Especially our home-grown fanatics on the left who view conservatives the same way Muslim extremists view Jews. Witness the silly brouhaha in the Daily News recently. Mallard Filmore, a mildly conservative strip did this cartoon to howls of indignation and rage from our very own fascists, those humorless drones known as left-wing activists.

The cartoon had the temerity to mock hate crimes by in turn mocking liberals’ laughable rationalizations for their own hypocrisy and bigotry. Yes, children, lefties are hypocrites too. But do not dare call them out on it or you will get 20 or so people with nothing better to do than hold signs in front of your place of business like these dopes.

Notice the signs are all nicely printed, even the ones they’re holding upside down. Shades of ACORN or SEIU! Or maybe it was the MoveOn or Code Pink crowd. The fact is, what they are really protesting is free speech. And the fact that they are basically trying to paint the cartoonist and the paper that runs him as some kind of racist hate mongers shows how little regard they have for both reality and the First Amendment.

Oh, sure…these aren’t congress-people trying to abridge the Daily News’ free speech. This is a bunch of bogus protesters sent by some pressure group to try to intimidate a paper into not veering from the approved script. Which is why we should show these people the scorn and derision they so deserve — and the horse they rode in on — being whichever hack group funded their per diems.

They’re all hot and bothered that the strip mentions hate crimes. Their argument is no one is allowed to make fun of the term. Well, let me be one to do it, as I love barbecuing sacred cows. “Hate crimes” is a bogus term. The very idea that some murder and assault is worse than other kinds is in itself an absurdity and a racist, sexist argument. To say that one group or another is more sanctified than another is bigoted. It’s saying it’s not as bad to kill one group (white males) but if you kill that group (fill in the blank) it’s extra-extra bad and should really, really get super-extreme-punishment with extra-pain nuggets on top.

Does it really matter why someone would want to kill you? I mean, seriously, if someone wants to kill you because of your race, are you going to feel worse when you die, than if they wanted to kill you because of your tastes in movies or music or your hairstyle?

Does it really feel worse getting beat up by someone who thinks you’re lame for going to see Twilight 90 times instead of because you’re a Buddhist?

This is the rationale of lefties who think Hitler is worse than Stalin because he killed people for their religion when Stalin killed 10 times more people than Hitler. Yet Stalin gets a pass because they approve of his politics, even though Hitler was also a socialist. These same people who think Hitler was more evil also hate Jews for killing Palestinian terrorists even though they’re doing it to defend themselves. The Palestinians who kill Jews get a pass because, well, they’re killing Jews. The logic is as insane as it gets, but that’s leftism for you. Sanity isn’t its strong suit.

The cartoon protesters are a fraud. America’s political debate has become a cartoon of its own. And it’s not very funny.

Now, I’m no fan of hate. Hate in all forms is ugly, even when performed by beautiful people (that’s a shout out to Stephanie Von Pratt, who turned me down for my senior prom). But here’s what I don’t get: If I kill someone, I’m a killer. But hate crime law says that I also broke a new law, one that has to do with my thoughts when I committed said crime.

So it’s a thought crime more than a hate crime. Which begs the question: How can a thought be against the law?

Now I can barely read, so I don’t want to get too deep into this, but if I were to kill my co-host Bill Schulz, whether I hated him or not, that’s a crime. But, if we find out later that he was a sequential hermaphrodite, one might say it could be a hate crime.

I don’t get that at all.

What of terrorists? Does the fact that they hate us make their crimes worse? Not to them; punishment is meaningless. Which is the real truth about hate, anyway: Hate crime laws won’t stop hate or crime. It’s an after-the-fact gesture that does nothing to stop evil.

Even more, focusing on the killer’s outlook diminishes the victim. It’s no longer Bill Schulz is dead, but “Bill Schulz, the sequential hermaphrodite, is dead.”

Humanity should come before identity. We need to see people as people, not as part of groups. We know bigotry is bad. But murder in any form is so substantially worse, that it needs no footnote.

And if you disagree with me, then you’re probably racist.

Tonight we’ve got a humdinger of a show!

-Courtney Friel (in costume)

-S.E. Cupp (not sure)

-Ron Geraci

-Dr. Michael Baden (a special Halloween edition)

-my mom!