@ Yitzak

Whether a specific law is "unconstitutional" or not gets determined by the Supreme Court.  If the latter has not made such determination about current (existing) American "hate crime legislation" then the answer should be obvious.  Such legislation does NOT concern "speech", but ACTIONS or DEEDS.  In other words, naive-lefties and other sentimentalists have succeeded in passing laws that declare certain specific CRIMINAL DEEDS as a reflection of "hate", which then leads to or requires 'extra' punishment.  

These laws are pernicious in that they discriminate between actual or perceived motivations for SIMILAR crimes.   It is ludicrous for the law to discriminate between a murder, say on the basis of (real or imagined) racial hatred versus a murder that is based on sexual jealousy (or whatever motivation).  Both murders should be treated equally.  But naive-lefties cannot resist creating 'special categories' of victimhood.  Such is life in modern western civilisation.

But the point is that these laws in the USA relate to CONCRETE (criminal) DEEDS, not SPEECH or opinions.  The First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of (political) speech, remains alive and well in the USA.  Wish that it were so in most of Europe, where it is no more.

Question here is then why 18 USC 245 (b)(2) exists in US and why congress in 1969 had passed such law? Hate crime legislation (18 USC 245 (b)(2)) is clearly unconstitutional then why people get prosecuted under such law?

After reading the comments by Amsterdamsky and especially Yitzhak, I decided to take another look at the 1st amendment. Here is the relevant bit:

Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press

The relevant word there is "Congress": on the face of it, the 1st amendment does not prohibit state assemblies, let alone state universities, from making laws abridging freedom of speech within the state, or on campus. Saying that the 1st amendment guarantees freedom of speech in, say, Colorado (my favorite state) is like saying that there is freedom of speech in Sweden, as long as the EU does not make laws against it.

NB: I don't want to censor Amsterdamsky's speech, but I do disagree with much of what he says.

No, Yitzak, the U.S. and Europe are quite different in that even most of the lefty elites in America would insist that the government should not punish someone simply for stating that organized crime is dominated by Italian Americans.  But you would have to search far and wide in Sweden to find members of the media or government or academia who are willing to speak out against a law that makes it a crime to state that drug trafficking is dominated by Albanian Muslims.

@ Jason

Well, you said it better than me.   In the case of Amsterdamsky, one feels like one is "talking to a (big)child here". It even led me at one desperate point to call him "a shallow-educated American", I am only half sorry to say.   I thought my exchange of views with Snorri Ghodi would have made clear the distinction between the state and the private citizen (or employer) in matters of toleration of free speech.  But no, he came straight back showing that he cannot get it.    

One thing is clear, he hates jews and America (probably based on some particular individual experiences of his in Detroit and in California).  And he will not bother to read (and make the effort to understand) what is in front of him.  He wil simply come back with his same mantras, totally ignoring the arguments presented.  Such is unthinking man.......Yet, he reads The Economist.  So there is hope that, as his age advances, 'cognitive dissonance' can be mastered and will temper his 'certainties'.

Come on people let’s get real here US is not much different then Europe.  In US people do get prosecuted under hate-crime legislation just for painting graffiti on the wall (plz note only Caucasians). When black paints graffiti against white that is considered expressing free speech right but if it goes vice-versa that’s racism incitement of hate and all hell brake lose. A black singer can cheerlead about raping white girls killing white cops etc no one dare say word about it. But if you are a white and use N word then l-rd almighty helps you everyone would want your blood.

Prosecutions under hate-crime legislation more then 70 percent whites in USA. If a white use N word why that falls under intimidation in USA? Why saying (Barak the magic N****) is a hate speech in US?

US and Europe are facing same kind of problems. White majority is vanishing faster and faster with each new day. I don’t know how US would look like with a non-white majority but one thing I am sure about is immigration both in Europe and US is changing everything.

From Jason "Ummm, yeah...and exactly as the Founders inteded. If I worked for someone who was Jewish and expressed admiration for the Nazi's he would have every right to fire me."

Yeah but Jews expressing hatred for muslim, christians or germans would be protected speech in your book right?  People like you make me ashamed I am american.  Heil the rise of protected classes!  Heil Israel!  Heil Nelson Mandela!

Lets go cluster bomb more arab villages with US tax money!! That will teach them not to be anti-semitic!!

Nihilism
The belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy.

Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West (1926) studied several cultures to confirm that patterns of nihilism were indeed a conspicuous feature of collapsing civilizations.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm

Europe has become Nihilistic so Europe will fall.

The Swedish justice system is also very understanding of Muslim hatred towards Jews.

Chancellor of Justice Lambertz did not think that material calling to kill the Jews were considered “incitement against an ethnic group according to Swedish law”.  

His conclusions were that the preliminary investigation should be discontinued because this case of incitement against Jews could be said to originate from the Middle East conflict. That is, in spite of the calls for ”killing the Jews”, these statements are not a crime in the legal sense in Sweden, because of the current conflict in the Middle East, according to the Chancellor of Justice.

(Sweden: When incitement is allowed)

Marcfrans: if I understand you, you are saying that governments must not penalize people for their opinions, but individuals and private institutions (eg private universities) should be free to do so, and pay the consequences. (If I don't understand you, please summarize your message into a few lines.)

Before the cartoon jihad, I would have agreed with you. Then I saw that in Sweden, in Britain, and initially even in the USA, no major newspaper dared to exercise freedom of speech, even without government pressure. That made me think back to Salman Rushdie, Pim Fortuyn, and Theo van Gogh, and I realized that the government does not, in fact, have a monopoly of violence, when it comes to freedom of speech. But I grant you that the situation is different in the USA than in Sweden: in the USA, the government could, hopefully, be part of the solution. In Sweden, as in Britain, the government is part of the problem.

I would certainly donate money to help that happen

@ Snorri Godhi

You are making an improper comparison.  Worse, you are trivialising the bedrock of freedom and of democracy, which is freedom of (political) speech.

The state has a MONOPOLY on force, and makes the laws.  That is why it must respect everybody's freedom of political speech.    You cannot compare that with individual job retention.

If you work for a local baker and you make fun of his wife or his mother, do you think that you are going to retain your job at that bakery for very long?   If you have an administrative job in your country's 'socialist' party - or any party - and you publicly (verbally) attack their political positions, or speak well of an opposition party, do you think that your job with them would be 'secure'?.  Etc....

In a free society employers and employees are free to work with and for each other if they so please, and if they don't get along (or don't like each other) then they go and work for (or with) someone else.   Freedom means that you are responsible for yourself and take the consequences of your own actions (including consequences of what you say and do, or what you don't say and do).

In a free society the state (office holders) is supposed to be working for you, not the reverse.  If you allow them to proscribe what people are allowed to say in the political realm, then you are in essence allowing conditions to develop that will perpetuate their political power.  The result is that they no longer work for you, but that you (the citizen) will work for them, for they wil be controlling the 'agenda'.  That ultimately will lead to another 'revolution'.

Marry Frances Berry is a non-White female and as such, cannot be expected to render even a superficially unbiased opinion or decision regarding issues of race or gender...or class considering her support for the Chinese education system.

As far as Rytel is concerned, I would enjoy seeing her parachuted naked into the heart of Mogadishu so she can be 'one' with her non-White brethren.

Going back to Jared's orginal post I found this "Compare U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Mary Frances Berry's statement that "Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them."]"

This women clearly believes that the equal protection clause of the US Constitution does not apply to white men.  She is a public official charged with enforcing the laws of the US and the US Constitution.  Incredible.  This is what we are dealing with everywhere in the west now.

I really enjoy Jared's Amren site at www.amren.com. Even though I am pretty liberal, pro-gay rights and anti-religion compared to most of the posters these same issues affect me also and I fear the increasing role of government in our lives everywhere. It was not always like this but the neo-com education/indoctrination process in the west will try to tell you otherwise.

Marcfrans: No one in the USA can be convicted for merely expressing an opinion.

Not by federal or state governments, but people can (and do) lose their jobs and ruin their careers by expressing opinions.

As for Sweden, some Swedes do not include Sweden in the definition of "Europe", just as some Argentinians (I am told) do not include Argentina in the definition of "Latin America". If Swedish prosecutors think that way, then in Sweden criticizing Europe -- or any form or Christianity other than Lutheranism -- can be grounds for prosecution. Better keep that in mind if you happen to go there.

From Frank Lee "but the problem in Sweden is much more fundamental as it pertains to the curtailment of free speech. "  Try using the word "nigger" in Chicago or New York if you are "white" (note the common usage of white as opposed to "African-American.  We "whites" are clearly not worthy to be considered to have our own culture being merely white).  I know of at least one person that was jailed in Chicago for hate speech.  These cases tend to get overturned on appeal but after the jail time was done.  Free speech only exists if you can hire a good lawyer and afford to pay them in the good ol' U S of A.

RE: Kapitein Andre If Joanna Rytel should be executed she should be executed in the manner common to her adopted religion, stoned to death. I am sure she has already violated some edict that calls for stoning.

It is utmost comic to see politically-correct appeasers in Europe look the other way and blame the natives when Islam has never been more violent and suicidal than today. The good news is that we see more signs everywhere (including in Lebanon, Irak and Gaza) that Islam is falling apart and blowing up its own followers at a faster speed...
Back to these left-wing european appeasers, they're maybe thinking that their stance will protect them from the muslim thugs in their own city (most of these appeasers and their offspring live in secure cities far from the muslim suburbs) but they will sooner than later realize their mistake.

Fjordman: "In Sweden, saying that Muslim Albanians are behind much of the drug traffic in Europe (a fact) is considered racism and a crime."

In my opinion, Swedish hate crime legislation is going in the right direction. Naturally, such legislation will come to criminalize all speech that refers to "American," "European," or "White" "slavery," "colonialism," "imperialism," etc. It should also criminalize any association between Germans and National Socialism or National Socialism and the Second World War.

Fjordman: "Making derogatory statements about the native Christian population, however, is just fine."

Rather, the "White" population. Archbishop Desmond Tutu receives a significant amount of positive media attention.

Fjordman: "Dahn Pettersson, a local politician in Sweden, has been fined 18,000 kronor for writing that 95 percent of all heroin brought in comes via Kosovo."

Most opiates are derived from Islamic states, notably Afghanistan. Indeed, one of the aims of the ISAF/NATO and American military presence in that country is to neutralize Afghan poppy production.

Fjordman: " 'It is never ethnic groups that commit crimes. It is individuals or groups of individuals,” prosecutor Mats Svensson told the court. The court found Pettersson guilty of ‘Agitation Against a Minority Group.’ "

I only hope that when Whites are minorities in all of their ancestral homelands, that we are granted the same rights and privileges that these non-White 'minorities' are.

Fjordman: "When in 2004 Joanna Rytel, a Swedish feminist, wrote an article called “I Will Never Give Birth to a White Man,” the authorities refused to indict her. Prosecutor Göran Lambertz explained why: “The purpose behind the law against incitement of ethnic hatred was to ensure legal protection for minority groups of different compositions and followers of different religions. Cases where people express themselves in a critical or derogatory way about men of ethnic Swedish background were not intended to be included in this law.'..."

Comments such as these make me unhappy that Christians place so much emphasis on crucifixion, for there are certain cases, such as this one above, where this form of execution would be appropriate. Incidentally, Ms. Rytel (who is not an ethnic Swede and was born in Warsaw), has a line of jewellery that consists of tiny aborted foetuses, and supports prostitution.

@ Amsterdamsky

I am truly getting worried about what must have happened to the 'little grey cells' in your head.  Can you still use your brain, or are you just parroting nonsense and selfhate all the time?

If your point is that governments, all kinds of governments (federal, state, county, city, etc...) can waste money in politically-correct ways, you are saying nothing new, nor earth-shattering.  Or, if your point is that naive-left academics can do silly things, the same applies.   BUT, what has this got to do with what Fjordman was writing about?

No one in the USA can be convicted for merely expressing an opinion.  Apparently in Sweden they have a pc-law under which one can be convicted for saying that there are Albanian drug traffickers.  In the US one hears every day someone on TV talking about Mexican drug pushers, particularly in the context of the current "comprehensive immigration reform" debate.  And no one has ever been convicted for saying such a thing! 

Have you ever heard of the First Amendment to the Constitution?  There is nothing about which both the left and the right in American culture can agree more than freedom of (political) speech.  Even most of the nutty components of those different sides of the political spectrum can agree on that one.  And, it is the MAIN reason why the USA is the oldest 'uninterrupted' democracy in the world (still using the same constitution from 1787).      

A strange "entitlement society" for minorities does indeed exist in America, but the problem in Sweden is much more fundamental as it pertains to the curtailment of free speech.  In America one is free to make sweeping, disparaging statements about subgroups of people -- whether well-founded or not -- without receiving a fine from the government.  In fact, one might say a significant difference between Americans and Europeans is that most Americans are proud that they enjoy free speech while most Europeans are pround that they curtail the speech of people whose views they find objectionable.  We need to stop pretending that Americans and Europeans share the same values.

I think it is actually far worse already in the US than in europe.  Women or minority run businesses get special money from the government, black children go to Harvard with medium grades before any middle class white children are even considered.  It is already in action in the US while you guys are just starting really.  Martin Luther King himself would be appalled at the entitement society he helped create I am certain.

This law, well, I can't put it in a democratic society. It makes people, because of their ethnicity or religious beliefs and etc not equal before the law. How did it come to this? How did it come to the point where we actually must retake our rights and freedom? Well, I believe that action will be needed soon and then there will be no turning back and we will never let us be put in the same position again. The trust for politicians will be over and a new system to preserve our democracy will be built.

Are we really condemned to swallow any trash which they give us? 

No this is the plan.  Assault male european culture over and over until it no longer exists.

Actually the Netherlands is getting over this. 10 years ago these types of fines were handed out all the time. Theo van Gogh in particular was a serial abuser who intentionally thwarted these laws. There still might be hope for Sweden but I doubt it.

Stupidity of political corectness has obviously no limits.