In 2018, the Trump Administration took the United States out of the hypocritical United Nations Human Rights Council, arguing that no nation that itself abuses human rights (Venezuela, China, Saudi Arabia) could serve on that body. Fast forward to 2023: one of the members of Montgomery County’s Committee on Hate/Violence is Council Member Kristin Mink, the one who has had very hateful things to say about Moslem school children, Jews, and white women. CM Mink’s participation on that committee proves it is compromised. The other members of that committee who have not resigned in protest of her participation are also compromised.
CM Mink, if you’re reading this, here’s the deal: make LGBT studies an opt-in elective in the public schools, and we’ll stop reminding people of your bigotry. Neither you nor the illegitimate school board have the right to make arbitrary decisions about what science is mandatory and what is optional in the schools.
Hatred is a terrible thing. It’s a motivator for vandalism, assault, arson, intimidation, bomb threats, and murder. Churchgoers have been feeling it for quite some time, as have African Americans, as have (until recently) the LGBT residents, and more recently the schools’ Jewish students.
As with many other jurisdictions, our county government acknowledges this problem exists and is trying to address it. It established the Committee on Hate/Violence, whose duties include promoting educational activities that demonstrate the positive value of ethnic and social diversity, and recommend policies, programs, legislation, or regulations necessary to reduce the incidences of acts of hate/violence. How effective has this committee been?
Pro-choice liberals use an acid test to determine if a governmental body is worthwhile: if the issue the body addresses continues to persist, the body is ineffective and should be disbanded. The paradigm example is the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. That agency promoted the Food Pyramid which recently transitioned to MyPlate. The objective is admirable: get Americans to eat healthier. We know that Americans are tragically becoming sicker due in great measure to poor diets. That proves the Food and Nutrition Service isn’t a successful agency and should be disbanded.
The same is true of the county’s Committee on Hate/Violence. I couldn’t find when this committee was established, but I did find a reference to it from 1990. After 33 years, not only has the county government failed to stamp out hatred, the hatred is even worse! This committee needs to be abolished because it is an obvious failure. The committee’s members are not at fault: the fault lies with those who believe that making up laws, fines, regulations, committees, reports, and recommendations can eliminate hatred. Here’s the Clean Slate MoCo guarantee: the Anti-Hate Task Force established by the County Council last June will also be a failure.
There is another matter of priority. St. Thomas Aquinas enumerated the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Easterners are familiar with the three deadly poisons: delusion/confusion, greed/sensual attachment, and aversion/hate. Hate crimes are spectacular, but is the number of victims greater than those of adulterous partners, cheated business associates, addicts, or abusers? We don’t have laws against narcissism, even though narcissists leave behind victims who, in extreme cases, are on strong medications to stay alive or succumbed and found their final comfort in the cemetery. If we don’t have laws against the other six deadly sins, it’s not worthwhile to have laws against hatred.
We do have laws for the manifestations of hatred (assault, murder, vandalism, etc.). Realistically, that’s as far as we can go. Criminalizing human emotions, like criminalizing drug abuse, doesn’t make the problem go away.
