Who said that gays have to be Democrats?

[saymyname]

^ Again, blatantly and factually incorrect.

Yes, I'm the one that is factually incorrect, even though I'm the one that provided a link with a citation. You should have gone to college.

 

[JB3]

Yes, I'm the one that is factually incorrect, even though I'm the one that provided a link with a citation. You should have gone to college.

I did, as a matter of fact. And not one textbook referenced the French revolution as the beginning of anything. You are incorrect. (and Wikipedia? You must have gone to a state school if you honestly think that's an appropriate 'cite' for anything...)

 

[Kulindahr]

I don't necessarily disagree with you here, although I think the number of incidents of people that get attacked for being a minority (racial, religious, sexual, etc.) far out number the obscure cases you're talking about in terms of someone possibly getting attacked for being, say, a bartender. I agree that political affiliation should be included as well. I understand where you are going with listing things like "logger, hunter" but seriously, when do people get attacked for being that? And if they do, does it inspire fear in a group of people? In other words, does it amount to the same sort of cultural and social terrorism that attacking someone for being black or gay does? That's why hate crimes deserve a harsher punishment, because you aren't just attacking that person, you're attacking an entire group of people, you're attacking their very person, their right to exists freely.

My point is that if you can classify a group in a way that sets them apart from the rest, they are a minority (unless of course you're some radical who wants to destroy some actual majority).

I've never heard of anyone being attacked for being a bartender, but for being a hunter or a logger -- yes. There are eco-freaks who seem to consider the moss on a tree or the slug sliding through it to be of more value and importance than human beings, and there have been attacks on people who "rape" nature. And their whole point is to inspire fear, so loggers and hunters will stop logging and/or hunting.

I disagree with your reason why hate crimes deserve a harsher punishment. It isn't a matter of attacking an entire group of people at all, because the attack was against the victim. The reason is rather that attacking someone because of membership in some group is inherently a denial of the victim's humanity. It's a declaration that this person (and all like him) do not own themselves, but are property; yet not merely property, but property that should be eliminated because it is more than useless, it's dangerous.

That's where the harsher punishment comes from. In any regular crime, say assault, the act is a temporary violation of the victim's self-ownership. But in a hate crime, the whole point is to not merely violate the person's self-ownership but to deny it entirely. Since the only way self-ownership can not be present is if the victim is not sentient and self-aware, but is an animal. Thus in carrying out a hate crime, the attacked makes a statement also about himself, namely that he does not consider that honoring others' self-ownership applies to him, that he believes it is legitimate to treat others as non-human. In so doing, he strips himself of the right to have his own self-ownership honored.

In a way, then, the punishment has to be harsher in order to fit the crime. The crime is not bodily assault, it is denial of personhood and an acting out of that proposition. At that point your proposition comes back in, that the perpetrator has not simply attacked an individual, but what he's attacked is not merely the minority/classification of which the victim is a member, but the very concepts of humanity and rights.

Well then, you're a more intelligent libertarian than most that I've come across. I'm glad that you can see it from that perspective as opposed to the libertarian trend of labeling it as something that introduces "thought crime" into state/federal legislature.

Most libertarians I've met treat liberty only as a personal issue, and take a lot for granted. I begin with the accepted principle of self-ownership, and ask how from that starting point we can have a society of order and mutual respect. I arrived at the only real "social contract", which is merely the following of a simple rule: honor the self-ownership of others as you would have them honor yours. Liberty is thus not something I or anyone else can "have", it is something we produce together constantly through our interactions, something held jointly because it arises from the web of interactions wherein we each honor the self-ownership of others.

Looked at it in that light, a simple assault is an issue between two people, who most likely need some outside assistance to resolve it. But a hate crime is in a very stark way not just an issue between two people -- it is treason.

 

[saymyname]

The particular section on the legacy of the French Revolution was particularly laden with citations, which references three separate books.

One by Paul Hanson, a history professor at Butler University, a liberal arts college founded in 1855.

Second is by Linda and Marsha Frey. Both are history professors. Linda Frey teaches at the University of Montana, and her sister at Kansas State University.

The third was by British historian George Rude, who specialized in the French Revolution. He held the Chair of History at the University of Stirling, Scotland.

And the verdict is out.