SayUncle: Terrorism Shouldn’t Be A Crime
Posted by
tgirsch
In another thread, SayUncle says:
If you beat someone up, you beat them up. I don’t think motivation should matter in law. Someone was beaten up and there is a penalty for it.
Following that through to its logical conclusion, we shouldn’t have any special category for “terrorism.” If you set off a bomb in a busy market, you should only be charged for the actual people you killed and injured, and for the property damage. Simply charge the market bomber with murder, assault, and vandalism, and be done with it. That you intended to intimidate others not directly harmed, and/or to cause panic, is wholly irrelevant. Your motivation doesn’t matter.
Attempted murder is out the window, too: It shouldn’t matter that you intended to kill more people — your motivation doesn’t matter. Hell, if you shoot at somebody and miss them, the only crime you’ve committed is possibly violating firearms laws that Uncle would rather repeal anyway. What with criminals not caring about laws, and so forth.
You know, the first part of your claim makes sense (i.e., terrorism is no more special than random nuttery). But the rest is just stupid.
Comment 5/3/2007
To be clear, motivation matters to the extent it leads to the commission of a crime.
Comment 5/3/2007
motivation matters to the extent it leads to the commission of a crime
Game over, dude.
Comment 5/3/2007
“Attempted murder is out the window, too:”
Attempted murder is an act. What part of “attempted” don’t you understand?
Comment 5/3/2007
How about conspiracy to commit murder, Fred?
Comment 5/3/2007
“How about conspiracy to commit murder, Fred?”
What about it? What part of “conspiracy” don’t you understand? Conspiracy is an act.
Comment 5/3/2007
To be fair to SayUncle, his comment was unfairly decontextualized. No reasonable human being would draw from his statement that terrorism shouldn’t be a crime. SayUncle should have been more careful about his word choice, but com’on people, its obvious from the co-text and context what he meant.
Comment 5/3/2007
“but com’on people, its obvious from the co-text and context what he meant.”
I thought so too.
“Game over, dude.”
Not hardly. motive is commonly used as evidence to prove why a crime was committed. The motive is rarely part of the crime for which one is charged (i.e., first degree murder is first degree murder whether or not the murderer did it for money or because they’re crazy).
Comment 5/3/2007
Fred:
Conspiracy is an act.
Conspiracy can be merely planning to act without actually acting.
And for what it’s worth, intimidation is an act, too.
Uncle:
Where we’re talking past each other is whether intimidation is itself a criminal act. In a hate crime (or in any form of terrorism), there are victims besides the obvious one. A crime has been committed against them, as well, but you think there should be no extra punishment for this? I just can’t see it.
The way I see it, your logic would claim that burning a cross on an African-American family’s front lawn is nothing more than simple trespassing and maybe vandalism, no different than if you piled up leaves on their lawn and burned those. But the difference between those two acts is huge, and I can’t believe anyone would try to seriously argue that the law should behave otherwise.
Again, nobody is talking about criminalizing thoughts or opinions or even speech here; we’re talking about criminalizing certain types of acts. It’s just that some of us think it’s but-ass stupid to view the act itself in a vacuum, ignoring all the circumstances under which the act took place.
Frankly, I’m surprised we don’t see eye to eye on this. Perhaps you can enlighten me why I’m wrong, but in your view, it should not be illegal to intimidate entire groups of people through acts or threats of force.
Dan:
Clearly, I took it to an extreme to make a point. But I still hold that this is where his logic leads. And by and large, as evidenced above, he agrees, having conceded that a terrorist bombing is essentially “just another murder,” no different than any other.
Comment 5/3/2007
Tgirsh> While I agree with most of what you are saying, it seems you are unwilling to accept that there is a significant element in our society that will be willing to use this legislation to stop free speech that they disagree with. It is entirely possible for a person to say they are feeling intimidated when no intimidation has actually taken place. The onus then shifts to the person accused to prove their innocence. All you need to do is look at places like Sweden where a pastor was jailed and Canada where a Bishop was brought up on human rights charges because of what they said exclusively to their own congregations. There was no intent to incite, no attack on anyone, but the gay individuals that pushed the issues did not like what they said. Everywhere that this type of legislation has been brought in, Christians HAVE been targeted. So, when people say they are concerned about that, it has a basis in history.
Comment 5/3/2007
Sweden where a pastor was jailed and Canada where a Bishop was brought up on human rights charges because of what they said exclusively to their own congregations. . . . Everywhere that this type of legislation has been brought in, Christians HAVE been targeted.
Rightly or wrongly, those countries have lesser free-speech protection; hate speech is a crime there (as are other forms of distasteful speech, such as promoting Naziism and so forth), and adding gays to the list of protected classes means that speech explicitly denigrating them is a crime - of speech.
The US laws don’t work that way, nor could they. Speech by itself is never a crime in the US unless it includes Janet Jackson’s nipple. The US hate crime laws do not define hate speech as a crime. They only address the degree of charge brought, or the penalty imposed, for some overt act which itself is already a crime - that is, determining that a crime included or was motivated by elements of bias (which need not include speech) make it a more serious crime, but only if it was already a crime without those elements. Hate-crime laws in the US never make it a crime to do anything to a member of a protected class that wouldn’t be a crime if done to anyone else - they only make it a more serious crime to commit that criminal act while also doing so with evidence of, or while motivated by, discriminatory bias against the victim.
The justification for these laws is (a) such a crime is more serious, in that it involves both group-based discrimination and the overt crime itself, and (b) maintaining sensitivity to and punishing bias-motivated crimes expresses societal disapproval of and provides deterrence for discriminatory acts over and above merely criminal ones, while (c) the country’s history of (past and ongoing) discrimination and oppression of particular social groups, in both official and widely tolerated unofficial forms, has put members of those groups at both a social disadvantage and a greater risk of violence or harassment, necessitating special attention to the crimes against them that result. But, again, they only work by increasing penalties for things that are already crimes, if they are committed under particular circumstances. In this, the bias elements of “hate crimes” are similar to many other non-overt elements of a crime which work to increase or decrease the penalty.
Christians who complain of crackdowns on bigoted speech alone are invariably talking about countries in which speech alone can constitute a crime. That is not the case in the US. Bigoted speech itself is never a crime, or sufficient evidence to constitute a crime, in the US under hate-crimes laws or otherwise. Christians who are concerned about such issues elsewhere could lobby for stronger speech-protection codes in the relevant countries, or they could just stop being bigots. But if they can’t stop being bigots, they can always come to the US, where they’ll have no problems at all unless they can’t stop being criminals, too.
Comment 5/3/2007
Careful KTK. I see and hear much more bigotry from non-Christians than I do from Christians.
Comment 5/3/2007
Big U:
What KTK said. But more importantly, I would vehemently oppose any proposed law that would criminalize mere speech or bigotry, irrespective of first amendment protections. I don’t doubt that there are some who would try to ban offensive speech. I’m not one of them, and frankly that’s not at issue in this case, because nobody here is proposing any such thing.
Comment 5/3/2007
“Conspiracy can be merely planning to act without actually acting.”
A conspiracy involves at least two people (look it up). Conspiracy is the ACT of conspiring with another or others (Look it up.)
Comment 5/4/2007
“The US laws don’t work that way, nor could they.”
Nor could they? LOL Liberal activist judges find things in the Constitution all the time that nobody else saw for 200 years.
Comment 5/4/2007
TGirsch,
The logic doesn’t lead there because terrorism wasn’t part of the original discussion. If you wanted to remain true to logic, you would remain true to the circumstances.
Comment 5/4/2007
Dan M:
I probably should have said this explicitly, but I fail to see how hate crimes fail to qualify as terrorism. Terrorism is part of the original discussion, because hate crimes are terrorism. And again, Uncle essentially agreed with my characterization of his position.
Comment 5/4/2007
Tgirsch, the difference between terrorism and hate crimes is terrorism is directed at us, hate crimes are directed at others.
I have to laugh when I read Fred’s thoughts on these matters. On the one hand he campaigns to restrict the rights of gays because he disapproves of them. The next day he opposes laws designed to protect others because he sees a slippery slope to where some day his rights (to hate) might be restricted because he realizes the majority disapproves of him (or at least his bigotry). What a tool.
Comment 5/4/2007
“he campaigns to restrict the rights of gays because he disapproves of them.”
Why do you tell such whoppers? Homosexuals have every right I do. I disapprove of homosexual acts because they are sins. I have never campaigned for anyone to have fewer rights than any other person. You are a baldfaced liar.
Comment 5/4/2007
Tgirsch,
I’m still not “Dan”, but “Dan M.”.
Dan,
Could you become “Dan X.” for some X other than M?
Comment 5/4/2007
Fred, do you deny advocating disallowing gay marriage?
Comment 5/4/2007
Dan M, of course Fred is against gay marriage. Not only does he seek to restrict the rights of gays, he is intellectually dishonest and will not admit that he does so.
Comment 5/4/2007
Sorry Dan M. I thought about changing my name to Spiderman, but that would probably violate copyright laws. Those bastards…
In short, tgirsch, I’m not going to make the same connection between hate crimes and terrorism that you made. There are overlapping similarities, but they aren’t equivalent. And I’m done with the conversation!
Comment 5/5/2007
Dan G:
Fine, then. Take your ball and bat and go home.
Comment 5/5/2007
“Fred, do you deny advocating disallowing gay marriage?”
No, what’s your point?
Comment 5/7/2007
Fred:
The point is that you don’t seem to have any problem at all infringing on the rights of others when they’re rights you don’t approve of.
Comment 5/7/2007
“The point is that you don’t seem to have any problem at all infringing on the rights of others when they’re rights you don’t approve of.”
What right does your active mind think I want to infringe upon?
Comment 5/7/2007
Equal treatment under the law. Your partner’s being the same sex as you shouldn’t change what legal rights acrue for making the partnership legally as well as socially binding any more than their sex or your sex should change what other contracts and jobs they can participate in.
Comment 5/7/2007
Does your open mind have any limits? Brother/brother marriage? Sister/Sister marriage? Brother/sister? Father/daughter? Mother/son? Multiple marriages? Man/dog marriage? Who are you to decide who should marry whom?
This has all been discussed in here multiple times. It doesn’t change the fact that homosexuals have the same rights as heterosexuals.
Comment 5/7/2007
Fred,
Your bigotry against polyamory doesn’t constitute an argument for your bigotry against homosexuals, and neither does your inability to distinguish between a child, a dog, and an adult.
Nor does your inability to tell that heterosexual couples do marry constitute a reason for the state to prohibit those marriages from the legal benefits given to other marriages.
Claiming that the right of marriage is limited to what your little mind can hold doesn’t make it so and it doesn’t change the government’s obligation to treat males, females, and everyone else equally in their marriages.
Comment 5/7/2007
Correction: …homosexual couples do marry…
Comment 5/7/2007
You know, I’m really impressed that you keep trying, Dan.
Comment 5/7/2007
Dan M., you didn’t answer the question. Does your open mind have any limits?
Comment 5/8/2007
Not that you ever answer our questions, but…
First, I’m not convinced the law should be granting rights and privileges to any marriages at all, but I’ll assume that it should for this discussion. I see no reason for me or anyone else to distinguish between any combination of people making a social pact to share their lives.
So, yes, marriage should be limited, to persons capable of making unfettered decisions about their lives. Marriage has always been a societal recognition of shared lives, and that’s what it should continue to be, whatever the law says about it.
And if you’re going to ask why I’ve chosen these limits, it’s because personhood and choice are actually impartant features of a moral system, which KTK actually explains plenty well.
Comment 5/8/2007