Yes, of course. That's an accepted aspect of making a generalization. You believe it to be generally true, but you assume there will be some exceptions. However, when a population votes, we assume the majority won, which means even my generalization might be wrong, which was my point. A few exceptions to the rule don't win elections.
Not directly, not the way you stated it, which includes the aspect "which is likely to lead to a breach of the peace".
What I strongly oppose are USA hate-crimes.
A hate crime goes like this:
- It's already against the law to walk up to someone you don't like and punch them in the nose. Let's say the penalty might be a $1000 fine and 3 months in jail. Let's call this the crime of "assault".
- In recent years, it changed so if you punch them in the nose "because" they're [name of victim group], the penalty is now a $5000 fine and 3 years in prison.
The problem is that the person who got punched in the nose does not actually deserve any "additional" meting out of justice/punishment to the puncher compared to anyone else who got punched in the nose. His suffering under the law should be, he got punched in the nose.
This may seem overwhelmingly obvious, but I understand
why the hate-crime concept got its appeal: Because years ago, minorities were being punched in the nose and nobody was prosecuting it. Instead of fixing the obvious problem of failure to prosecute and enforce the law, it was rather solved by lawmakers saying "If you punch a minority, we promise promise promise we're really really really going to prosecute it and look at this, we'll even double the punishment!" which was the wrong and unnecessary response.
It puts minority punch-ees in a privileged position over and above anyone else, which is completely unequal and unfair.
Beyond that, I actually think punishing someone for the reason they did something, or for the thoughts that may have been in their mind, is not a place I'd like to go in society. I don't want to live in a place where your thoughts are punished, I think we should draw the line at physicality for the most part. But this aspect of the conversation isn't even needed to make my point - the main thing is what I said previously.
Beyond that, many people feel that only specific groups are benefitting from hate crime enforcement. The reasoning (beyond the actual anecdotal evidence I have seen many times), is quite straightforward: The idea came from liberal, social-justice types in the first place. The enforcement decisions come from the same philosophical place.
Thus, even though a hate crime is
supposed to work equally well when a black guy punches a white guy out of dislike and frustration with the White race, everybody pretty much knows that almost never actually does work that way. This adds even more to the 'unequal' aspect.
Beyond that, now I'll add even one more thing: The limited categories of hate crimes are inherently unfair. Let's take an example. There are occasions when people who look affluent are targeted out of frustration to that; there are times when attractive women get targeted out of men's frustration to that, there are times when CEO's and executives get targeted out of people's frustration with them. Are they less deserving of justice than someone who is Polish? Of course not! And yet, we would have to create a hate crime category that covers every imaginable 'reason' in the world, in order to make this situation right. Of course, we can't do that. So we lumber along, year after year, slowly creating 1 new category every 5 years out of the 1000 needed. It's ridiculous.
In my opinion there are quite a few laws like this in recent years that follow essentially the same pattern.
Wrongs were being done to people and prosecution was lacking.
Instead of solving the root problem - failure to enforce the law - New additional laws were made to make the 1 crime 3 crimesbl
The only effect this had was of punishing the few people who got prosecuted at 3x the harshness. It did nothing to change the overall lack of prosecution for the basic, and only, crime that was ACTUALLY committed.
