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The sweat started out on
Winston's backbone. A horrible pang of terror went through him. It
was gone almost at once, but it left a sort of nagging uneasiness
behind. Why was she watching him? Why did she keep following him
about? Unfortunately he could not remember whether she had already
been at the table when he arrived, or had come there afterwards. But
yesterday, at any rate, during the Two Minutes Hate, she had sat
immediately behind him when there was no apparent need to do so.
Quite likely her real object had been to listen to him and make sure
whether he was shouting loudly enough.
His earlier thought returned to him: probably she was not actually a
member of the Thought Police, but then it was precisely the amateur
spy who was the greatest danger of all. He did not know how long she
had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes,
and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under
control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when
you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The
smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious
look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that
carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something
to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face
(to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was
itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in
Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.
- George Orwell's 1984 |
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Big
Brother New Jersey - the New Jersey legislature - recently passed A-4591,
a bill penalizing “bias intimidation”, or what George Orwell would
have termed “thoughtcrime”. Under the bill, a person who displays a
bias against a member of certain protected classes - such as
homosexuals or transgenders – and causes feelings of “intimidation”
might be guilty of a thoughtcrime under A-4591. If prosecuted and
found guilty of a thoughtcrime, the convicted party would be subject
to fines, reeducation (sensitivity training), and counseling to
“reduce the tendency toward violent and antisocial behavior” and
facilitate the development of more acceptable social attitudes.
Additional penalties might include “payments or other
compensation to a community-based program or local agency that
provides services to victims of [thoughtcrime]” and payments to the
victims themselves for “emotional distress”.
1 To help effectively
root out thoughtcrime, the bill provides for the training and
development of the Thought Police:
The Police Training Commission shall
require all new police officers to complete two hours of training,
which may include interactive training, in identifying, responding
to, and reporting [thoughtcrime].
2
The training is to
be developed in consultation with the Ministry of Truth (the New
Jersey Human Relations Council) and will include:
a. features that identify or could
identify a [thoughtcrime];
b. laws dealing with [thoughtcrime];
c. law enforcement procedures,
reporting, and documentation of [thoughtcrime]; and
d. techniques and methods to handle
incidents of [thoughtcrime], including training on how to deal
sensitively with victims and referring victims of [thoughtcrime], to
organizations that provide assistance and compensation to victims.
3
Thoughtcrime is apparently a very
serious crime, therefore existing law was amended to include it among
crimes potentially deserving of “payment of compensation” – a list
that includes aggravated assault, threats to do bodily harm, lewd,
indecent, or obscene acts, kidnapping, murder, and manslaughter. And
there is no room for error when it comes to thoughtcrime; legislators
added verbiage to the law that will make it impossible for defendants
to duck the accusations against them by claiming they were "mistaken as to the race, color, religion, gender,
disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression,
national origin, or ethnicity of the victim.”
4 A-4591 passed 65 to 10
with five abstentions and now will go to the Governor’s desk for signing.
Hopefully A-4591 sounds as
crazy and dangerous as it is, because it truly is out of the pages of
Orwell's 1984. Unfortunately, such legislation - otherwise
known as "hate crimes" legislation - is a pillar of radical liberalism
and activists have managed to pass it in varying degrees and forms in
Congress and in statehouses all across the nation. To be perfectly
blunt, hate crimes legislation is a feature of tyrannical
societies, not free ones. It subjects not just actions to
the authority of the law, but thoughts, feelings, and speech. Glen Lavy of Alliance Defense Fund explains:
"The emotion of hate is an unfortunate
reality of the human experience. But it is not a crime unless
accompanied by a criminal action – and even then it is the action
that is within the police power of the government, not the emotion."
he said. "The reality is that 'hate' crime laws are designed to
punish people for what they think, feel, or believe . . . There is
legitimate concern that once Congress makes any 'hate' crime a
federal offense, the categories of crime will expand to include
speech that causes someone to 'feel' intimidated.” 5
Several previously free nations around
the world are already penalizing thoughtcrime.
A Catholic city councilor in Canada was fined $1,000 for merely stating
in public that a gay couple's lifestyle was 'not normal and not
natural’”.
6 Swedish pastor Ake Green was sentenced to a month in
prison in 2004 for violating Sweden’s hate-speech laws. The court
determined he was “guilty of having offended homosexuals in a
sermon.”
7 (emphasis
added). Wow, did you catch that? His crime was simply
offending a homosexual! This is happening here in
America, too. Legislators in Pennsylvania passed legislation that
added "sexual orientation" to the state's hate crimes laws and
expanded “the definition of ‘harassment’ to include ‘harassment by
communication’ – which means one could be convicted based upon spoken
words alone” (emphasis added).
8 No
matter what proponents of these laws might say, they are intended to
penalize certain belief systems and speech - namely traditional,
conservative belief systems and speech. Outspoken conservatives ought
to take note, because the same people that came up with political
correctness are pushing hate crimes legislation. Anything deemed
politically incorrect will likely be dangerous territory in New Jersey
if A-4591 is signed into law.
What is truly amazing is that many
liberals who support laws like A-4591 also would likely insist they
believe in and support free speech. After all, isn't it liberals that
are always citing the First Amendment in support of pornography and
flag burning? How could it not be considered
anything less than a full frontal assault on free speech to
penalize people for what they say and believe? Hate crime legislation
is inconsistent with American values, period. Our Founders would never
have tolerated such nonsense. Hate crime legislation is also woefully
impractical. The application of A-4591 hinges on the word
"intimidation" - an awfully subjective term that could mean different
things to different people, including judges. Intimidation to one
person might be just a mere annoyance or nothing at all to another
person. How is it to be proven that a plaintiff was truly
"intimidated" other than just taking his word for it? If it is
difficult for a judge to figure out what is impermissible under the
law, how is the legal system supposed to apply the law fairly to
everybody? The truth is that this law is simply unjust and is going to
be a mess for New Jersey’s court system as it becomes bogged down with
innumerable, frivolous complaints of “intimidation”. There couldn’t be
any other result. The threshold for legal action is so low, the burden
of proof so vague and subjective, and the potential monetary rewards
so easy to obtain that it could only encourage massive amounts of
litigation.
Henry Ford is reputed with
once telling his customers they could have any color Model-T they
wanted - just as long as it was black. In the shining beacon of "tolerance"
and "freedom" called New
Jersey, you can believe and say anything you want, just make sure it’s
something liberals like. |
