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Originally Posted by MrSelfDestruct
My personal belief regarding personal liberty, responsibility, and accountability is that while society should judge a person's action based on motives, legal action should focus strictly on the consequences of those actions.
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I understand what you're saying as well and I think it's perfectly rational as well, but unsurprisingly I disagree with it. What if someone (like the kid who shot a BB gun at a bus) didn't mean to incite terror? Should we still punish him as a terrorist if he was just having fun and got careless? That would seem a bit cruel.
On the opposite side of things, I don't really have a problem charging someone like Moussaoui as a terrorist even though he didn't actually kill anyone. He clearly intented to terrorize this nation and we can't just let him get off lightly because he failed. If we do, he'll almost certainly try again and possibly succeed.
In any case, that's kind of a different discussion from the hate crimes one. I've probably already derailed this thread too much, so I'll end it here, but I do appreciate you giving your take on all this. It's certainly forced me to test my own beliefs about this topic.