Correspondence
Correspondence POLICING YOUR MIND JACKSON TOBY is right that hate-crime laws are a bad idea, but he misses the mark in explaining why ("Hate-Crime Laws: What's Not To Like," Oct. 30). By talking...
...Philip Barber Rector, St...
...Was there racial strife...
...Hate-crime law is just the first step in the process to legislate what we may think...
...By talking about hate-crime laws in liberal terms of "wasting scarce custodial space" and prison sentences that "may be longer" than what the criminal "deserves," Toby suggests (falsely) that if those problems were eliminated—if judges were given more flexibility in sentencing, or if prisons were less crowded—hate-crime laws might be a good idea...
...LAUREN KUMMERER Notre Dame, IN JACKSON TOBY is generally correct to say that hate-crime law is bad for America...
...There are gray areas in war, peace, and even terrorism, but none so gray that U.S...
...We need to punish people for their bad behavior and nothing else...
...BRUCE YOUNG Cedar Key, FL THE EXPRESSION "peace in our time" comes from the versicle "Give peace in our time, O Lord" in the "Suffrages" of the Order for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England...
...Fine, but he doesn't suggest what the reaction should be...
...Which is not to say I was right...
...So we had a public school in the deep South just a couple of years after the march from Selma to Montgomery, attended by the governor's children and black students alike, that produced a perennial state championship football team with black and white players...
...CARLTON AMES Tokyo, Japan LIVING THE DREAM I WAS FASCINATED by David Tell's Casual "Forget the Titans" (Oct...
...However, are we to say that killing a man for his money is somehow more noble than killing him because of the color of his skin...
...As high school football teams go, there was none superior...
...On Oct...
...MIKE MCKEEVER San Diego, CA OOPS, HE DID IT AGAIN JOHN PODHORETZ is probably right about The Contender ("Never a Contender," Oct...
...We sweated and bled together, and the strong leadership of our coaches ensured we were a championship team...
...We just were...
...9), David Brooks attributed Neville Chamberlain's infamous phrase "peace in our time" to a book written by the prime minister's brother Austen...
...Two Arabs who want to join Allah before their time, or a wealthy Saudi who lives under a tent in the desert...
...23, The Weekly Standard printed a letter from Tom Graham tracing the phrase to a hymn written in 1842 by H.F...
...By introducing his own experiences at the time, Tell correctly questions the portrayal of Alexandria, Virginia, in 1971 as depicted in the movie Remember the Titans...
...I was a player on the integrated Alabama 4-A state championship high school football team in 1967 and 1968 from Sidney Lanier High School in Montgomery, Alabama...
...But in the movie, Oldman is the sole chair of the committee that oversees the confirmation...
...troops in their own country, to a terrorist, unnamed and operating for an unknown cause, who performs a sneak attack on a completely unaware naval vessel in a peaceful port...
...Donnelly's reference to the 1993 battle in Mogadishu emphasizes his general confusion...
...PEACE AT LAST EDITOR'S NOTE: In his Casual entitled "Shelf Life" (Oct...
...The real problem with hate-crime laws is that they single out the one element of criminal activity that is not a crime—hate—and convert it into the sole basis for a stricter penalty...
...That would never happen in a joint hearing—there would have to be a senator who served as co-chair...
...The case for strict uniform penalties—based on the crime and not the motivating beliefs—is not so difficult to make...
...We were ranked third nationally in 1967 and won the state championship for the third year in a row in 1968 with white and black players...
...Hate-crime laws punish a person for two reasons rather than just one...
...The Rev...
...But I'm pretty certain Podhoretz is wrong about one important point he makes in his review, at least the way I read Section 2 of the 25th Amendment: "Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress...
...And one of our cheerleaders was none other than Peggy Wallace, the daughter of the governor of Alabama...
...That action occurred in the context of military (or peacekeeping, if you prefer) operations...
...George's Anglican Catholic Church Temple Hills, MD...
...On the first point, anyone familiar with U.S...
...MARTIN S. HARRIS Cape Coral, FL WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, Tom Donnelly's "America at War" contains some language and thinking that could be deleterious to the United States and all Americans...
...Because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou, O God...
...It was dropped in the bowdlerized and emasculated American Prayer-Book of 1976/1979...
...And hate, however disdainful, is an inclination, like all other emotions and beliefs, that is and should be protected by the right to free speech...
...What is not protected, of course, is criminal activity, which thankfully is already punishable by law...
...No sensible person could compare the Somali militiamen, who were openly and courageously fighting well-armed U.S...
...Unfortunately, by concentrating as he does on the "policy" question of whether hate-crime laws will have a positive effect on the judicial system, he diminishes and even implicitly concedes the more important and far more compelling philosophical argument against such laws...
...In effect, these laws criminalize hate...
...embassies in Africa attacked in 1998, or the people in the federal building in Oklahoma City, is neither admirable nor justifiable, and should be disparaged...
...And, of course, that's where Chorley found them...
...Liberals have successfully whipped the conservative movement with assistance from the news and entertainment media to demonize individuals who disagree with them...
...Donnelly says that blowing a hole in the USS Cole was not a terrorist act but an act of war against the United States and that we should react accordingly...
...TOM GRAHAM may well be right that Neville Chamberlain had in mind the refrain from H.F...
...Apparently, the phrase predates the hymn as well...
...policy over the past few decades should know that the United States consistently refers to terrorist acts as "cowardly...
...Perhaps my own experiences are even more demonstrative of the twisted portrayal of race relations and the football elite in the South...
...As such, it was familiar to millions of English churchmen, and Chamberlain's use of it would have found considerable resonance...
...Neither do we need to couch our principled conservative opposition to hate-crime laws in bland liberal policy terms...
...I too am repulsed and frustrated with the ignorance that infests the people who commit acts of senseless violence against an individual because of his race or for any other reason...
...Blowing up people who have no warning or reason to believe they have been targeted, such as the sailors on the Cole, the people in the U.S...
...Although many terrorists display bravery in commission of their heinous acts (as do some bank robbers and assassins, for that matter), the acts are considered so contemptible that we usually don't compare their perpetrators to John Wayne, as Donnelly does...
...MATTHEW B. LIBBY Stillwater, ME FIGHTING TERROR TOM DONNELLY'S "America At War" is long on criticism and short on conclusions (Oct...
...The words had been in the Book of Common Prayer since 1549, when Archbishop Cranmer composed the first Prayer Book...
...Even the ads and trailers lead me to believe the movie overflows with the kind of self-righteous, liberal, Hollywood-style preaching about American politics that sets my teeth on edge...
...Nothing as dramatic as shown in the movie occurred to make us football champions...
...SCOTT E. HUCH Falls Church, VA JOHN PODHORETZ RESPONDS: Oops...
...opinion makers should feel the need to publicly laud the courage of terrorists merely because they are willing to sacrifice themselves in the service of a bad cause...
...There are good reasons for doing this...
...The discussion continues below...
...we need not delve into deep-seeded prejudice or make value judgments among those prejudices to bring to justice those who commit heinous crimes...
...Who is the enemy...
...But where were the press and movie producers to document these events...
...just to say the movie remains wrong...
...However, Toby uses logic that is not based on the principles of liberty and freedom...
...I am referring first to Donnelly's reference to the terrorists who killed 17 U.S...
...Perhaps Donnelly believes the United States should bomb Afghanistan to kingdom come because Osama bin Laden may be living there and may be responsible...
...All crime is hateful...
...Chorley's rousing hymn when he used the phrase "peace in our time...
...This supplication has been a part of the English liturgy since 1549 and is still found (though only in the Evening Prayer) in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer as used by continuing Anglican and traditional Episcopal churches...
...Of course I got the 25th Amendment wrong...
...Toby does hate-crime-law opponents a disservice by declining to advance it...
...sailors on the USS Cole as "clever" and engaging in "an extraordinary act of self-sacrifice and courage," and second to Donnelly's general inability to distinguish between war and acts of terrorism...
...The U.S...
...The congressman played by Gary Oldman would clearly play a significant role in the confirmation of a vice presidential nominee...
...Dead is dead...
...Chorley...
...They punish criminals for their actions, and for their thoughts used in conjunction with their actions...
...I didn't notice her cheer any more for white players than for black players...
...I don't recall much at all...
...But it seems more likely to me that he was thinking of the fifth of the six "Suffrages"—brief petitions and responses in the service of Matins, or Morning Prayer, as familiar to any churchgoing Englishman of that day as the Lord's Prayer itself: "Give peace in our time, O Lord...
...Rangers and Special Forces troops involved were armed, ready, and aware that they were involved in a hostile situation...
Vol. 6 • November 2000 • No. 9
