Clinton wants to expand the categories to include crimes based on gender, sexual preference, and disability. Clinton has frequently invoked the issue of hate crimes in fundraising speeches. We cannot be under the illusion that either material prosperity or technological breakthroughs alone can purge the darkness in our hearts. By raising hate crimes to the top of the problem list, he allows all political and governmental abuses to recede into the shadows. Prosecuting hate crimes takes government out of the mundane and makes it seem to be an avenging angel.
Government rises from merely trying to punish and thus prevent violence to being a judge of souls.
Most federal laws require that a federal agent be shown to have had an intent to violate citizens' rights before the agent can be prosecuted or held personally liable for action which harmed people. If animal rights activists had blown up the only pharmaceutical factory in the U.S. producing a key drug to prevent an epidemic, the Clinton administration might have ordered the round-up of every registered pet lover in the country. But when the U.S. did the same thing in 1998 to a factory in the Sudan wrongly suspected of terrorist links, the White House shrugged it off as an innocent mistake. Perhaps nothing highlights the contrast between crimes of hate and Acts of State as clearly as the Clinton administration's efforts to provide a lesson in human rights to the Serbs. It's very humbling.