Giv the dizzy broad a break. It took her a month to write her diatribe, scouring through a thesaurus, and with newfound respect for her writers she forgot to thank. This just happened, and it was far to complex for her little brain to weave in with the time she had.

Where is Meryl's outrage at this situation?

One thing here that constantly bugs me. Whenever I read BLM, I think Bureau of Land Management. That political entity has been an oppressor to me my whole adult career.

When the BLM management policies have been hijacked by an environmental agenda that hates mining, don't we have a hate crime of extinction of private property rights performed through administrative fiat?

Yes indeed.

You should write James Patterson novels!

My dangerous dino imagination is taking that a step further.
A gangsta from the hood decides to beat up four perceived easy targets for special needs white people who beat him to death with their canes, crutches, artificial limbs, whatever. Maybe one is a concealed carry and shoots the poor unarmed thug.
A witness lies that the special needs white people attacked the gangsta.
Police investigate. Meanwhile, here comes BLM, Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Black and white cops assigned to crowd control are ambushed. A black neighborhood burns.
BLM feels vindicated until the four special needs white people are acquited.
Then the real hell kicks off.

Is it laziness or is it the peer pressure/desire for public approbation? To me those are two separate motivations entirely (the public approbation one is definitely a worthy mention that didn't cross my mind earlier - well done). Another might simply be the thrill or adrenaline rush associated with the act itself. I've heard that many rappers intentionally get themselves involved in crimes to up their "street cred" so that later they can sell more albums.

Agreed!

Hello Thoritsu,
A crime is a crime. The particular motive is immaterial. The fact that there is one is.
Regards,
O.A.

Very well said. Excellent!

If you believe that one groups is unjust to and hates another it is easier to sell the slavery idea that people must acquiesce their liberty and their property to the offended party even though they are not responsible for the offense.

Agreed. However, I do think a pop in the nose would do a lot of people a lot of good a lot quicker than a discussion sometimes. The animal in us does function.

That is worth a discussion! I see where you are coming from, but in the case of the "lots of planning and forethought", the perpetrator still thought this was worth more than achieving the same end with legal means.
Personally I think one can argue that both ways of looking at it are valid. I just like the laziness view, because it takes away the "cool" factor of the crimes and demeans the perpetrator.

"Hate Crime" is a form of "Thought Crime". This Orwellian concept is consistent with Stalinist orthodoxy but antithetical to a free society. Doing injury to another is and should be a crime. The concept of "Hate Crime" opens the door to "acceptable" or "appropriate" crimes as well as those that are unacceptable in addition to being illegal.

I would certainly agree that theft is spawned from largely from laziness. Some cases of murder - such as in cases where the murderer expects to gain from the murder - can be similarly argued to spawn from greed (which has a component of laziness). But I hesitate to associate all crime with laziness, as there are some crimes which are undertaken only after a lot of planning and forethought. I think the real all-encompassing term is rebellion.

Exactly right!

Ahh, but what about a black guy getting assaulted by four special needs white people? Wouldn't that be complicated?

Certainly can be argued that way. Although it does water down the meaning of "hate". My brother likes to assign "laziness" to the motive for all crime. I like this distinction better.

Well said!

I just don't believe in "hate crimes". I don't hold
with criminalizing emotions. To me, a crime is a
crime. Murder is murder,brutalization is brutalization, regardless of race. What
those thugs did should be severely--and I do mean
severely--punished.

Every crime is a crime of hate: of disdain for the accepted rules of society. Whether the crime is against an individual or against a city, it is still a crime. What they are really discussing with "hate" crimes are crimes which have a motive of irrational passion resulting from one person viewing another as less of a different class of human than himself. In a society of true equals, crime disappears completely.

Nothing complicated...everybody knows what a hate crime is...it is when a white criminal does something to a downtrodden minority thereby giving the constantly aggrieved something to piss and man about.

Quite frankly I seriously doubt that such a "Crime" is even constitutional as it is a crime resulting from thought.....It is impossible to discern what someone was thinking when they commit an act. Therefore I suspect the civil war [equal protection] amendments would make such "Crimes" unconstitutional. I think that a strict reading of the constitution would reveal that there is no basis for prosecuting someone for a thought crime...only the actual act should be punishable.

This sort of "Crime" is just like all the regulations that Hank Reardon complained about when being asked to steel Reardon metal to the state science institute. He was told not to worry about them because "our friends don't have a problem with those laws" ...IE if laws are malleable and subject to interpretation...they can be used to oppress....and that is in the final analyses the reason for "Laws" like these.

Thanks. Now I get what you were saying.

My point was that you would have trouble finding a CNN article, with a white person shooting a black person (or other "exciting" victim), where the CNN article remains so sterile.

I think you meant to write Fox instead of CNN, or I may just be confused.