This week in the US there were two executions of convicted murders. One was convicted of killing a police officer in Georgia and the other for a particularly brutal dragging murder in Texas. The man in Georgia was executed despite a lot of pressure from the public there to overturn the case. No one seemed to mourn the man in Texas. He and a few friends drug a black man to death behind his pickup. Putting the professions of innocence and the moral ramifications of the death penalty aside, I want to address something that has always bothered me – hate crime laws in the US. I don’t understand it.

Here is an imaginary example detailing my confusion. Say I am of a criminal persuasion and go into a 7-11. The cashier takes too long to give me the money and I, high on drugs, shoot him a couple of times. The cashier dies, I am on video and the cops come to arrest me a couple of days later after my mom rats me out so she can have my not-so-secret coke stash. I am found guilty and am sent to the electric chair.* Another tale – harboring a life-long hatred of Jews and other supposed sub-humans, I walk into my local Jewish deli and shoot the manager because I, like Mel Gibson, believe that Jews start all the wars. The local SWAT team raids my house hours later, finding me absentmindedly fondling my hoard of Nazi memorabilia. A ZOG controlled judge by the name of Goldstein sentences me to death by lethal injection. A decade later, after several appeals, I am executed by the state.±

The issue that I really have is over cause and effect. What difference does it make why a man was killed? I am not saying that intent should totally be eschewed, as that would totally throw out accidents, self-defense, and insanity. But a murder over racial or other equal motivations is no more heinous to me than one over money or anything else. A man (or woman) is still dead, leaving a hole in the victims family. All murders (by which I mean not of the three exceptions) should be processed to the harshest degree currently allowed. Allowing gradation in crime will in some sense create special social definitions where one person’s death is more horrific than another’s. Also, do we draw the same lines across all boundaries? Will a black man, if he is filled with hate towards “The Man,” then drive up and shoot me as I pick up the morning paper because of my skin color get the same treatment as an Aryan Brother pulling the same crime? I do not know. All of this current rush towards “fairness” leads me to believe not. I do not mean to just limit this to just murder either, but include rape, assault, etc. In any of these moments, no matter the reason, I am sure there is a lot of hate there.

*The first imaginary me could probably get a good lawyer and get it whittled down to just Manslaughter or Murder 2.

±The second imaginary me would probably try for an insanity plea. Pre-planned videos of me saluting “Heil Hitler” while watching Triumph of the Will, getting loaded on schnapps and repeated loops of Wagner on high volume would no doubt aid my cause.