Punishing hate crimes: the next phase.

Canada pioneered the prosecution of "hate crimes," introducing enhanced penalties for crimes against protected victim groups years before our nation began to adopt the same misbegotten policy. Subjects of the socialist regime in the Great White North can be fined, lose their jobs or sentenced to prison terms merely for publicly expressing unsanctioned opinions regarding race, religion, or sexual "orientation." But according to Canadian law professor Alan Young, such measures simply aren't enough: What is needed is a full-blown, Soviet-style program of government-imposed "deprogramming" for those accused of hate crimes.

"In the context of hate crime, I do have some regrets that we have a constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment," lamented Young--the Canadian Alan Dershowitz--in a March 28 Toronto Star column. In dealing with such reprobates, government must display the "ingenuity, audacity and courage" in the use of brutal means supposedly intended to "kick-start a brain."

"The hate criminal is unique," writes Young. "The defining feature of the hate criminal is stupidity. It is a crime born of intellectual deficiency.... These people turn off their brains and pay homage to half-baked philosophies based on nothing more than their own inadequacies and insecurities. The racist deliberately short-circuits his brain to massage a crippling and neurotic need to hate."

While Young agrees that criminal sanctions are necessary, he insists that "the use of the law as a tool of coercive persuasion" is an insufficient remedy: "Just as some cancers require invasive surgery, the hate crime needs intrusive measures.... For crimes of supreme stupidity we need Clockwork Orange justice--strapping the hate criminal into a chair for an interminable period, and keeping his eyes wide-open with metal clamps so he cannot escape from an onslaught of cinematic imagery carefully designed to break his neurotic attachment to self-induced intellectual impairment."

The Soviet Union employed audacious means to deal with those deemed "socially dangerous": Thought criminals of that sort were consigned to the psihuska, or psychiatric gulag, where they were given psychotropic drugs. Those whose brains could not be "kick-started" often underwent lobotomies. This type of abuse is all but inevitable once the state assumes jurisdiction over the mind of its subjects, and defines certain opinions as not only criminal but pathological. For now, Young and his comrades would focus their attention on certifiable bigots. Tomorrow, however, they might prescribe similar "intrusive measures" as punishment for such supposed crimes as attending The Passion of The Christ.