Violence from the left and the right

Over at Dave Neiwert's blog, Orcinus, is this post which compares and contrasts two incidents of violence that happened recently. The first is described in this excerpt:

Now comes a fairly clear-cut case of a politically inspired assault by right-wingers on a gay man in Atlanta -- in fact, it appears they drove all the way from at least Kansas to commit the crime.

The assault -- which included raping the man with a sawed-off broomstick and holding a knife up to his scrotum and threatening to cut it off -- was in apparent retaliation for a LiveJournal post in which the victim, an Atlanta artist, depicted (through the wonders of Photoshop) George W. Bush as a Grand Dragon at a Klan rally. Using information they gathered from the Web, they stalked him and brutalized him into unconsiousness, leaving him for dead in an alley.

If the permalink doesn't work, just look for a post titled "A political hate crime." The link to the picture currently won't work as the owner of the LiveJournal account hosting it is setting his posts to friends-only due to harrassment. I've seen the picture, though, and it's pretty much as it's described. Rather artistically done, in fact.

The other incident of violence was reported by blogger Matt Margolis where he was, in his words, "roughed up" at a Bush fund raiser in Boston. Matt himself writes about the event in his post titled, "The Margolis Incident."

It all happened very fast – but at the same time, seemed to happen in slow motion. I remember being with everyone cheering for Bush, and the union worker had been engaging us, and Aaron had also exchanged some words with him, then the guy just jumped down and charged at Aaron. He took a swing at him (missing his face by a hair – knocking off his glasses) and then everything just exploded. I went right for that guy and jumped at him, getting a few punches in before I got tackled (presumably by another union worker), and got thrown to the ground. I ended up getting my face slammed down and held to the ground. I believe someone got him off of me and I got back up as the altercation was broken up.

Dave links to Glenn Reynolds' post about the subject as well and has this to say about it:

Over at Instapundit, Mr. Reynolds is predictably exercised about the supposed harbingers of left-wing violence emanating from an incident in Boston in which a bunch of Freepers and a right-wing blogger were roughed up by union types.

Glenn cites, of course, all three of the posts he could find that supported the violence -- while ignoring the voluminous denunciations of the violence by other liberals.

Okay, now that the linking and excerpting are out of the way, let me insert my own 0.00000002 megabucks:

• I don't care whether your beliefs are the same as mine or not, if you engage in violent behavior over those beliefs you are simply a thug and I denounce your behavior. You do not act in my name and don't even try to tell me otherwise.


• The first incident is clearly of greater magnitude than the second. I won't pretend that there is any kind of moral equivalence here. An altercation where someone gets a bit scraped and bruised is nowhere near as heinous as the deliberate stalking, maiming, and sexual assault of someone, regardless of motivation.


• And, though it shouldn't have to be said, this country is based on free speech. In both cases, the victims were engaging in constitutionally protected speech. I disagree with the person who created that picture (I'll leave researching the real history of the KKK, the Republicans, and the Democrats as an exercise for the reader) but he had every right to create it and display it. If you disagree with something, don't look at it or listen to it. Or else counter it with your own well-reasoned argument.

I also want to address something else that Dave writes about, namely this:

This is the kind of case where a federal hate-crimes bill would make a real difference. It clearly involves the interstate commission of a crime, but unfortunately, those kinds of cases are typically only enforced under the bias-crime provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which covers only race, ethnicity and religion as bias categories. The FBI is constrained by federal law from involving itself in this case as things stand.

I understand the desire to punish hate crimes more severely than those with other motivations. However, I have a real problem with the concept because it is punishing people not just for what they did, but for what they were thinking. The way I see it, this is one step toward the thought police, newspeak, and all that other 1984-style oppression. I believe that people should be judged on their actions, not their thoughts. You can't stop people from hating through legislation.