You know, perhaps it is about time as humans that we confront and understand the difference between thought and dramatization. I know this is a tricky wicket, and a difficult issue but it is the hingepoint. If we will not face the fact that psycho "acting out" is not the same as an effort to communicate a viewpoint, we will be hard put to ever address the issue of hate crime, because we value free speech so dearly, and rightly so.

As anyone who has had to deal with a rabid dog knows, thought control becomes necessary when the owner of the thought cannot control it himself, at least if it is precipitating harm to others. The reason we put bullets into German soldiers during WW II was to control thought. For example, the thought that anyone who was Jewish was part of a destructive conspiracy or a subhuman species--a thought well worth controlling, in my opinion.

I am entirely opposed to fascism, and thought-control as it is generally interpreted (see LH's arm-waving screed upthread). But if all thoughts are equal, then survival is no more valuable than destruction, and progress and regression are just one big murky blob of apathetic indifference.

A