Justifications of Hate Crime Laws

David Kopel over at Volokh Conspiracy points out that one of the justifications for why hate crimes (crimes motivated by bias against members of an identifiable group) is the secondary consequences:

The best argument for hate crimes laws is that a hate crime causes more harm than an ordinary crime, because it causes many other people to fear being victimized. This is true for some hate crimes (e.g., public vandalism of a synagogue), but certainly not all of them (e.g., a dispute between neighbors in which an epithet is used). Moreover, there are plenty of ordinary crimes (such as highly-publicized serial attacks on random victims), which also cause fear in many people besides the immediate victims.

And this is one of the most powerful arguments against "hate crime" laws. Yes, a crime motivated by hatred of members of group A will, if widely publicized, cause all members of group A to feel threatened. But a robbery and murder that is motivated only by the desire to obtain the contents of the victim's wallet causes all members of the society to feel threatened. (At least, all members of the society that have anything worth taking.) So why doesn't the same logic apply to robbery, aggravated assault, or murder? All violent crimes that aren't motivated by bias produce a generalized fear in the population.

Let's just stop the pretending: this is about pandering to a group that is politically powerful, and wants violent crimes against it to be punished very severely--but doesn't much care about violent crimes committed against everyone else.