TO THE EDITOR:
David Gelernter’s eloquent piece on the scourge "hate crime" classifications represent in our legal system and upon our society gives voice to the sentiments I have long held. The one aspect I would add to his argument however, is the troubling precedent these laws create by criminalizing thought. By criminally defining a certain ideology or prejudice of thought in politically correct terms today, I fear we have begun the descent down a slippery slope of regulating or criminalizing other thought or opinion , such as the government sponsored history found in some European nations that Gerard Alexander documented in your publication a few months ago. As George Will stated in his column some months back, "Hate crimes are, in effect, thought crimes. Hate crime laws mandate enhanced punishments for crimes committed as a result of, or at least when accompanied by, particular states of mind of which the government particularly disapproves. Governments that feel free to stigmatize, indeed criminalize, certain political thoughts and attitudes will move on to regulating what expresses such thoughts and attitudes -- speech."
Any criminalization of thought or opinion is antithetical to democracy. It is the action itself that is a crime, and its moral reprehensibility is neither diminished nor accentuated by the motivation behind it. As Mr. Gelernter put it, "Murders done for love or any other reason are just as bad."
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