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“Hate Crime” Means ThoughtCrime — #everylifematters

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RGBStock.comBloodIt’s a scene played out all too frequently: Gunfire shatters  a neighborhood’s quiet routine. Screams echo through its streets or the halls of one of its apartment complexes. Sirens wail. An ambulance hauls away the bodies, a police cruiser hauls away a handcuffed suspect or suspects. Later: A trial, a verdict, a sentence. Some lives are lost, others forever changed.

On Tuesday, February 10, that story line came to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Three young people — Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha — lie dead. Their suspected killer, Craig Stephen Hicks, stands charged with three counts of first-degree murder.

It’s an ugly thing. Unfortunately, instead of mourning the victims and seeking justice versus their killer, many seem caught up in disputes over motive. Were these three killed over a parking space? Or were they killed because they were Muslims?

If the latter, some assert (and, unfortunately, have the legal power to back the assertion with charges) that the victims enjoy special status because their murders constitute a “hate crime.”

That assertion and the laws associated with it go 180 degrees against the US Constitution, and against the goal of a just social order, in several ways.

Under “hate crimes” laws, if a victim belongs to any of various “protected classes,”  and if the criminal’s motive is demonstrably connected to the victim’s status as a member of such a class, additional charges may be laid and additional penalties or punishments levied.

Those conditions are repugnant to the 14th Amendment’s requirement that all Americans enjoy equal protection of the law. They designate some victims as more valuable than others, and some criminals as more culpable than others,  with respect to the same crimes.

“Hate crimes” laws also do damage to the 1st Amendment’s enshrinement of our rights to think, speak and worship as we please. Only the violent act may be prohibited. The underlying idea, no matter how ugly or hateful, is sacrosanct. While ugly and hateful ideas are rightly subject to criticism and social pressure and preferencing (who but another Ku Klux Klansman wants to make friends with a Klansman?), “ThoughtCrime” must never be forbidden, let alone punished, by law.

The blood of Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha cries out from the ground. It cries for justice versus their killer, not for vengeance versus their killer’s beliefs or motives. We the living should heed that cry. #everylifematters.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Right to be Forgotten?” Fuhgeddaboudit.

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RGBStock.com WWWLast May, the European Union Court of Justice asserted a “right to be forgotten,” ordering Google and other search engines to remove “inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive” personal information from search results on demand.

Glossing over the difficulty of objectively deciding what kind of information might be “inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive,” Google promptly complied. The web search giant created an application process through which individuals could quickly and easily register their demands that EU web users be forcibly made a little dumber. Maybe even as dumb as European Union Court of Justice judges.

Or maybe not. Turns out the EU’s censors want Google to implement their Orwellian “memory hole” globally. After all, EU web users, who on average run smarter than European Union Court of Justice judges, know they can bypass Google.fr and go to Google.com for information their masters don’t want them to have.

To its credit, Google is resisting the idea, citing the recommendations of an “advisory board” it put together for the express purpose of recommending such resistance.

But I wish Google would take matters further and simply tell web censors and other bad Internet actors to go pound sand.

Some governments are better than others when it comes to respecting Internet freedom. Unless governments act to stop them, users in any given country can reach sites hosted in any other country. And a company boasting $60 billion annual revenues carries enough weight to make offers of substantial value.

Google should move its headquarters and main server farms to two countries (splitting its servers and running redundant backups across both sets) on an offer like this:

“We’ll double, maybe even triple, your national GDP, bring substantial information infrastructure improvements, follow your labor and environmental regulations, and pay a reasonable tax rate on our revenues. Only one condition. You don’t regulate our content or sign international treaties requiring you to let others regulate our content. Ever.”

Latvia and Jamaica, perhaps. Or Iceland and Paraguay. Two countries, so that if one regime tries to back out on the deal Google can back out as well without missing a beat.

After which, of course, Google could show its middle finger to the European Union Court of Justice and other tyrannical institutions and tell them “if you want to censor, do it yourself.”

Freedom of information is too valuable to let governments screw around with. Time for some tough love.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Joe Biden’s Dangerous Game

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RGBStock.com WW2US vice-president Joe Biden put American exceptionalism on display in a big way Saturday (February 7), laying down a tough line of patter to the 2015 Munich Security Conference. Biden called on Russian president Vladimir Putin to “get out of Ukraine,” doubling down on US threats to escalate conflict in the Russia-Ukraine border region by arming Kiev’s forces.

“Too many times, President Putin has promised peace and delivered tanks, troops and weapons,” quoth Biden, by way of promising peace and simultaneously promising to deliver tanks, weapons and possibly US troops.

At issue are two new “ethnically Russian” states — the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics — which seceded from Ukraine in the wake of last year’s US-backed coup and the installation in Kiev of a regime friendlier to the US and the European Union and more hostile toward Russia.

Biden’s newly minted opposition to ethnic secessionist movements rings hollow, given his enthusiastic backing of such movements in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. He recalls his support for Bosnian and Kosovar secessionists — up to and including US bombing campaigns and ground troop interventions versus Serbia which  dwarf even the most inflated claims of Russian meddling in the current conflict — as his “proudest moment in public life.” Hypocrisy much, Mr. Vice-President?

Biden, US president Barack Obama, and the more hawkish contingent in Congress might also do well to reconsider the practicality of a counter-insurgency campaign in the region.  Given the complete failures and follow-on consequences of the 21st century’s first two such US campaigns — in Iraq and Afghanistan — a betting man would likely put long odds on success in a third such misadventure. Especially one which antagonizes a major military power with the capacity to, in extremis, take things nuclear. But that same gambler would put similarly long odds on the likelihood of such reconsideration.

It took 58,000 American deaths in Vietnam to raise even minor self-doubt among American politicians on their post-World War II conception of themselves as “leaders of the free world,” disposing of the military might to impose their will around the globe in, as George III put it to Britain’s rebellious colonies in 1775, “all cases whatsoever.”

The fall of the Soviet Union and the sugar high of victory in the first Gulf War dispelled that doubt. 9/11 put the War Party completely back in America’s driver’s seat. And we’ve been cruisin’ for a bruisin’ ever since.

If Joe Biden and Company can’t figure out a way to gracefully walk away from the mess they’ve made in Ukraine and let Russia, Ukraine, the breakaway states and the EU settle their own arguments, this conflict may very well turn out to  be that bruisin’.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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