You can tell much about a society by what its establishment is sensitive to. For example, while Major League Baseball dropped the Chief Wahoo logo and other American Indian symbols, the Los Angeles Dodgers doesn’t appear to have a problem honoring the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” whose very purpose is to mock the faith of 62 million Americans. Then there’s this, also out of the City of Angels:
In 2020, Black Lives Matter-affiliated protesters burned an American flag on camera, an act the Supreme Court has called “protected speech.” More recently, May 22 morn, the sexual devolutionary banner euphemistically known as a “pride flag” was found burned at a North Hollywood school. Yet this act the authorities call something else: a “hate crime.”
In fact, the Los Angeles Police Department has launched a “hate crime” investigation and is seeking the perpetrator(s).
The banner was burned in the run-up to a “Pride Month” assembly. Per Newsweek:
The burned rainbow flag, which was placed in a plant pot outside a classroom at Saticoy Elementary School in North Hollywood, California, was discovered by school staff….
“The investigation is ongoing. It is a vandalism hate crime. The hate crime is still significant but it is a misdemeanor,” LAPD’s Valley Bureau Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said on Saturday, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. Hamilton said that it is not clear when the flag was burned and there are currently no suspects in the case.
Notorious California congressman and ex-Trump impeachment manager Adam Schiff, he of the sanpaku eyes, was among those expressing outrage over the incident (while apparently having said nothing about the American flag’s burning). On Tuesday he tweeted a statement in which he said he’s “deeply distressed” by the act; he also included the usual boilerplate talking points about how every “child deserves safety and acceptance” (unless that child happens to be in a womb) and how hate “has no place in our schools and communities” (unless it’s miscreants Burning, Looting, and Murdering because they hate Trump or America).
The May 22 incident qualifies as a “hate crime” because it meets the criteria of, Newsweek writes, “California Penal Code 422.55 [which] states that a hate crime is defined as ‘committing crimes due to the offender’s perceptions about the victim’s traits,’ according to the law offices of Randy Collins’ website.”
The page added “that the traits that are often central to the crimes include the victim’s ‘national origin, race or ethnic group, religious beliefs or sex lifestyle or orientation,’” Newsweek continued.
One could ask, though, doesn’t the American flag’s burning relate to national origin? It’s sometimes done overseas, do note, by people who hate Americans.
To be clear, the 2020 American flag’s immolation was different legally speaking because it wasn’t done within the context of a crime, whereas the rainbow banner’s burning occurred within the context of “vandalism”; thus, a hate-crime “enhancement,” as it’s called, could be applied.
No doubt it was applied with vigor, too, as also clear is the spirit behind the double standard evident here: The sincere pseudo-elites (as opposed to those posturing) have, viscerally, no problem with the American flag’s destruction but are truly bothered by the sexual banner’s burning.
This dark spirit was noted by a reader who commented on the Newsweek piece. “Why pursue it as a hate crime?” asked “Kim M” rhetorically. “If not to make an example out of someone who dares not kneel to that flag.”
Politically correct passions are long-standing, too. For example, pseudo-elites will defend “artists’” creation of pictures of a crucifix immersed in a jar of urine or of a dung-smeared Virgin Mary, screaming “freedom of expression!”; they may even fund the “works’” display with taxpayer dollars. But their reaction to a 2015 “Draw Mohammed” contest in Garland, Texas — which was organized in protest of the jihadist Charlie Hebdo massacre and was itself attacked by two gun-wielding Muslim terrorists — was quite different.
They offered only opposition, and even then-presidential candidate Donald Trump called the Garland effort “dumb.”
Then again, when France’s public radio broadcaster played a song titled “Jésus est pédé” (“Jesus Is a Faggot”) in 2020, the station did ultimately apologize — to sexual devolutionary (“LGBT”) groups “offended” by the term “faggot.”
Oh, France, do note, is notorious for its use of hate-speech laws to silence critics of Islam.
Yet that hate-crime/speech laws are used tendentiously is not surprising; it’s just another reason they shouldn’t exist, too.
Today, however, even conservatives accept them, as the laws have been around long enough to have become part of what conservatives ever conserve: the status quo. Yet are they at all congruent with the American ideal?
Consider: Hate-crime laws prescribe more punishment for a given criminal act if it’s deemed to have been motivated by “hate” (as defined by the day’s fashions). But what is that extra punishment for if not the thoughts expressed via the act? Thus, are hate-crime laws not an effort at thought control?
It’s also troubling that hate-crime prosecutions actually punish expression — within a certain context — that is, within the context of a crime. But does accepting this within any context not bring us closer to accepting it within every context, closer to having what’s meant to be constitutionally forbidden, hate-speech laws?
Regardless, for certain is that hate-crime laws’ unequal application is a feature, not a bug. Were their most Machiavellian proponents honest, they’d call them what they are: Wrongthink laws. They’d also admit that they’d love to apply them within every context but that this won’t pass political muster — yet.
