The past few days the RTD Editorial Board has published some great comments. In one editorial they take the Republicans to task for complaining about Creigh Deeds and the Washington Post's use of Bob McDonnell's 20 year old thesis. Wasn't it just two months ago that the GOP was digging into Justice Sotomayor's past to call her unqualified for use of words like "wise latina" in previous speeches? Way to call them out, RTD.
In today's paper they call out the inconsistency of GOP and Democratic ideology with regard to crime and punishment. Democrats are generally against the death penalty and long jail terms for drug crimes, arguing that neither are deterrents for murder and drug dealing. Republicans argue for both capital punishment and laws like three strikes and you're out for repeat drug offenders because they claim that these laws help lower murder rates and drug crimes.
Yet both parties fail to remain consistent to their principles when it comes to hate speech. Democrats generally champion hate speech laws like the Matthew Shepard Act which will extend "protection" to gays in an already long list of protected classes for crimes motivated by hate. The GOP, otherwise tough on crime, generally opposes hate crime laws.
To the GOP, if capital punishment is a deterrent for murder, why wouldn't a hate crimes law prevent hate crimes? And to the Democrats, if those same laws actually do prevent hate crimes, why not support capital punishment and mandatory sentences for drug pushers?
The answer is special interest groups that donate money to keep these parties in power. Right wing religious conservatives with a social agenda dislike gays so the GOP opposes the Matthew Shepard Act. Gays and politically correct big government liberals want to stifle any and all speech that they deem offensive and against their far left agenda, even at the expense of the First Amendment.
The Libertarian Party is the Party of Principle. Freedom of speech should be protected and laws like the Matthew Shepard Act and current laws on hate crimes continue our federal government's assault on individual liberty. Murder is murder and we do not need thought police in Washington suppressing speech. I do not have to like what my neighbor is saying, but he has a Constitutional right to say it.
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