MORRIS DEES
Morris Dees hits hate groups where it hurts the most--in their pocketbooks (“The Long Crusade,” by Richard E. Meyer, Dec. 3). But we need laws to protect targets of hate based on group differences before damage can be inflicted.
How such laws will stand the tests of constitutionality as to “free speech” rights has already been established by Supreme Court decisions and other guarantees found in the Bill of Rights and our Constitution. Surely, these guarantees, the established civil right laws that prohibit wide areas of discrimination in various fields, and our being signatories to the Genocide Convention Treaty, can guide legislators and “civil liberty” absolutists in drafting laws that would end advocacy of bodily harm based on hate toward human beings because of differences.
History teaches us that where differences are not reconciled, wars grow out of the conflict.
HYMAN H. HAVES, Pacific Palisades
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