Verbosities

Orcinus - Getting It Right On Hate Crime

Three Burleson men who belong to a "radical Christian activist group" were in the Johnson County Jail on Friday night after a church deacon caught two of them attempting to ignite an explosive device on Independence Day at a church under construction in north Burleson, authorities said Friday.

Radical Christian "warriors" trying to bomb a church? Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Had they been Muslim? Non-stop coverage on all the major networks through the entire week and a flurry of "See!?!?! We told you!" posts from LGF, Hot Air and the rest of the Keyboard Kommandos.

Oh, and just for context, let's be absolutely clear that this was terrorism, by any definition that you want to use:

Cmdr. Chris Havens, the Police Department spokesman, said the suspects boasted about belonging to a leaderless group of 10 or 15 who share a belief that society has become too focused on self-improvement and self-gratification and has lost focus on the glorification of God.

"They admit to being Christian and being brought up Christian, but they believe there should be one denomination and one church, not multiple denominations," Havens said.

"They did not say they had a name for their group, other than they were a radical Christian activist group. That was the way they explained their group," he said.

The suspects said the group has three levels of involvement: Bible study, consensual fighting and destructive acts. Because one of their beliefs is free thought, however, participation in all three levels is not mandatory, they told police.

The three admitted to being in a core group of seven that created the explosive weapon as a test to draw attention to the demise of society and to see whether the device would work, Havens said.

Sara from Orcinus goes further to reinforce that this "demonstrates once again how important hate crimes laws are in protecting everyone's rights," an idea I'm not sure I agree with. Regardless of motivation, a criminal act is a criminal act, and I'd like to think First Amendment protections extend to what's in your head, and those thoughts aren't used against you to amplify the punishment of a crime. Far be it from me to say that criminals should go unpunished, but the point is that there really shouldn't be a difference in punishment between a guy who kills his wife to cash an insurance policy and another guy who kills a Puerto Rican because he hates adobo pork. To me, there's no difference. But Sara does hit this part squarely on the head:

When fascism comes to America, this is precisely what it will look like: cults that incite violence, firebombed churches, the young men caught up in a noble cause; the emphasis on national purification; the hostility toward religions (even other Christian groups) that don't hew to their orthodoxy; the belief that the world is corrupt ("accumulated trash") and the only answer is eliminationist violence against those they believe are doing the devil's work.

And we cannot count on all of them to be this inept. The only mistake these guys made was not in testing their device somewhere more remote before inflicting it on their local churches. If they are connected to other groups, this event may simply be an additional point on an upward learning curve -- one mistake the next group won't make again.

Shorter Sara: If you think this is an isolated incident and these are the only seven Christian nationalist/fundamentalist/fascist idiots out there, you're being naive.

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