The liberal hypocrisy is making me sick and anxious

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Why are you apologizing for people who deliberately insult or target people for violence simply because of some characteristic like race?

If it's legal to call someone the n-word then it's legal to call them a racist. Use the n-word to refer to black people and probably people are going to call you a racist. That's just a fact of life: Deal with it. It isn't "oppression", it isn't even "political correctness", it's people expressing their views on decency. It makes zero sense to me why Campin_Cat has such a problem with that.

As for hate crimes, these laws were passed in response to at times excessive violence against people who were just minding their own business just because they had a certain characteristic, like being of a certain race, and which would often go unpunished. Of course, the most extreme example was the Holocaust, but we have also seen such violence here in the States, like the Birmingham church bombing, where it took more than a decade to bring the first perpetrator to justice. The purpose of passing such laws is to show society's disapproval and intolerance of such violence; to make clear, that if they want to try to hide behind social prejudice, that they are risking severe punishment to do so.

And you see no glaring potential for abuse of "hate crime" laws??

I don't see any such apology.

Is anyone arguing that it should be illegal to call someone a racist? Perhaps that calling large swathes of the electorate racist for dubious at best reasons wasn't the slickest campaign move, but not that it should be actually illegal.



Is anyone arguing that they should be allowed to use racial slurs without being termed a racist? (Really though, a person who uses racial slurs is definitely a jerk, only possibly a racist, I think the distinction is important)



Most of us are primarily opposed to speech based hate crime laws, but we still find the kind you're describing as redundant at best, as all of the actions described are already illegal, and determining a person's state of mind at the time of a crime can be tricky. Maybe someone spray painted a swastika to terrify local Jews, maybe they were drunk and did it for the lulz, the difference could mean years of someone's life, and I'm not content to give that power to a justice system that has already proven itself abusive and incompetent with what powers it does have.

I think speech should be policed socially, not by the state. If someone calls someone a "n****r" they should be socially shunned.

Here in Turkey there are blasphemy laws which basically amount to "hate speech" laws against criticizing religion. Why? A lot of people here are offended if you criticize religion (especially Islam). In practice this amounts to the silencing of atheists and other critics of religion.

Exactly. Especially 'both sides' who seem so caught up in being liberal or conservative that they forget that the other 'side' has valid points too.

Wondering if this is a result of America's two-party political system, or if it's just a result of human nature. Making politics tribal.



Agreed. Marshall's whole post was very reasonable.