A couple of quotes:
— The worst enemy is one whose doctrines are founded in hate and are thus beyond debate. Tobsha Learner, in her historical fiction novel The Witch of Cologne.
— There is no passion more spectral or fantastical than hate. Lord Byron, in his play The Two Foscari.
Twice this year, the Kansas City area has been in the national spotlight because of horrific hate crimes.
F. Glenn Miller Jr., one of the nut cases who visited us with his particular brand of hate — anti-Semitism — came from Aurora, Missouri, southwest of Springfield.
The other, Ahmed H. Aden, was living among us.
Miller, as you know, shot and killed three people, including a 14-year-old boy, outside Jewish facilities in Overland Park in April. Recently, he told The Star’s Judy Thomas, “I wanted to made damned sure I killed some Jews or attacked the Jews before I died.” He was so blinded in his hatred that he didn’t even bother to identify Jewish people as particular targets and ended up killing three Gentiles.
Abdisamad
Aden, a demented Christian Somali, killed a 15-year-old Somali Muslim named Abdisamad Sheikh-Hussein…Killed him by running him down in his SUV last Thursday outside a mosque on Admiral Boulevard. He claimed he mistook Abdisamad for someone who had threatened him previously, but I’m not buying that for a minute. For one thing, why would a 15-year-old boy be threatening a 34-year-old man? No, Aden was after Muslims, that’s all.
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According to the FBI’s 2012 Uniform Crime Reports, most hate crime was motivated by race, accounting for 48 percent of all such reports. However, race fell significantly as a percentage of hate crimes, while sexual orientation rose.
Hate crimes motivated by religion stayed about the same, but between 1995 and 2012, the percentage of such crimes aimed at Jews dropped significantly, while the percentage aimed at Muslims rose significantly.
Take a look at these tables:
The shift is not surprising, considering the upheaval in the Middle East the last 20 years or so. But when you get away from the statistics and see living, breathing mad men like Miller and Aden do the things they did and think about them (and probably others like them) being among you, it is shocking and frightening.
There are a ton of goof balls out there, not to mention those who dedicate themselves to crime as a way of life, and any of us could become victims. Just because most of us don’t look like young Abdisamad, we should not feel safe. If a Caucasian youth had been standing next to Abdisamad, he might have been run down, too.
The hate that Lord Byron and Tobsha Lerner wrote about is reckless and unfocused, and it’s not limited to Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Just look at Glenn Miller’s victims, 53-year-old Terri LaManno, 69-year-old William Lewis Corporon and 14-year-old Reat Corporon. Hate does not discriminate among locale, age, gender, nationality or religion; when cut loose, it destroys whatever is in its path.
And tomorrow, Feinstein will release a report that experts claim will incite more killing and violence from the muslim world. I wonder what good could come from releasing a report like that. From my point of view, none, unless you are a Democrat looking to smear the Bush administration. Is that enough reason to release the report?
I’lll just let John McCain answer that:
“Everybody needs to know what happened and why it happened and how we never have to let this happen again.”
Good enough?
Speaking of demented, that was what the guy was who shot and killed John Lennon 34 years ago today. In and of itself, hate is not a bad emotion. It’s just that the energy there needs to be channeled in the right direction – used for good and not for evil.
Interesting point of view. Something to consider…
You mean like beating the Raiders, Rick?
In the early 70’s i saw Dick Gregory debate Russell Kirk. Gregory demolished Kirk. But, interestingly enough Gregory argued that you have the right as an individual to hate anyone you want for any reason you want. However, he went on to saythat institutional hatred was a bad thing.
The first column I wrote for The Star, and one of the few on a national issue, was in opposition to hate crimes legislation. I personally could care less if they execute this guy the day after his trial for murdering the kid, but I would find it completely offensive if they would add so much as a day to his sentence for what he thought about prior to committing the crime.
Punishing people for what they think as oppose to what they do, is a totalitarian nightmare. Since this lunacy has been passed (often with the assistance of some gutless Republican legislators) it, predictably, has been used in a discriminatory manner. A Christian killing a Muslim is a hate crime, but the Muslim mass murderer who shot up a military bass was only involved in a workplace incident. Or one thinks of the Carr brothers and their multiple white victims tortured, humiliated and then slaughtered, but no hate crimes.
Hate crimes are simply ideological pap created by an authoritarian state to rationalize their own values while dehumanizing and delegitimizing other ideas.
If you kill a kid like this, or slaughter multiple people, who gives a hoot what you were thinking, you should be given a speedy trial and an even speedier execution.