At Catholic World Report's blog, Diogenes points out that when a single noose was found on an Indiana college campus, hundreds, including the university president, had a massive conniption, and called the FBI. But when a local Catholic Church was badly vandalized, including having its altar set on fire, it was ho-diddly-hum from the po-po. What's the lesson here? Here's Diogenes:
OK, there may be good reason to think the damage was done by juveniles out to wreak mischief rather than to express hatred. But any way you look at it, smashing doors and setting a fire on an altar is not a compliment. If a mosque or a synagogue or the office of a Leftist professor were roughed up in this fashion, could the police get away with attributing it to hooliganism?The innovation of hate crimes is a bad business. It makes particular passions iniquitous instead of particular acts, and that puts the state's coercive power into the hands of those persons most adept at manipulating bureaucratic timidity and fashionable resentments for their own ends -- not those most concerned with justice. As Catholic teaching comes to clash more and more blatantly with the ethos that animates the organs of public life (the courts, the media, the universities), the asymmetrical indignation seen in these Indiana episodes is not going to get better.
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Um, can't believe no one has pointed this out ...
Terre Haute and Auburn are on **opposite** ends of Indiana. So I have no idea, other than the fact the crimes occurred hundreds of miles apart but coincidentally in the same state, why they are linked.
I'm truly torn on the whole "hate crimes" issue. On the one hand, I'm a First Amendment devotee, and people are allowed to be personally prejudiced in our country -- so the "thought crime"/Minority Report aspect of guessing if something is a hate crime is troubling.
On the other hand, a crime committed in the name of prejudice (a cross-burning in an African-American's yard, a swastika spray-painted on a Jewish family's door -- no guessing on either of those ...) is really, like the shooting of a police officer, an attack on the order of society, and not just an attack on an individual. Doesn't that deserve extra punishment accordingly?
I honestly don't know how to resolve the difference.
Larry, pogroms in Russia and other places were not just condoned, they were ordered by authorities. In other words, they were a part of the order of those societies. Similarly, lynchings were sometimes openly supported by local law enforcement. There is no order of society if there is a cognitive disconnect between law and its enforcement.
I really want to say this as gently as possible, because I know you are asking sincere questions, but there is just no connection between the shooting of a police officer and a crime committed in the name of prejudice. Please note that I am offering no qualitative comparison at all. Please also note that -- especially for other readers thinking of raising this objection -- I do not accept a direct analogy between the past and the present. We are a very different society from the segregation of our past.
Franklin:
Do not misunderstand me. I was asking that crimes of prejudice be given AT LEAST AS MUCH consideration as the shooting of a police officer, not ONLY the consideration of the shooting of a police officer.
Without that context, I can see why my tone may have put you off.
Larry,
Thanks for clarifying. My objection is that crimes of prejudice must be primarily opposed by social action, whereas the shooting of a police officer is strictly within the context of a criminal act.
Everyone (who isn't already a criminal) abhors the injury or killing of a police officer. Large subsets condone prejudice and at best turn away when prejudicial crimes are committed. Legislative equity for the crimes is not going to change the behavior or attitudes of those subsets. Social action by the majority who abhor the prejudice can make those changes, but also only over time.
I forgot to add, and must really emphasize, that in the present climate of complacency and the mythic expectation that passing a law will magically make a problem go away, I will on principle oppose any legislation that implicitly or explicitly lets my fellow citizens off the hook for their complacency.
Larry, to be clear, I am put off by that general complacency. I do not lump you in with it, indeed I am grateful for your voice on this forum because you tend to goose people out of it. :-D
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