Crimes du Jour

National Review, Sept 13, 1999 by Midge Decter

The new campaign to seek additional legislation against hate, then, is not really meant to be directed at the cold-blooded race murderers of this world, the ones who declare themselves and feel themselves to be serving a higher cause. What more can be done either with or to them than will be done as a matter of legal course? We must therefore conclude that it is for lesser crimes that the cops and courts would be required to consider the thought rather than simply the deed.

This, make no mistake, would be a violation of the very freedom for which the United States of America stands. But set aside for a moment the question of constitutional principle-it has after all been set aside so often in recent years for the sake of social convenience-and get to the real point of the hate-crime campaign: The crimes deemed worthy of this designation will quickly come to be defined simply and only as crimes committed against members of minorities. We have certainly had enough experience in recent years to understand that. And again, at least to judge from history, first these crimes will be defined as crimes of violence committed only against members of minority groups, and as time wears on they will come to be defined as any "crime" (including critical disagreement) committed against members of minority groups, and finally the status of "minority" will be withheld from any but certain designated groups. So not only will people's thoughts be made a crime-and in what now-defunct country have we heard that one before?-the hate that is supposed to be stamped out by passing laws against it will end in all-out social war.

It is the chief glory of the United States that, in an ugly world, where groups engage regularly in bloody murder, this blessed society has found the means to keep a decent if not an always perfect civil peace. What in God's name, then, do all these good, upright, liberal advocates of hate-crime legislation imagine they are doing? Beyond, that is, giving vent to some of their ever-venturing, ever-expanding self-righteousness.