Resolved: Hate crime enhancements are unjust in the United States.

Cross-ex Answers: 1. Alright, John Locke is a famous philosopher from the 16th century. His philosophies were great insights for the framers of the Constitution and many of them were actually used. Now John Locke fights for everyone's rights for life liberty and property, EXCEPT when a violator infringes upon another's right. Basically what he is saying here is that you should delegate a punishment that fits the crime. 2. We are not debating whether we should have hate crimes or not, we are debating whether they are just or not. My arguments talking about hate crime enhancements being in place is just an example proving that hate crimes are just at the moment. 3. All of these exceptions are related to hate crimes, just not directly, that's why I'm tying them into it. Take for example, the slander laws. These laws were created to protect people, even if it technically violates the 1st Amendment. This is going back to John Locke's theory. If you infringe upon another's rights, you don't deserve the rights yourself. I hope this clarification is good enough :-) Going down the flow of the round. .. 1) So the way I hear this, you say that KKK member's punishments aren't drastic enough, but that any ol' punishment will make society feel better. First of all, it sounds contradictory to me that there aren't drastic enough punishments for them, but any ol' punishment will work. Secondly, it's not about making society "feel" better, it's about giving people what they deserve for breaking the law. Also, intent can be proven. Look back to the KKK and Nazi example. They're intent was obvious, they meant to hurt a certain group. And the Nazi example is just in the past. Had we not done all that we could had in WWII, then the Nazis may have ended up winning WWII and they could've hurt millions more. We need to treat MAJOR crimes with MAJOR punishments. Furthermore, take for example, the case of Mitchell v. Wisconsin. The intent was proven through oral confession. How can you say that intent isn't able to be proven if they say it themselves? Intent is something that can be proven. 2) There is no actual refutation to this argument except the intent argument, which Ive already proven against. 3) Once again, this debate is about whether something is JUST OR NOT, not whether they should be taking place. Again, I have proven that they are necessary over regular crime punishments and this went basically unrefuted. On to my opponent's case. .. 1) Once again, if you look to any of the rights that are guaranteed to us, there will always be exceptions if they are to infringe upon another's rights (John Locke) and thus, this entire argument should be thrown out the window as my criterion has been completely unrefuted in this round. 2) & 3) I will attack these in my crystallization. Some points of crystallization. .. 1) Normally I start with a value clash, but since we are both going for justice, we must look first to the criterions to see who best upholds their value and then to the contentions. 2) Now on to the criterion clash. John Locke vs. Proportionality. Once again, there isn't much difference between criterions but what you must see is that proportionality works on the Negative side better. The Justice System already uses proportionality to decide the proper punishment, in example, they give a different punishment for petty theft and grand theft auto, because of the amount affected. I mean, they are both theft, they should be given different punishment and, if the Affirmative is trying to say that a hate crime is the same as a regular crime, then we are not punishing them proportionally to the number of people affected. Every member of the group being attack is affected, as proven in my original 1st contention, and went un-argued by my opponent, and thus it must be given a proportional punishment, which is more than a regular crime, which is the definition of a hate crime enhancement. 3) My final point of clarification is the entire intent argument. My opponent doesn't EVER prove how intent cannot be proven, he just says that it can't. If you look throughout the round, I have proven that intent can be proven through oral (or even written) confession and through the obvious reasoning. If a man is completely outspoken against blacks (for the politically correct, African Americans) and just happens to kill a black man, it's not just a coincidence. It's obvious that he just committed a hate crime. I hope anyone voting on this debate sees that the "I'm right, you're wrong" technique being used by my opponent isn't really effective. There were several arguments that were only attacked by this single point, and thus I should win all of those arguments. I hope that since the cross-ex was a little fuzzy that this was enough clarification for this round and that nothing was left out. I also hope that my opponent doesn't bring up any new arguments in his next speech as I would not be able to refute them and would be abusive to me. Generally that's not a problem but I just wanted to cover all grounds. :-)