The weasel has landed

You know who you are, you spalpeen. I had forgotten about you until last night, when I was reminded in spades.

Aaaarrghh!!!!

Here’s the deal. When I saw the resolution “Resolved: Hate crime enhancements are unjust in the United States,” what I thought is that people would attempt to understand what hate crimes are, their meanings and their effects, and analyze if those crimes deserve special handling in the justice system.

What was I thinking? Because you have absolutely no intention of viewing the resolution in that light.

You spalpeen!

What you intend to do is argue on the affirmative that we can never really know what someone is thinking (1) or that because the justice system is imperfect any attempt to address hate crimes would be imperfect and therefore unjust (2) or that because hate crimes are not all-inclusive, for instance not including gays as targets, that the concept of hate crime in the US justice system is inadequate (3). In other words, you intend to argue about the justice system and the legal process, and the fact that the topic is marginally about hate crimes is of no interest to you whatsoever. The topic could be about jaywalking as far as you’re concerned, because you would be making the exact same arguments.

You spalpeen!

[(1) We use the trial process to come to a determination of what someone is thinking. It’s called motive. Oh, and by the way, if someone burns a cross on the yard of a local family of color, how hard do you really think it is for me to figure out what they might be thinking?
(2) Therefore the US justice system is inherently unjust, and if you buy that, why don’t you go back to Commie Red Russia where you belong, you idiot.
(3) While we have specific laws on thefts from banks we do not have specific laws on theft of certain intellectual property, but the concept of theft is clear, whereas the application requires further tuning. That would be the point of the argument in the first place. It’s about what we should do, not what we already do. The subject of what we already do is determined by looking it up; the subject of what we ought to do is determined by reasoned debate and analysis.]

There’s a place for me. A time and place for me. Where people will argue on the affirmative not that hate crimes are too nebulous to understand (because they’re not, and this is simply not a true position) but that hate crimes, however heinous they may strike us, do not warrant special punishments, whereas on the negative it will be argued that the nature of hate crimes does indeed warrant special punishment. Both sides will accept the burden that crimes motivated entirely by hatred exist (because they do) but will argue different retributive outcomes (because they may be warranted).

Hold my hand and I’ll take you there.

You spalpeen…