There was a break in at a property owned by Montpelier gadfly Gary Schy over this last weekend. Property was stolen, smashed and defaced. The Times Argus gave it front page treatment, though. Why?

A pair of swastikas were left at the site of a destructive burglary in Montpelier late last week, transforming the break-in into a hate crime, according to police.

Property owner Gary Schy discovered the anti-Semitic symbols amid the aftermath of a destructive rampage when he checked in on his teenage children's East State Street “clubhouse” early Thursday morning. The burglars, according to Schy, took two expensive guitars from the small barn before ransacking the premises and spraying the interior with a fire extinguisher. Schy said the swastikas were traced into the layer of white residue deposited by the extinguisher.

“I saw it on my kids' face, they know what hatred feels like,” Schy said.

A lot of folks on the left like to echo the right wing on hate crimes. Hate crime laws evoke strong negative feelings from the damndest people, and to a person they use the same arguments. That its somehow penalizing thoughts. That all crimes somehow involve hate already, so what's the point? That its some sort of fallacy to prosecute a random assault differently, and with a different set of punishments, than an assault based on a persons race, creed, color or sexual orientation. And they always go straight to angry that anyone would suggest otherwise, throwing around accusations of “political correctness.”

Often when somebody goes straight to angry like that, it's a sign that there isn't a lot of rationality to their argument to waste any time with.

First of all, lets do away with the two least developed arguments. No, not all crimes involve hate, and even if they did – that's not the point. Call them bias crimes if you want, it hardly matters. A rose by any other name, and all. This argument is a straw man at best.

Second of all, there's no penalization for thoughts. You don't get charged with a hate crime for thinking bad things about people – you get charged when you do bad things to people, and as is the case with any violent crime, intent matters. We prosecute criminals differently for reckless homicide vs. intentional murder. We prosecute differently for premeditation. We let people off completely if they can prove they weren't in their right minds. This is all common sense. Throwing out the “thoughtcrime” canard is, after a second of thinking about it, clearly a way to suggest that bias and ethnic, racial or sexual identity motivations should be specially singled out as beyond consideration (so now who's making special allowances?).

Finally, there's the argument that an assault that is motivated by bias-hatred should simply be prosecuted as an assault. That it's no different.

And that's a load of crap.

First of all, there's – again – the argument that we don't treat all assaults or attacks the same in other ways, as I mentioned before. Why single out the consideration of bias motivations as specifically arbitrary or inappropriate?

And the fact remains that a garden variety break in or vandalism and one motivated by bigotry are NOT the same crimes. Not even close. Need proof? There are break ins all the time in central Vermont with comparable damage and theft. Generally, you'll find them in the police reports. Sometimes a blerb on the sidebar in the B section. This particular break-in, however, was front-page-above-the-fold. What was the difference?

The swastikas.

Surrounded as we are by a disturbing complacency on such matters, fed by a media that considers those that gleefully associate themselves with dangerously fascistic bigots to be “quaint,” we have a special responsibility to call this sort of thing out and tell it like it is. By defacing Schy's property with swastikas, the peretrators were not simply trashing the place and stealing a few items, they were dropping a fear bomb into Montpelier's Jewish community – and by extension, all of us with friends and family among the Jewish community. It's the same when someone targets a gay man for a beating specifically because they're gay. Sure there's an assault, but there's also a violent, loud threat to the entire gay community, and an intent to terrorize them.

If you doubt that there's something much than in a garden variety act of violence when bias is the motivation, simply look at the ripples made in the community and you'll have little choice but to admit there's something more in play.

And that something is what makes it a hate crime. They're a form of terrorism, and should be treated as such.