"Hate Crimes" or crimes committed out of prejudice against a group of people IS scarier. Trying to blame it on Trump trivializes the true nature of the crime. Killing or even just hurting a person simply for what he or she is perceived to be is a societal problem and therefore much more serious.

Agreed!
That must make you one of the Deplorable's. lol Yeah, me too.

"hate crime" is a term used by the neo-nazi left to restrict free speech and to label actions contrary to their to the way the left expects you to act or to interpret how you act or to label you as racist or as undesirable

The whole idea of a "hate crime" is idiotic! Crimes are behaviors, not thoughts. I don't care why a person is assaulting, killing, stealing from or otherwise victimizing me. If there are aggravating or mitigating circumstances those factors will be taken into consideration at the time of sentencing. Those things will determine if the guilty party (previously determined, "yes, this person committed this crime") get a consequence that fits the circumstances. Whereth his/her actions were justified or not. If so a lessor sentence due to mitigating circumstances will be imposed; if aggravating circumstances demand a harsher consequence will ensue. But under no circumstances will a penalty be imposed BECAUSE s/he thought something (sometimes called hate).

That can depend on your political beliefs.
All in all, to hate just ain't PC.
Nevertheless, to commit crime as a Trump hating rioting libtard hypocrite is PC.
Angry snowflakes all get a PC pass, you see.

You definition I think is an accurate one technically, in actual usage here in the USA it is a term used to oppress the white race, in much the way feminism is used to oppress men. Apparently, the reason you never hear about African Americans perpetrating "Hate Crimes" is because white people are born with the "Original Sin" of racism and "White Privilege" ....Try using that "White Privilege" when you apply for a federal job...see how that works for you!

Some of your Granola chompers will go on about the supposed advantages that oppression and slavery gave the white descendants of slave owners, however relatively few owned slaves back in the day and given the multiple mass migrations of people to the US since the civil war, there are not actually that many direct descendants of slave owners, as a proportion of the white population. I myself emigrated from England in 1967...I sure as shit got nothing out of it....but I sure have been discriminated against because of it.

In short it is used as a opportunity for the Race Baiters to complain and make money.

Here's my problem with the concept of a hate crime: By assigning different penalties if I get caught, you are in essence assigning that the victim's life is worth more or less based solely on my motive.

For example, if I beat the hell out of someone because he looks like he has enough money to make the crime worth my while, I get X jail time if I get caught.

But if I go out to beat up the first (insert group member here) that I see who also looks like he has enough money to make the crime worth my while, then I get X + Y jail time.

Since my jail time is different based purely on my motive, that's saying that this guy's life is more important--and so I should be punished more harshly--if I singled him out just because of his ethnic or other group.

I don't get it. I intentionally commit the same crime, I do the same amount of damage to the victim in both cases, and my penalty if I'm convicted differs just because of my motive?

Really?

Is there a difference between a "Hate Crime" and a "Thought Crime"? The whole concept reeks of Stalinist orthodoxy. The "Minority Report" system of punishing crimes before they happen is next.

The terribly sad thing is that it is more than just a term. It can often carry a stronger sentence than a "normal" crime. If someone punches someone in the face and calls them an "a-hole", how is that different than punching someone in the face and calling them a racial epithet? The name calling is irrelevant, other than possibly helping to determine motive. The fact that one of those crimes would carry a harsher punishment than the other is deplorable. (See I used one of the left's fun words there.)

Hate crime is anything a white person does.

A hate crime is a crime committed by a Trump supporter against a Hillary supporter. A love crime is a crime committed by a Hillary supporter against a Trump supporter.

The adjective "hate" tries to describe the motive, and therefore the perpetrator's own justification, for the crime.
That reason is all that is needed to stop using it. Every crime is harm done to another person(s) and nothing else.
Two other phrases I can think of, which should also be dropped from use...
"honor killings"... which says the justification was honor, so it was ok.
"crime of passion"... a lawyer's trick to imply the crime was justified and suggests leniency.

...When you hit somebody over the head but actually don't like them(?) (sorry...)

In order for anything to be considered "Hate" there Must be physical animosity, someone physically harming another. So All violent crimes are Hate crimes.

Intent is problematical when it comes to proof.
"beyond a reasonable doubt" as a standard is already hazy enough because of "reasonable" without throwing intent in there to muddy it further.

Pyschology is not on the same plane of reliability and repeatability as Chemistry or Physics.

You can try, judge, convict, punish pretty consistently on actions, the who/what/when/where. That is the basis of a/our legal system. Once Why gets in the mix fog overshadows fact.


Why is outside the act. Of concern for the relatives of Justice, Vengeance, Retribution, but not a legal necessity.

Janet Reno?

is it right that a Marx or Rachel Carsen get off the hook through free speech? philosophically speaking. an Ayers acted on an Alinsky

while I am mostly in aggreement, I do think there are crimes which are motivated or perpetrated beyond the act itself. I agree though, "hate crime" is not one of those

Hate Crime is a political construct.

Intent can never be fully proven externally, only guessed at. When the person that committed the crime admits to doing it because they hate the other, that is a close to proof as you can ever get.

In any case, a crime is a crime, penalties should be the same period.

Now we use "aggravated XXX" instead of depraved heart

yes, yes. I was caught out using the phrase. I acknowledged the contradiction and have been thinking about it. Did you know there is such a thing as "depraved heart" murder? we do have laws that have qualifiers to the violence

Almost right. I agree with the opening. But a lot in there begs discussion.

"The death of one is a crime; the deaths of millions is a statistic." (It is often attributed to Stalin, but has another story: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/... Your claim is the reverse, that we are saddened by the victimization of one, but outraged at the deaths of many. And why not? I mean, can you say that one person is "worth" more than some number of others? Maybe to each of us, this person or that must be worth infinitely more than all others combined - our spouse, our parents... In Dr. Zhivago, the hero's half-brother, the police general, says "I have killed better men than me with a small gun." So, we must easily admit that some people are better than others. I have no easy answer for this forum, but I do note the question. I am not sure how to evaluate it. But, I do see your point, that victimizing one person for being a member of a perceived group is to attack the entire group, which is somehow metaphysically "worse" - which you question. And I agree with you: it bears questioning.

Generally, the perpetrator does not hate the victim. Obviously, the perpetrator has no regard for the victim: criminals do not consider the victim at all. They are concerned only with their own goals. Largely, those are immediate goals, range of the moment. Shoplifting and other white collar crimes are somewhat different from that in that they are planned. White collar criminals (including shoplifters) are planfully competent actors who calculate their gains and risks. But they do not hate their victims.

Prejudice is offered as an excuse or justification. (Those are different, offered by different kinds of criminals.) But with criminals, we have a basic problem in their own almost complete lack of self-awareness. They are not thinkers. If they were thinking, they would not be criminals. But they do have mental processes, even as they are largely unaware of whatever is going on "inside."

And it is not just them. Any pollster will tell you that people say what they think someone else wants to hear. Working in real estate, I learned the saw: "Buyers are liars."

Perhaps the largest lacuna in the law is ignoring the fact that rape is a hate crime. See my comments in the discussion on Hip Hop:
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
and
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
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Just for reference on topic:
The Hate Crime Statistics Act (28 U.S.C. § 534) defines hate crimes as “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender or gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) measures crimes perceived by victims to be motivated by an offender’s bias against them for belonging to or being associated with a group largely identified by these characteristics. For a crime to be classified as a hate crime in the NCVS, the victim must report at least one of three types of evidence that the act was motivated by hate: the offender used hate language, the offender left behind hate symbols, or police investigators confirmed that the incident was hate crime. Bureau of Justice Statistics here: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&ti...

The FBI agrees: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/civil...

"Hate crime" is almost the same as "terrorism". It means the motive was to intimidate an entire group. The words seem to imply that hate crime or terrorism crime is worse than ordinary crime because its intended victim is an entire group. This is a clever way of aggrandizing criminals. If you hear about a murder and then find out it was "terrorism" or a "hate crime", it's supposed to be scarier and somehow turn the low-life criminal into a soldier fighting for a cause.

It doesn't matter what group the perpetrator identifies with or which group he's trying to intimidate; they're all "terrorism" and "hate crimes".

The people talking about a rise in "hate crime" supposedly associated with President elect Trump are probably trying to aggrandize those criminals and then blame their crimes partly on Trump.

I hate crime. Is that a hate crime?