As for the penalty enhancements themselves – they’re perfectly justifiable. Our criminal justice system already considers the motivations of an offender in numerous places – perhaps the most famous being the distinction between first- and second-degree murder. Society has made a policy judgment that individuals who kill in cold blood are more corrupt and dangerous overall than people who are incited to murder by a sudden emotional provocation.

Similarly, hate crime penalty enhancements reflect a social judgment that an attacker motivated by bias is more dangerous overall, since he’s proven that all it takes to incite him is a mere *encounter* with someone who belongs to a group he detests. He’s set off by the mere EXISTENCE of people who are unlike him – and, in my book, this greater danger to society justifies a greater sentence. It’s no “thought police” slippery slope, either; he’s free to hate all he wants, just not to translate that hate into the swing of a machete. Only CONDUCT is punished.