-Caveat Lector- The politics of hate If we must talk about hate crimes, then we should also include the hate speech liberals regularly employ against Republicans and conservatives. - - - - - - - - - - - - By David Horowitz Oct. 30, 2000 | This year it seems especially appropriate that Halloween falls the week before Election Day. And that timing hasn't been lost on the Democrats, who have found new and creatively deceptive ways to spook voters. One official Democratic Web site offers a spoof on a popular horror film -- Iknowwhatyoudidintexas.com. With features like "The Bush Record: Our chilling favorites -- sometimes the truth is scarier than fiction," the site aims to frighten visitors about George W. Bush's supposed legacy in Texas and the policies he and the Republicans would impose on an unsuspecting American public if elected. The site also provides this dire warning: "Nothing is more terrifying than the official platforms of the Republican Party and its state parties." Nothing? Saddam Hussein? A ballistic missile tipped with anthrax? Returning home, after a one-night-stand, to face Mrs. Clinton? Somewhere in Michigan, the sister of James Byrd, the African-American tortured and lynched in rural Texas two years ago, is trotted out by Al Gore's campaign to accuse Bush of being soft on hate crimes, and thus implicitly of being a racist-lover himself. Somewhere on television, an "independent expenditures ad," funded by the NAACP National Voter Fund (a tax-exempt organization helmed by two former Democratic legislators), is airing images of the lynching, while making the case against Bush even more directly. Meanwhile, Iknowwhatyoudidintexas.com has this to add to the tragedy: "When faced with one of the most horrendous crimes motivated by racial hatred in recent memory, Bush chose to sit on the sidelines and not lead in expanding and strengthening laws against those kinds of crimes." A pack of fear-laced lies. The men who murdered Byrd by dragging him behind a pickup truck in Texas have been condemned to death or life in prison by Texas courts under existing Texas law, which includes a hate crimes bill that has been on the books since 1993. Moreover, Byrd's killing wasn't the most horrendous crime motivated by racial hatred in recent memory. An 8-year-old boy named Kevin Shifflett was murdered last April in the very shadow of the nation's capital. Kevin was killed by a 29-year-old African-American, who screamed racial epithets at the youngster and slit his throat with a butcher knife, as the boy was playing on the sidewalk in front of his great-grandparents' house. In contrast to the killing of Byrd, which became the subject of much presidential hand-wringing, Capitol Hill grandstanding and national outrage in the press, Kevin's murder was not even reported as a racial crime. To this day, it has been systematically and consciously kept out of the public eye. Collaborators in this suppression include local authorities, the media and every hypocritical organization -- the Democratic Party and the NAACP foremost among them -- that claims to oppose racial violence and stand up for civil rights. For four months following the atrocity, the local police in Alexandria, Va., where the crime took place, actively suppressed the racial identities of Kevin and his attacker. Now that the race of perpetrator and victim are known, and the racist motive of the attacker is clear (the assailant was previously imprisoned for a hammer attack in which he allegedly called his victim "whitey" and left a racist note in his hotel room around the time of Kevin's stabbing about "killing them racist white kids"), the crime has still not been declared a "hate crime," and the nation still could care less about Kevin Shifflett's fate. Far from regarding Kevin's slashing as a "hate crime," Democrats involved in the case are on record praising the police gag order, and they are anxious to keep the racial aspects of the crime hidden. Alexandria Democrat and City Council member Joyce Woodson said of the police suppression: "What they did was proper. We already live in a racially charged world. I don't think knowing that would have any impact on the way they investigated the case. It could have colored their approach in ways that would have been inappropriate." Democratic Mayor Kerry Donley and council member William Euille agreed. And even those vocal congressional advocates of hate crime legislation, Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., have maintained a silence about Kevin's fate that speaks louder than words. Evidently, hate crimes against 8-year-olds -- if they are white -- are OK with liberals. This is one reason why Republicans like Bush have opposed hate crime legislation directed at specific groups like gays (laws that would be the human equivalent of the Endangered Species Act). Why should gays be protected from hate by heterosexuals, but not heterosexuals from hate by gays? (Remember the violent attack by ACT-UP militants on St. Patrick's Cathedral a decade ago?) Consider the fact that no liberal or feminist group has proposed making rape a hate crime, even though rape is universally regarded as an act of hate. Could the reason be that such legislation would jeopardize another protected group -- African-American males -- who commit over 40 percent of such crimes? Next page | How hate crime laws undermine democracy 1, 2 First blood: The fight over Bush's Cabinet The left's efforts to tar and feather Ashcroft and other conservative Bush appointees are as unfair as the smear campaign waged against Clarence Thomas 10 years ago. 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