Hate Crimes? Thought Crimes? Crimethink?

So I've noticed.

No, but disapprove and disapproval are. Since you seem to be missing it, here it is again with the necessary emphasis:

What do they say, Jon? There are already laws about premeditation, but that still does not prevent the law from declaring that certain types of murder, such as killing by poisioning or laying in wait are considered capital offenses.Let's consider the case in question in which the perp murdered nine people in a cold calculating manner. Is there some level of punishment that he is going to receive that is outside the range of punishment for which he is already eligible?In the case of homicide, there is simply no danger of hate crime laws being thought crime laws. And making bogus arguments about current law does not advance your point.The examples were given to point out that the explanation you gave about how we currently treat mental state in assigning punishment was not correct. You need to provide a different reason why hate crimes are unlike non hate crimes if you have one.Quite frankly, I don't see how the current case fails to qualify as terrorism. Dylann's stated intent was to start a civil war.

But I still don't see where you are getting anything more than a description. What makes you think society disapproves of hate crimes more than other crimes?Get over it. It is simply a label.

Tangle said his society did.So I asked him about it.

I think that Dylann Roof is the worst example to bring up to talk about whether or not having hate crime laws is bad.He killed a bunch of people and admitted that hate was behind it. Calling this a hate crime is of little to no consequence.Its the minor shit that gets "hate crime" thrown on top of it that pisses me off.I remember back when I was in college, there was a bar fight one night between two guys. It occasionally happens and its not that big of a deal.But it turned out that the guy who lost the fight was gay, and then he made a big deal out of it and said the guy beat him up simply because he was gay. They wanted to charge the guy with a hate crime and throw the book at him.There wasn't any evidence that it actually was a hate crime other than the loser of the fight being a huge bitch about it. That, is a bit of a slippery slope in my opinion. But calling this Roof case a hate crime doesn't matter in the slightest.

Our society disapproves more of a murder committed because of racism. Or hate in general.The math isn't simple but it's clear: hate has zero value as a crime but it adds to the value of a crime.

I can't speak for the US but in the UK, society does not disaprove of hate crime more than other crime, it's not a crime itself, it's an aggravating factor ontop of the basic crime. So a simple common assault has a penalty, if that assault was caused by the offender's dislike of Asian people, it would attract a higher punishment. That's because the law believes that the message "this society dislikes crimes against minorities and would like it to stop" needs to be heard. It's a label that increases the penalty for an offence.

Well, it still involves examining what a criminal is thinking. "Did Fred intend to kill Bob?" is a psychological question just as much as "Was Fred motivated by racism when he killed Bob?"

And that's the messy bit.'Hate speech' is a crime in some countries.Is 'hate crime' a slippery slope to 'hate speech' to simply 'crimethink'?I don't think whatever perceived 'benefits' society might think it's getting out of these laws is worth the risk of finding out.

What risk?

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.from the same song at the end:And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

This isn't quite right. You're correct about the motivation behind the introduction of racially aggravated offences, as the justifications offered in Parliament were mostly about 'sending a message'. However, hate crimes are not just an aggravating factor - the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) created new offences for racially motivated crimes. There's a long debate on the topic from the House of Lords in 1998 here on Hansard. I haven't read the whole thing, but the main argument as to why to create a new offence rather than rely on treating racial motivation simply as an aggravating factor (which had been done in the UK long before 1998), other than simply 'to send a message', was offered by Lord Ackner:

quote:

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By relying upon the racial motivation purely as an aggravating aspect, it becomes merely part of the background and not part of the offence itself. Moreover, as part of the background, it may hardly emerge at all during the trial of the substantive offence. When it does emerge relative to sentencing, there may be the complication of an issue as to the seriousness arising therefrom. By making it a separate offence, it would be the members of the jury who would make all the relevant findings; by keeping it merely as aggravation, you are mixing up the functions of the judge and the jury. I assume that the Government take the view that, in the particular circumstances, that is not the desirable way of dealing with the matter.

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Do those countries have a first amendment? Apparently not. So far you don't seem to be have any evidence or argument for your position. We have such laws now. Do you have any discussion or references suggesting abuse? There are hate crime statutes in 45 of fifty states. Surely you have some track indicating a sliding along a slippery slope.

Yes. It's not called 'the first amendment', obviously, but almost every modern democratic country has freedom of speech enshrined in their constitution. And yet some of these countries, such as France since 1990, also have laws against hate speech.The French Constitutional Court has, for reasons I might understand better if I spoke French, confirmed that laws against hate speech and against Holocaust denial do not violate the constitution. The same court, however, ruled that the 2012 law criminalising denial of the Armenian Genocide is unconstitutional on free speech grounds. Make of that what you will.