A Claremont Institute editorial, dated August 20, 1999, is a model of clarity and common sense. It addresses the matter of "hate crimes" in the light of the Granada Hills Jewish center shooting.
Subject: Claremont Institute Precepts: Tolerance and Rights
In a Los Angeles suburb last week, another wicked act of violence against innocent children made national news. The response from political leaders and pundits has been predictable, and in many ways regrettable.
Every demagogue in the country took to the airwaves and waved the bloody shirt, fulminating against the scourge of guns and declaiming the urgent need for special laws against crimes motivated by hatred. They turn too quickly from the suffering of these children and their parents to the political agendas which they hold most dear.
Here is a high-profile, deplorable offense, the latest in a series of such offenses. In this case, a minority group was singled out by a disturbed loner who identifies with the cause of National Socialism and the doctrine of white supremacy. This is a scandal and an outrage. It was committed by a man of unsound mind, who was released from prison on probation, and whose probation was not properly monitored. We should have a debate about how to improve probation, and how better to keep people who are violent behind bars where they cannot harm others. The direct remedies--and they are not perfect--lie in this area.
Instead, the debate centers on
a) the ban, confiscation, and destruction of legally obtained firearms from law abiding citizens;
b) new federal and state laws which would add additional penalties if it is found that a crime was motivated by "bias."
As to the first, it is important that Mr. Furrow, like the boys of Littleton, Colorado, broke existing firearms laws. Neither would have had the guns they did have, if those laws had been enforced. Instead of enforcing those already on the books, which applied very well to the circumstances of the tragedies in question, we propose instead to pass new laws that have little or nothing to do with those circumstances. This will not be effective.
As to the second, "hate crimes" legislation, it is important that Mr. Furrow, and the boys in Littleton, Colorado, both committed capital crimes. By those acts they made themselves subject to the most severe penalties that the law can impose, unless we resurrect the practice of torture. It will add nothing to their punishment to convict them of a new crime based upon the "bias" they showed in the selection of their victims.
Moreover, if we add to murder prosecutions the new element of "bias" or "hate" against certain groups, we make the implication that it is worse to murder one person, than it is to murder another, worse to shoot one child, than it is to shoot another. This is not good doctrine. Children who do not fit the selected groups will wonder what this means for them. And they may be subject to greater danger.
In this talk of "hate crimes," we speak often of the virtue of tolerance. Tolerance is indeed a virtue, rightly understood. But it is not a sufficient conception to explain the events perpetrated by Mr. Furrow or the Littleton boys. They did much worse than fail to tolerate their fellow citizens. They rather deprived them of one of their sacred rights.
The children fired upon in Los Angeles were Jewish, going to summer classes at an Episcopal (Christian) church. George Washington, a citizen and a Christian, once addressed a note to some Jewish fellow citizens about the superiority of rights to tolerance, on matters of high importance.
"It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights," Washington wrote. "For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."
Government is obliged to protect the rights of us all, and equally. It should get about that work.
Sincerely,
Larry P. Arnn
President, The Claremont Institute
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Thought for the Day:
"Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous."
(William Proxmire)
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