Fanaticism is a blinding mental health problem. The fanatic is so focused upon his own narrow, limited perspective, he neither sees nor understands other, more prominent or reasonable views. Perhaps the worst kind of fanatic is the religious fanatic. He spreads hate and grief wherever he goes.

While there may be mental health issues at work, as I said, these do not implicate any sort of legal defense. Sixteen breakaway Amish cultists discovered this recently when they were all convicted in federal court in Cleveland of hate crimes. Their leader, Samuel Mullet Sr., was among those convicted. What he had done was send out his followers to terrorize other Amish who would not knuckle under to his hateful leadership. The victim’s beards and hair were cut by the assailants. Because of the spiritual and religious significance of their hair, this became a hate crime, an egregious example of religious intolerance.

Mullet reminds me of Warren Jeffs, the fundamentalist and polygamous Mormon leader, presently serving a sentence of life plus twenty years in prison for sex crimes against children. A claim of religious beliefs cannot shield a pervert from the consequences of his acts. As for Mullet, his attorneys claim he and his co-defendants are bewildered by their conviction. I find it impossible to believe that these people did not understand the criminality of their acts. They simply thought that they lived above the law because of their misguided religious fervor.

Separation of church and state does not mean that secular laws prohibiting criminal conduct do not apply to cultists. The religious fanaticism of which Mullet and Jeffs are examples, in a small way, seems to be similar to the larger, substantially more dangerous fanatics spewing hate in other parts of the world. Religious freedom as a concept, however, dictates that for reasons of political correctness and fear of blind, retaliatory violence we not make negative references. Fanatics, of whatever stripe, have no sense of humor. They murder innocents on religious grounds and think they follow their God. For the slaughtered dead, however, no God existed sufficient to save them from butchery.