Hate Crimes? Thought Crimes? Crimethink?

The risk mentioned by the question in the post you replied to:

Is 'hate crime' a slippery slope to 'hate speech' to simply 'crimethink'?

No. You just did find out, 'cos I told you. There, it wasn't that bad, was it?

I know this may offend your unbounded sense of self importance, but someone should probably break it to you that your statements are not a substitute for the play-out of reality.

You can have a freedom of speech enshrined in your constitution and yet not have anything like the first amendment. Pure hate speech laws that do not involve incitement, fighting words or otherwise lead immediately to law breaking and violence would be unconstitutional in the US.First amendment jurisprudence is one reason why I do not think the risk of having hate speech laws passed and enforced is very high. Holocaust deniers and Nazi supporters in the US are ridiculed and but not arrested.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You're quite right.The assault offence is the 1861 Act, the racially/religiously aggravated assault offence is 1998. I'm now officially confused.The sentencing guidelines run both the 1861 act and the 1998 act into one. Statutory aggravating factors being disability and sex.Assault: Definitive guideline – SentencingIt's as though ordinary assault has been bumped up. But as I say, I'm now properly confused.

Then obviously not. Crime is an act that causes harm, not a thought that can't. If you punch someone because he's black, that's an act that causes harm. If you just think that you'd like to punch the guy, no one knows and no one is harmed.

Same here. But I think individual countries that have suffered genocidal tragedies can be forgiven for having enacted some very specific laws that are generally out of character.

Crime is whatever the law says crime is.

And until we can detect criminal thoughts, they cannot be crimes.Next!

Again, a crime is whatever the law says a crime is. If the law doesn't require that a crime be detectable, then it doesn't matter that we can't detect thoughts, they can still be crimes.

To have Orwellian Thought Police you have to be able to detect them.

They're an excellent substitute. You asked "Is 'hate crime' a slippery slope to 'hate speech' to simply 'crimethink'?" I said "no". Now let's look at the play-out of reality. We've had hate crime legislation for the last 47 years and haven't slid an inch down this supposed slippery slope. "The play-out of reality" also says "no". Reality should hire me as a spokesperson, and I should get some sort of official hat.

Are you high?What makes you think real detection of an act is required in order to criminalize it?Do you think all those Puritans had super witch-detecting powers?Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Well in that case, no.

This thread has, IMO, finally jumped the shark. (Not your fault Larni)But more importantly, how is your rating a Bo Derek, perfect 10 Larni? What's the algorithm at work here? I'm going to give you an upvote and see what happens.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.