From: tcmay@got.net

My point is this: For anyone who claims that "thoughtcrime" is something the Evil Empire specialized in, i.e., totalitarian communist regimes, look to the enforcement of laws about what can be viewed or accessed from the United States. Thougtcrime. .........................................................................

Those laws obviously (to me) don't have all that much to do with legality nor all that much with thought, either; but more with a government aiming to "looking good" in front of an audience of voters, presenting an image of being more moral, or "better-than-thou" - in front of other nations, etc.; that is, to gain favor, and therefore political support, from the Citizen Units by sounding like Mother Superior/fatherly figures who are going to look after All The Little Children (tm), plus all the similarly weak & dispossessed.

This posturing gives all the un-selfconfident people someone to look up to, even if they don't really get anything (their memories being too short to notice the failed promises, lack of follow-through, and blatant inconsistencies, not to mention the 'legal' crimes committed along the way).

Many people seek after sympathy towards their feelings (present and/or future pain) more than to be respected for the ability to think. I imagine this develops into a reduced sympathy towards certain kinds of thought or towards thinking per se, eventually, promoting a general atmosphere of tolerance for offenses like "thoughtcrimes".

And of course anyone who is free to think about anything & everything (who could therefore potentially think about what everybody else has forgotten) will seem dangerous to those who wish to appear to be in total, beneficent control.

.. Blanc