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Hate [the] Crime
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David C Kifer
Aug 8, 2006, 2:21:48 PM8/8/06
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PAMELA WAECHTER was murdered at the Jewish Federation of Greater
Seattle on Friday, July 28--an American who was born a Lutheran and
reared in Minneapolis, a middle-aged mother, a convert to Judaism who
became a leader in Seattle's Jewish community. Pamela Waechter. Do not
stamp her "hate crime" victim and file her away. Because her killer
said, "I'm Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel," the local police and
the FBI have both called this a "hate crime" murder--just one more
handy tag for deceased human beings whom you lack the time or energy
to remember. And this particular tag is foolish and destructive. It
attempts to bring home the frightfulness of the ultimate crime by
seasoning it with social-worker talk.
Murder is always a crime, and to call it a "hate crime" adds nothing
and explains nothing. (Murders done for love or any other reason are
just as bad.) Hatred is never a crime; if the Seattle killer had kept
his hatred to himself, it would still be his business and no one
else's. The "hate crime" label makes it too easy to lose track of the
dead woman as we ponder the crime and the killer. It speaks of a
society where solving crime isn't enough for law enforcement officers;
where they need to preen for the cameras too. It suggests a society
that is already on the road to forgetting that we claim the power (in
this free land) to police your actions, not your emotions.
Of course it is important that hatred is wrong for America's two
principal religions. Although Judaism and Christianity travel
different routes, they reach approximately this same point. But there
are subtleties along the way. And policemen and justice officials are
the wrong people to teach us about them. We should be hearing about
these topics from our priests, rabbis, and ministers (and maybe our
philosophers of ethics, if they can remember to hold onto reality and
think straight). The whole idea of "hate crime" is one more sad
symptom of the dreadful modern tendency to replace "moral" by "legal,"
"what is right" by "what is lawful" (which inevitably becomes "what
you can get away with")--and worst of all to substitute bureaucrats,
legislators, and academics for clergymen and bona fide philosophers.
--David Gelernter, Call It Murder, _The Weekly Standard_, 08/14/2006,
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/554maylr.asp
Seattle on Friday, July 28--an American who was born a Lutheran and
reared in Minneapolis, a middle-aged mother, a convert to Judaism who
became a leader in Seattle's Jewish community. Pamela Waechter. Do not
stamp her "hate crime" victim and file her away. Because her killer
said, "I'm Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel," the local police and
the FBI have both called this a "hate crime" murder--just one more
handy tag for deceased human beings whom you lack the time or energy
to remember. And this particular tag is foolish and destructive. It
attempts to bring home the frightfulness of the ultimate crime by
seasoning it with social-worker talk.
Murder is always a crime, and to call it a "hate crime" adds nothing
and explains nothing. (Murders done for love or any other reason are
just as bad.) Hatred is never a crime; if the Seattle killer had kept
his hatred to himself, it would still be his business and no one
else's. The "hate crime" label makes it too easy to lose track of the
dead woman as we ponder the crime and the killer. It speaks of a
society where solving crime isn't enough for law enforcement officers;
where they need to preen for the cameras too. It suggests a society
that is already on the road to forgetting that we claim the power (in
this free land) to police your actions, not your emotions.
Of course it is important that hatred is wrong for America's two
principal religions. Although Judaism and Christianity travel
different routes, they reach approximately this same point. But there
are subtleties along the way. And policemen and justice officials are
the wrong people to teach us about them. We should be hearing about
these topics from our priests, rabbis, and ministers (and maybe our
philosophers of ethics, if they can remember to hold onto reality and
think straight). The whole idea of "hate crime" is one more sad
symptom of the dreadful modern tendency to replace "moral" by "legal,"
"what is right" by "what is lawful" (which inevitably becomes "what
you can get away with")--and worst of all to substitute bureaucrats,
legislators, and academics for clergymen and bona fide philosophers.
--David Gelernter, Call It Murder, _The Weekly Standard_, 08/14/2006,
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/554maylr.asp
--
Dave
"Tam multi libri, tam breve tempus!"
(Et brevis pecunia.) [Et breve spatium.]
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