while coding » politics

A Note on Hate Crimes

matt — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:46:11 +0000

I don’t talk politics here very often. I tend to focus on programming and related things. But the name of the blog is “While Coding” for a reason: I blog almost exclusively about things that pop into my head when I’m trying to get some code written. Blogging frees my brain cells so I can work. Lately I’ve been able to let off a lot of that steam through Twitter (much to the chagrin of those who follow me), but every now and then there is a topic that demands more than 140 characters of discussion.

At the library yesterday I ran into a petitioner. “Got a moment for gay rights?”, she asked. That isn’t one of my pet topics but certainly rights – gay or otherwise – are pretty important. I stopped to find out what she wanted. It turned out that she wanted support for a bill adding gays and lesbians to existing hate crimes legislation. I knew right then I wasn’t going to sign anything.

This had nothing to do with gay rights in my mind. From her point of view it was unfair that gays weren’t a part of the existing legislation. I agree, that’s not fair. Unfortunately, hate crimes legislation is a really bad idea to begin with. Adding more classes of people on to bad legislation only makes a bad law worse.

There are two fundamental problems with the idea of hate crimes: For starters, hate crimes really boil down to thought-crime. How do you get inside someone’s head and prove what they were thinking? I asked the petitioner about this. This was a question that she had a stock answer for, and she said that you train law enforcement to be able to recognize hate crimes. You might imagine that her argument didn’t win me over.

The greater problem with hate crimes legislation is that it takes away equal protection under the law. Hate crimes laws may start off protecting one or two classes of people, but over time more and more classes of people will be added. You start with an ethnic or religious protection, then it’s nationality, sexuality, age, gender identity, or just gender. Pretty soon the people not protected by the legislation are in the minority. Once that happens you have created a default class of people who are easier to abuse.

This is similar to why criminal organizations have juveniles commit crimes for them. The punishment is often less for a teenager to commit a crime than for an adult. The same will eventually happen here. It will become no big deal to commit a crime against a certain segment of the population because the punishment will be far less than for crimes against the protected classes.

You don’t solve bias and discrimination with more bias and discrimination.

I should mention as an aside that I really admire people who get out and do the footwork for the things they believe in. This young lady at the library was obviously doing something she really believed in and was trying to make a difference. I wish there were more people out there like that. I also wish that I had stayed more politically active beyond my youth.

The ticket I’d vote for in November

matt — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:11:49 +0000

Barack, your campaign is pissing me off

matt — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:41:56 +0000

This is bullshit. I have supported the Obama campaign since well before it was officially announced. I’ve been on their mailing list forever. I struggled to get the pretty-but-poorly-designed website to understand that I had moved from California to Oregon. These days I patiently receive a constant stream of emails from the campaign asking for money. All of which is no big deal to me.

But, I’ve gotta say that something is wrong if you have to start building false suspense in your campaign with this “Be the first to know who my VP is” crap. First off, I’ve been on your mailing list forever. So I damned well better be “the first to know”. But apparently it doesn’t work that way, because I still have to go to some web page and type in a bunch of the info that the campaign already has. WTF?

It’s not like I’m going to run out and vote McCain because of this. It’s just an annoying smudge on an otherwise shiny campaign.

Edit – Here’s the page I hyperlinked in the text of my post but isn’t showing in Google Reader:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/firsttoknow

Don’t do it Barack!

matt — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:00:16 +0000

Don’t do it Barack. Don’t make Hillary your veep.

She’s not worthy. But that isn’t the important thing. The important thing is the crossover vote you will surely lose if you align yourself with Hillary.

Reagan had the “Reagan Democrats”. You could have the “Obama Conservatives”. There is a lot of support for you from conservatives, libertarians, and quasi-libertarians such as myself. There could be even more in the months to come. But tread lightly.

I have supported your campaign since it was only a rumor. I have your bumper sticker on my car. I voted for you in my state primary. In fact, I had to fight red tape just to have my vote counted. So I’m a pretty loyal guy. But if you give Hillary the nod, I’m going to have second thoughts.

You may be led to believe that Hillary represents a great deal of Democratic votes. That is a load of crap. Those votes are already yours. In practical terms it is pretty clear that no one who would vote for Hillary would instead vote for McCain. So with Dems, you’re golden.

The real hassles lay ahead. No doubt you’ll have to deal with the Greens and the Naderites in the fall. That’s going to be enough of a problem. Don’t make it worse by ostracizing those of us who have made the effort to cross over and support you.

Do us all a big favor: Pick up the phone and see what Bill Richardson is up to.

UPDATES: Jimmy Carter knows what I’m talking about.

And here’s the type of voter you risk with a Hillary ticket.