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I find myself thinking about hate crime laws today due to another blog that I have been reading over the past few weeks.

The blog in question can be found here.

I am highly opposed to “hate crime” laws because they criminalize thought, emotions and speech. If a person is assaulted, a crime has been committed and the attacker needs to be punished, but the thoughts, feelings and words of the attacker must never be criminalized in a free society. For if you outlaw “hate” that occurs during the commission of another crime, then shouldn’t it also be outlawed it on it’s own merits?

Freedom of speech does not only apply to speech that we agree with. If someone wants to call someone else a faggot, nigger, cracker, or any other racial or derogatory term, then he has a right to do so. If someone chooses to hate someone else based on their sexual orientation, race or political views, then they have every right to do so. If they choose to speak out against other people for the aforementioned reason, they also have a right to do so. For we live in a free society and the freedom of speech is a Constitutionally protected right of the people, this applies to all speech, even the speech most of us find offensive. Speech is an expression of our thoughts, if we are free to say it, then we must be free to think it.

If someone of one race attacks someone of the same race, why it that any less of a crime than if he were to attack someone of a different race? If you were murdered for the contents of your wallet, are you any less dead than had you been murdered for your sexual orientation?

Murder/assault is a crime, the action itself is the crime, not the reason behind it. To label something a “hate crime” changes the legality of the thought in addition to the criminal action of murder/assault. So if we now have criminalized “hate”, then people with certain thoughts are breaking the law and will be subject to prosecution.

The only arguments that I ever hear people put forward in support of hate crime laws aren’t really arguments at all, they simply plead for sympathy for their particular group and label those that oppose such laws as racists and bigots.

I hear some people calling for special protection of certain groups. They believe that if you are a homosexual, that you deserve special rights based on your sexual orientation, other groups should get their special rights based on their race or other demographics. What the hell happened to “all men are created equal”??? If we start creating special rights for different classes of people, we are no longer Americans with equal rights, but simply different classes of people begging the government for our own groups special rights.

If we the people allow the government to criminalize offensive thought, emotions and speech, we then have to determine which groups are going to be protected from being offended and which groups will be silenced. Who exactly will be empowered to make such decisions?

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie blasted bureaucrats in Washington for allowing a single mistake on a 1,000-page application to possibly cost the state Race to the Top education grants worth $400 million.

Here is a story of bureaucracy at it’s best. Bureaucrats from New Jersey filled out a 1000 page application to beg for money from the federal government, bureaucrats from the federal government discovered an error, some incorrect information. When the error was discovered, the corrected information was presented two week prior to the deadline. The application was still rejected by the federal government costing the people of New Jersey $400,000,000 in funds for education.

The really sad part is that the money was originally taken from the taxpayers of New Jersey in the first place, then they had to beg the feds to get it back. Why couldn’t they just have kept the money in the first place?

I don’t know about you, but I am really looking forward to filling out the forms for Obamacare, I just hope I never make a mistake.

I see the current state of our economy analogous to two people riding in a car, each one wanting their turn to drive. Currently, the left is in total control of the car. The car is currently off the road and heading over a cliff. While the car has not yet crashed and burned at the bottom of the ravine, it is, in my opinion, inevitable.

In November, the Republicans are pretty sure to gain control of the House and Senate, but how would that be any different than the drivers switching seats halfway down the cliff?

I believe strongly in free market capitalism and I also believe that the with the current state of the economy it is too late to do anything about it. Even if we were lucky enough to fill the Congress with the greatest capitalist minds, the fact remains that gravity now has a hold of the car and the media will be quick to point out who was in the driver seat when the fiery wreckage was examined.

By no means do I want the current agenda of spend spend spend to continue, that is equivocal to faster faster faster, but I do hope that the Republicans start pointing out publicly that we are in a real mess here and the bill for all of this spending will be coming due much sooner than most people think. I do not know exactly when we are going to hit the bottom, but I know it is coming up fast, very fast and very soon.

During the lame duck session, the left will surely push thru everything then can to dismantle our free market because they will think they have nothing else to loose and this may be their last chance to enact their socialist agenda for a generation or two.

I can see the headlines now, “Republicans Gain Control – Economy Collapses”, then the calls for more spending will begin again.