Democracy's Paradox

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/22398

Democracy's Paradox
by Robert C. Koehler | June 19, 2009


Wanna hear a good Holocaust joke? Or a rib-tickler about lynching? How about starving Ethiopians? You'll bust a gut.

I spent an eerie couple of hours recently on the wrong side of the sicko line, checking out hate sites and hate jokes. What's the difference between a dead dog in the road and a dead . . .

I won't go on, but we have to think about this. Hate crimes and hate speech are, you could say, democracy's paradox. Let's start with a definition: An "ordinary crime" (as though there could ever be anything ordinary about, say, murder) morphs into a "hate crime" when it's primary or, perhaps, entire point is to amplify speech, perfectly legal in and of itself, that targets and dehumanizes a particular group. Indeed, a hate crime is a perverted form of altruism in that it isn't generally committed for personal gain, but rather, for social intimidation and control.

snip//

For instance, Attorney General Eric Holder, according to AP, said that these recent killings "show the need for a tougher hate crimes law to stop 'violence masquerading as political activism.'" And congressional Democrats are rallying behind passage of the Matthew Shepard Act, which would make violence against gays, lesbians and the disabled potential hate crimes.

Fine, except that laws do not stop crime. That's the problem. Yes, there is a terrible, simmering evil here-- a deep national, indeed, human psychosis -- that we need to address, and to the extent that pending and existing anti-hate crime laws affirm national values and proclaim them on the marquee of government, they have, I think, immense value. In terms of the Old South, slavery and Jim Crow, for instance, we must declare as publicly as possible: Never again.

But the best a law can do is define a crime and punish it after the fact. The worst it can do is set off a "Prohibition effect" and wind up fanning its own flagrant violation. If we tried to ban hate speech of the sort I just described, that's certainly what would happen. It's what censorship usually accomplishes.

The looming horror of the hate that abides on society's margins -- the von Brunn psychosis -- is that it will link again one day with the political center, and hunting season will be officially open. Laws alone won't stop this. They may be necessary, but we dare not stop short of social transformation.

This means rethinking every policy we have that dehumanizes people, with or without -- especially without -- accompanying hatred, and turns them into collateral damage. It means stopping our current wars. It means demilitarizing.