Zonie63
Posts: 2826
Joined: 4/25/2011 From: The Old Pueblo Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr Some time ago, I was chided by a poster for suggesting that a thread was headed for a treatise on "Thought Control". It turned out that I was correct. That poster apologized to me later in thread. I found an article in my yahoo feed, today that echoes what I have been saying about "Thought Crimes" for some time; particularly: quote:
What comes to mind when I think of the genesis for this growing trend of government to control Americans’ speech, and by extension, thoughts, is when the notion of hate crime was brought into our criminal prosecution system — as if acts of violence that are committed because of racial divides deserve a different category of ‘extra-special bad I can't say how much actual "thought control" there is in this country. Sometimes, I think it might come in form of politicians and media pundits deciding what is worthwhile to discuss in public, without caring too much about where a person actually stands on it. As for the notion of hate crimes, while there may be something flawed about the concept, I honestly don't believe that it's any attempt at "thought control." More often than not, I see hate crime legislation introduced in order to make a politically expedient response to something horrifying that may have just happened. Like if there's some heinous murder or other violent attack motivated by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, etc., that will make the national news, and that's usually when the politicians and pundits start talking about the need for stronger hate crime legislation. It seems that it's more motivated by the desire to reassure an outraged and frightened public that they're "on the job." If it was designed for the purpose of thought control, then it doesn't seem to be working anyway. As for the comparisons to Orwell, one thing I remember from 1984 is that there was this belief that "thought crime" was some kind of insidious disease that even the thought criminal may not be aware of. It was considered a form of mental illness that had to be cured at the Ministry of Love.
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