Racism, “White Supremacy” and the Official Narrative

They Keep Coming: Another Campus Hate Crime Hoax

From the College Fix:

A note that used the n-word and threatened a black female student at St. Olaf College — sparking an intense protest that led to classes being shut down for a day as student demonstrators accused the school of institutional racism — “was not a genuine threat,” the school’s president said Wednesday.

President David Anderson said in an email to students that an investigation into the note identified a person of interest “who confessed to writing the note.”

“We’ve confirmed that this was not a genuine threat. We’re confident that there is no ongoing threat from this incident to individuals or the community as a whole,” he said.

In a second campuswide email sent later Wednesday, Anderson used stronger words to explain what happened: “The reason I said in my earlier note that this was not a genuine threat is that we learned from the author’s confession that the note was fabricated. It was apparently a strategy to draw attention to concerns about the campus climate.”

Anderson, citing federal student privacy laws, did not identify the person of interest nor use the term hate-crime hoax, but his announcements essentially confirm what some students have said privately to themselves ever since the chaos erupted at the rural Southern Minnesota campus earlier this month.

Around the same time Anderson made the announcement Wednesday, the black female student who initially told everyone she found the note on her car that used the n-word and threatened her announced on social media “I will be saying it was a hoax.”

The typewritten note had stated: “I am so glad that you are leaving soon. One less [n-word] that this school has to deal with. You have spoken up too much. You will change nothing. Shut up or I will shut you up.”

A Facebook screenshot obtained by The College Fix shows Samantha Wells, the student who reported the incident, wrote on Facebook on Wednesday that “it looks like something made its way back to me in the investigation.”

“I will be saying it was a hoax,” she continued. “I don’t care. There is nothing more that I can do. I just wanted to give y’all the heads up.”

In an email to The College Fix, Wells confirmed the post but said it’s since been deleted and that she has “nothing to admit.”

“It was a reaction to something said this morning and my wanting for all of this to end. I did not have to admit anything because there is nothing to admit,” she said.

She said the probe into her case has concluded, but that she couldn’t comment further because of legal reasons.

The April 29 incident in which Wells said she found the alleged note on the windshield of her car was the latest of a string of alleged racial incidents at the private, Lutheran college.

After receiving the note, Wells told Fox News 9 she “immediately shared the note on Facebook and with St. Olaf Public Safety,” saying “I knew I had to share it because it was another incident; it’s the third incident this week.”

Later that day, angry students blocked entrances to the college cafeteria and took over the student commons demanding redress for a string of alleged racial incidents on campus. Administrators canceled classes last Monday to allow demonstrators to air their grievances in a daylong sit-in.

Protesters also put up signs that included language such as “I’m sick of white tears” and “F*ck your white complacency.”

“The campus admins are allowing the commons area to become a bulletin board of complaints against white people. No action has been taken to remove the signs, and no students dare to touch them since there are newly-installed cameras everywhere,” a student who emailed The Fix said.

As the protest took on a life of its own, an email chain among students and scholars at the school shows Wells said she didn’t want the incident to be investigated.

The email thread, which had a subject line of TRACK DOWN RACIST BEHIND THREATS, includes college members discussing how St. Olaf could use its technology to find those behind the alleged racist incidents. As the chain of emails progressed, one student said she was speaking with Wells, who told her “she doesn’t want people tongo [sic] through computers to find the person who wrote the note to her. She does, however, want everything possible to be done for the others.”

The next email in the thread came from Wells.

“I would like to echo Krysta and say that I do not want my case to be investigated,” Wells wrote. “Not because I do not want to let this person go but because I am very stressed and I think that efforts could be utilized elsewhere. That said, I do want them to investigate both previous and possible later cases.”

Wells added she was stressed.

“Also, this message could have been printed off school grounds and could have been printed days, months, or years ago,” she wrote. “I mean heck, I printed off a form today for work (that I didn’t get to turn in whoops) right before I went to my car so I too could be a suspect but even I am not that extra.”

While the investigation into Wells’ case has concluded, Anderson, St. Olaf’s president, said investigations into the other alleged events are ongoing.

There have been nine reported incidents, six of which occurred in April, Anderson said in a recent interview with Minnesota Public Radio.

Anderson told students last month in an email that the racial incidents appear to be “the work of one or a small number of people.”

“This person uses the same modus operandi every time this happens; even the handwriting on the notes is similar from incident to incident,” he wrote.

The reported note in Wells’ case was typed.

Yes, they keep coming. Why?

Quite simply, there is a huge demand. There are lots of social justice warriors and bureaucrats with “diversity” or “inclusion” in their titles who need racist incidents to justify their jobs.

Add to that black students who, because of affirmative action, aren’t really up to the demands of a selective college. When they struggle, it’s easy to decide that “racism” is the problem, and if there were more diversity programs and more black professors things would be better.

And as these student struggle, they are easy prey for leftist faculty who find it easy to convince them that pursuit of racial grievances (and not studying for their classes, or working on their papers) is the way to achieve.

It’s a toxic situation, and it seems to be worst in hot-house liberal institutions. But that is poetic justice.

Yet Another Fake Racial Hate Incident

From Heat Street:

The University of Southern California has apparently identified the person who put up a “No Black People Allowed” sign and a Confederate flag on campus as a black man who’s not studying at the university.

According to The Tab, the university’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) is currently questioning the man, suspecting he recently put up the inflammatory placard together with a Confederate flag and “#MAGA” – meaning President Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”.

The student outlet reported that the man isn’t “affiliated with the university” and acted because of disagreement with someone. The man was supposedly identified by DPS after a security camera recorded the incident.

USC Department of Public Safety Assistant Chief David Carlisle has confirmed to the College Fix that the alleged culprit won’t be facing any charges because there was “no crime committed”.

Since Donald Trump’s election as President, there has been an explosion of fake hate crimes across the country. Numerous hoax hate crimes were reported in the media, only to later find themselves retracting the stories.

Back in February, a black waitress in Virginia has accused a customer of leaving no tips because he “don’t tip black people,” prompting multiple media outlets to champion the waitress’ cause. The woman received around $3,600 in donations after a local resident started a fund raiser for her.

As it turned out, it was either the waitress herself or someone known to her who fabricated the receipt showing the racist words

In December, a female student at the University of Michigan reported being attacked by a man who threatened to set her on fire if she didn’t remove her hijab. The Police found the student’s story false.

Why so many of these hoax hate incidents?

Simple. There is a huge demand for them. On college campuses, there is an Axis of Grievance: left-wing activists and the legion of bureaucrats who pander, pamper and cater to them. These incidents are grist for the grievance mill for the activists, and “issues” to be “addressed” for the bureaucrats. And the bureaucrats need these “issues” to justify their jobs.

Outside academia, the media has an insatiable demand for stories that fit their current narrative. The current narrative is that the election of Donald Trump has loosed the forces of hatred and bigotry. They don’t seem to much care that it was Trump (and not Hillary) who was constantly dogged with riots outside his election rallies. Nor that it is leftists on college campuses who shout down and sometimes assault conservatives (including those like Charles Murray and Ben Shapiro who opposed Trump).

Media people, like academics, live in a little self-contained world, and it’s extremely difficult for the real world to penetrate their consciousness.

Supposedly Pro-Trump Hoax Hate Crimes

Pro-Trump versus Anti-Trump Violence in the Wake of the Election

In the wake of the 2016 Presidential election, liberals have gone utterly bonkers. A few have seriously asked whether their party has somehow gone wrong and suffered the electoral consequences. But many more have simply produced a bunch of excuses such as “fake news” or Russian meddling in the election.

And worse, they have claimed that newly empowered Trump supporters have gone on a rampage, attacking members of all their favored victim groups. “Reports of Racist Attacks Surge After Trump Win” one headline screamed.

It’s difficult to know how often this has happened, since:

1. People who keep track of such things usually have a liberal bias,
2. It’s sometimes hard to know whether a real assault was provoked by politics, or something else — there are two examples below.
3. Many of these incidents have been faked by people with a liberal agenda, knowing that sympathetic media will eat up their account

Two things are clear, however.

First, there have been many faked incidents, committed by anti-Trump people and blamed on pro-Trump people.

Second, there have been many violent attacks by leftists on pro-Trump people.

First, bogus claims of attacks by pro-Trump people:

• Black woman at gas station in Delaware. More on this here.
• Muslim woman lied about being harassed on subway.
• Supposed homophobic attack at North State Park University.
• Northwestern students and swastika.
• Attack on gay man outside bar in Santa Monica. The attack really occurred, but was apparently the result of an argument in a bar that escalated on both sides. It is not clear that the Trump supporters the man argued with are the men who attacked him.
• Muslim woman at the University of Louisiana Lafayette claimed to have been attacked.
• Fifteen hoaxes (supposed pro-Trump hate crimes) that have been exposed.

Now, violent attacks on Trump supporters (or supposed Trump supporters):

• High school girl attacked for supporting Trump.
• Black men attack white guy on public street. Note: this incident started with a routine auto accident, but the attackers seemed to believe that the victim voting for Trump justified the beating.
• 15 year-old Trump supporter beaten during Rockville, Maryland protest.
• President of College Republicans at Cornell assaulted.
• A compilation of attacks on Trump supporters from Lifezette.
• Another compilation from the Daily Wire.
• Still more cases from The American Thinker.
• Yet more cases from Breitbart.
• Still more from the Daily Caller.
• Video compilation of anti-Trump people attacking Trump supporters.

The libertarian Reason Magazine runs down, and debunks a bunch of reports, and attempts to put the whole thing in perspective.

Media outlets, of course, report news that fits their favored narrative. This applies to the New York Times and CNN, but it also applies to the conservative outlets we have linked to above. So as noted, there is no hard data on the actual number of pro-Trump assaults as opposed to anti-Trump assaults.

But the reader might ask himself or herself: which side has been most emotional? Which side has staged enraged protests that devolved into riots. Indeed, which side has gone on YouTube expressing extreme emotion about the outcome of the election? The answer to those questions is clear.

“Bluebloods” on Campus Social Justice Warriors

Not all network TV is liberal propaganda. Example: a recent episode of “Bluebloods” that has a campus feminist playing the victim. It starts with a campus leftist wanting some fellow student punished for unkind (but perfectly legal) messages posted on the campus message board.

Would campus leftists do this? Absolutely. As The Volokh Conspiracy records:

A large coalition of advocacy groups has asked the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights to pressure colleges to (1) punish students for their speech and (2) block student access to certain Web sites — especially sites such as Yik Yak, which allow students to anonymously post their views.

Now, some of the speech that the groups mention consists of true threats of violence, including threats of attack and even rape. Such speech is constitutionally unprotected. (Indeed, some of it — threats against people for speaking, for instance, in support of feminist causes — itself attempts to suppress speech.) It is rightly criminalized and can certainly be punished.

But the letter goes very far beyond just calling on universities to punish threats. Here are some other examples of speech that the coalition points to:

• “[S]uccessive invidious comments targeting African-Americans, such as ‘Their entire culture just isn’t conducive to a life of success. It just isn’t. The outfits. The attitudes. The behavior.’”
• “Another comment” that said “Slavery was the worst thing to happen to this country, bringing them over here . . . ugh.”
• A statement that “I would be completely ok with Clemson being an all white school. Except for football.”
• A statement that “The only thing niggers are good for is making Clemson better at football.”
• A statement that “Jesus I hate black people.”
• A comment saying, “Guys stop with all this hate. Let’s just be thankful we aren’t black.”
• Statements “target[ing] Indian students and East Asians, referred to as ‘chinks,’ in addition to LGBT students, Mormons, and women.” ”[S]tudents post[ing] dozens of demeaning, crude, and sexually explicit comments and imagery about three female professors.”

All of this speech, offensive as it may be, is protected by the First Amendment. (There is no “hate speech” exception to First Amendment protection.) But despite that, the coalition is arguing that the speech should be restricted precisely because of the viewpoints it expresses, and the offense and “hostile environment” that those viewpoints cause.

The first statement seems to us a perfectly reasonable comment about ghetto culture, and the penultimate one accepts the notion of white privilege and says “stop the hate.” Wanting Clemson to be segregated is certainly a racist comment, but is probably just hyperbole from students unhappy with being berated for being white and being told to “check your privilege.”

But as Volokh says, all are constitutionally protected.

A Bogus Hate Incident

“Bluebloods” then goes further by including in the plot something that frequently happens on college campuses.

Yes, campus activists have often staged racist incidents in order to provoke more “diversity” initiatives.

So what we have here is the reality of contemporary college life. Social Justice Warriors really believe that any expression of opinion they dislike should be made illegal and punished. And since they believe the end justifies the means, they will stage fake incidents to promote their cause.

Faked Hate Crimes on College Campuses

Two sources that are not new, but continue to have relevance whenever somebody claims to have been victim of a “hate crime” on a college campus. First, from The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 22 (Winter, 1998-1999), p. 52:

In the 1990s hoaxes disguised as hate crimes have become common. JBHE’s sister publication The Race Relations Reporter has documented about a dozen such racial hoaxes over the past several years. Hate crimes have been staged at several college campuses. But in these cases the motive for the hoaxes has not been financial gain. Rather, the hate crime hoax is usually conceived as an effort to energize black student activism or to press the administration to move more quickly on black students’ concerns. Here are some examples of hate crime hoaxes that have occurred on college campuses in recent years.

The article also includes a short list of racial hoaxes.

Then there is John Leo, writing in U.S. News & World Report:

Like Tawana Brawley’s hoax, some recent fake hate crimes seem intended to cover personal embarrassment. . . . But more of the college hoaxes seem to reflect an acted-out commitment to a cause, not just personal difficulties. One factor is that colleges now stress the need for each identity group to express its “voice” or “narrative,” without much scruple about whether the narratives are literally true. (Postmodern theory says there is no such thing as truth anyway.) After the Brawley hoax, an article in the Nation magazine argued that it “doesn’t matter” whether Brawley was lying, since the pattern of whites abusing blacks is true.

This, of course, has not changed since the 1990s. What the literal, empirical truth is matters less than what serves a politically correct agenda.

Still Another Campus Racial Hoax

These keep popping up.

LITTLE FALLS — Two Montclair State University students who reported racist graffiti written on their dorm room door are facing charges after campus police determined they were actually responsible for the message, authorities said.

Olivia McCrae and Tanasia Linton, both 19 and from Newark, were arrested on campus Tuesday afternoon and charged with making false reports, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, according to the university.

The arrests came a week after the roommates reported a hateful message aimed at African-Americans and women scrawled in marker on their door at the Heights residence complex Feb. 7.

As we have said before, if the hothouse liberal atmosphere of college campuses did not promise such large rewards for racial (and gay, and Hispanic) grievances, these sorts of things would be much less common.

Supposed hate incidents should be cause for criminal investigation, not a lot of rhetoric and questionable “initiatives.”

Another Campus Racial Hoax

From the Racine Journal-Times:

SOMERS — Kenosha County sheriff’s officials are recommending charges be filed against a Kentucky woman who allegedly created a “hit list” of students — including herself — before posting it in a residence hall at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, according to the sheriff’s department.

Detectives are requesting that the Kenosha County District Attorney’s Office file charges against Khalilah N. Ford, 21, of Louisville, after detectives said evidence implicated her amid an investigation into a series of reportedly racially motivated incidents on campus last week, which included two purported nooses and the alleged “hit list.” Ford’s name was released Monday afternoon as the person who created this list of targeted students.

The incidents coincided with the beginning of Black History Month.

If approved, Ford could be charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing an officer, the sheriff’s department stated.

Efforts were made to reach Ford on Monday for comment, but she couldn’t be reached.

A student on Wednesday found a noose-like contraption made from rubber bands and plastic string in the Pike River Suites residence hall, which sheriff’s Sgt. Bill Beth said was “hanging near the trash chute in the middle of the hallway.”

After reporting it, the student — senior Aubriana Banks, 22, of Beloit — said she found a second noose and a threatening note on her door Thursday, according to investigators and Banks. Later that night, fliers containing racial slurs were found listing several black students and Ford by name and stated they were going to die in two days.

Beth on Monday said Ford did not make the nooses.

“The first one was string and rubber bands hanging in the hallway. I guess it was interpreted as a noose by Khalilah and Aubrey,” Beth said. “That’s how they perceived it. But we haven’t heard an explanation” for why nooses would be hung at those locations.

“There was some heated discussion (recently) in a class along racial (lines). I don’t know if that’s related to this,” Beth said.

Ford and Banks are friends, he added.

Investigators don’t know who hung the nooses, Beth said. And they are not even sure whether the contraptions are nooses, he added.

Ford, a junior at Parkside, reportedly confessed Friday evening to making the list after being confronted with evidence pointing to her involvement in this incident, according to the sheriff’s department. However, because of the ongoing investigations, detectives wouldn’t release details about this evidence.

Ford told them she created the “hit list” to draw more attention to the issue, according to investigators. They, in turn, told students the threats were a hoax.

“We’re very confident there’s no threat to anyone’s safety,” Beth said.

If prosecutors agree to charge her, Ford would be sent a notice through the mail informing her to appear in court. No court date has been set.

Unfortunately, hoaxes like this from racial and other victim groups have become increasingly common. Here is one case at the University of Virginia. Gay students can get in on the scam. And here is a compilation from the Los Angeles Times.

There are certainly cases where this or that black student (or gay student) has been harassed or even attacked. But the politically correct atmosphere of most college campuses (and the imperative that administrators act politically correct, whatever their real opinions should be) creates an incentive for these hoaxes on behalf of victim groups.

The University of Wisconsin-Parkside is certainly a campus with this sort of politically correct administrative ethos.

“Hate crime” incidents do not result merely in the investigation of the incident, and the punishment of whomever was guilty.

Rather, they are the excuse for escalated demands from the victim group. To combat “hate” it is demanded that a university institute sensitivity training, start an African American studies program (if one does not already exist) or a Queer Studies program (if the purported victim is gay). There are demands for the hiring of more “diverse” faculty, the setting up of committees on “inclusion” and the hiring of campus bureaucrats to cater to this or that politically correct group.

One incident, in other words, can be parlayed into a cornucopia of goodies (or if the goodies don’t come, a cornucopia of grievances).

Thus universities themselves bear much of the blame for these hoaxes, having created a climate where there is a large premium on having a racial (or gay, or Hispanic) grievance.

James Harris: Telling the Truth About Riverwest Violence

Playing the Race Card on a College Campus: Another Fake Hate Crime

From Inside Higher Ed:

Many campuses experience bigoted incidents of various types, but for many years now, hoaxes have emerged as well. Typically these cases involve undergraduates who make charges and — after some period of time — are found to have faked whatever it is they said happened to them. The fake hate crimes tend to frustrate just about everybody on campus. Minority students worry that truthful complaints in the future will be doubted. College officials bemoan wasted time and money investigating a fake report, and damage done to the reputation of the institution or individuals.

When a fake report is filed with the police, it is also can be a violation of the law. A gay student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was charged last month with filing a false police report after authorities determined that he had made up his story of being attacked for being gay — a story that generated considerable concern on the campus.

Another hoax was uncovered last week at the University of Virginia — and in this case, the university is being criticized for opting not to press charges against the black law student who made up a story about police harassment in the form of apparent racial profiling. The student — Johnathan Perkins — is scheduled to receive his degree May 22.

Perkins made his allegations in a letter to the editor of the U.Va. law school’s student newspaper, Virginia Law Weekly. He sent a copy to the university’s police department, which treated the essay as a formal complaint. Perkins described walking home from a bar review session and being stopped by the flashing lights of a University of Virginia police car. Two white officers, he said, questioned him, told him that he “fit the description of someone we’re looking for,” made fun of him as a law student, frisked and searched him, refused to give their names and badge numbers, and then followed him home after saying he was free to leave.

Invoking the names of victims of police brutality, such as Abner Louima, Perkins wrote that he knew he could not resist. “I knew that there would be no remedy for the indignity that I suffered at the hands of two of the University of Virginia’s ‘finest.’” he wrote. “As I stood there, humiliated, with my hands on the police car, my only thought was: ‘There is nothing I can do to right this wrong. I have absolutely no recourse.’ I hope that sharing this experience will provide this community with some much needed awareness of the lives that many of their black classmates are forced to lead.”

As soon as the letter was published, the university’s police department began an investigation, bringing in some outside experts to assist. Perkins gave several interviews to local reporters, and many students said that they were outraged by the way he said he had been treated.

On Friday, however, the university released a statement announcing that the investigation found that Perkins had made up the story. The university’s statement (not available on the university’s website, but posted on the Virginia Law Weekly’s Facebook page) quoted Perkins (without naming him) as saying that he fabricated the story. “I wrote the article to bring attention to the topic of police misconduct,” he said in a written statement. “The events in the article did not occur.”

The university said that its investigation included a review of all relevant dispatch records, personnel rosters, police radio tapes, surveillance video from the university’s cameras and those of businesses near where the incident was alleged to have taken place, and interviews with Perkins. The university said that Perkins cooperated in interviews and admitted the fabrication as the “facts of his story came into question.”

The part of the statement that has attracted the most discussion was a quote from Michael A. Gibson, the chief of police at Virginia, who announced that he would not press criminal or other charges.

“I recognize that police misconduct does occur,” he said. “Pressing charges in this case might inhibit another individual who experiences real police misconduct from coming forward with a complaint. I want to send the message just how seriously we take such charges and that we will always investigate them with care and diligence.”

Of course, the message is also that playing the race card, even to the point about lying about an incident to the police, is excused if a politically correct minority does it.

None of this is new.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Several researchers say the liberal atmosphere at many of the nation’s colleges creates an environment ripe for deception.

“There’s the preconception that if a charge is made, it’s true,” said John Perazzo, author of “The Myths that Divide Us.”

“One common thread running through many such incidents is the accuser’s sense of victimhood.”

One can file this, of course, under “the corruptions of political correctness.”

Of course, bogus claims of victimization poison academia as much as genuine victimization would. Genuine victimization of minorities is everywhere met with condemnation — no excuses allowed. That’s the morally healthy response.

The Real Agenda Behind “Hate Crime” Laws

From the Washington Examiner:

This story comes to us from Broward County, Fla. Teah Wimberly, 16, is charged with murdering Amanda Coll, a friend and classmate at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale. Both girls were 15 at the time of the shooting.

According to police, Ms. Wimberly wanted more than just a friendship with Collette, whom she’d known since childhood. Wimberly wanted a lesbian relationship with Collette, who rebuffed the idea, news reports indicate. On Nov. 12 of last year, police say, Wimberly took a .22-caliber handgun to school and fatally shot Collette.

Wimberly’s trial started last week and is expected to continue this week. This may be the first time you’ve read about the case, unlike when Matthew Shepard was murdered in Wyoming or when James Byrd was dragged to death in Jasper, Texas.

My guess is you know plenty about those latter two incidents. Shepard was gay; two men beat him to death because he was gay. Byrd was a black man whom three white supremacists chained to a truck, dragged through the streets of Jasper and beheaded.

Both grisly crimes, to be sure. And when President Obama signed a new federal “hate crimes” law recently, it was called the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

That’s a misnomer, because the law prevents nothing of the sort. And it creates classes of victims and perpetrators, as if some victims of violent crime are better than others, or the perpetrators of the same are worse.

And therein lies the answer about why Wimberly wasn’t charged with a hate crime. She’s the wrong sexual orientation: lesbian. Had she been a heterosexual teen who shot a lesbian, you’d have been able to repeat the details of this story verbatim, because that’s how many times you’d have heard it.

Wimberly is also the wrong race: She’s black, or, as the current PC term goes, African American. Her victim, Colette, was also a “person of color,” to use yet another annoying PC term.

I’ll repeat what I’ve said about “hate crimes” laws for some time: They should be more correctly called “bust whitey’s hump” laws. These laws target whites who commit crimes against “people of color.” You’ll rarely see them used against “people of color” who commit crimes against whites. And it’s even rarer to see them used against “people of color” who commit crimes against other “people of color.”

Ever heard of Cheryl Greene? She was a black girl killed by members of a Mexican-American gang in Los Angeles. There have been some very nasty brown-on-black crimes committed in Los Angeles recently, but like the Amanda Collette murder, most media outlets give them little to no coverage.

The victims are the right color, but, dang it, the perps just aren’t. Nothing makes for the perfect hate crime like a white perp and a victim who’s a “person of color.”

Or, if you’re like the Obamas of the world, a victim who’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or transsexual. The purpose of the Shepard-Byrd Act was to add them to the list of approved “hate crimes” victims. At least that’s what the law’s supporters would try to con us into believing.

The truth is this: Supporters of “hate crimes” laws don’t want to criminalize the conduct of those who commit crimes based on race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Wyoming and Texas both had murder statutes on the books that allowed the killers of Shepard and Byrd to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It’s not like the murderers escaped punishment.

No, supporters of “hate crimes” laws want to criminalize certain thoughts and ideas. That makes them far more dangerous than those who commit nonviolent “hate crimes.”

The yokels who’d burn a cross on a lawn, paint a swastika on a synagogue or yell the dreaded “F” bomb at a gay couple are, at worst, insufferable bigots. At best they’re simply royal pains in our collective neck.

But those who want to criminalize thoughts and ideas will soon lead us down the path to totalitarianism. Given my druthers, I’d gladly suffer the annoyance of the silly, nonviolent acts of a few idiotic bigots than trust an advocate of “hate crimes” laws to govern this nation.