17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's. ~ Exodus 20:17
It is a sin to covet. The hierarchy of things one should not covet is set; his house is greater than his wife, and all of them are his possessions. This is why it is very difficult to take religious rules seriously, to rely on them to make laws for the regulation of humans. The godly - and the godmen - among us will insist that what their god has laid down for them to observe, we must legislate into being. So thinking of taking my neighbour's house, wife, manservant, maidservant, ox, ass or anything of his would be a crime.
This is a thought crime. Similar to the one that Charles Njonjo wrote: It is a criminal offence for any person to encompass, imagine, devise, or intend the death or deposition of the President. How would Mr Njonjo - or my pastor - know what is in my mind, unless I express it. Which leads us to the second pernicious aspect of thought crimes - they are corollaries of speech crimes, once called sedition. (A certain Lt Wadi has just been sprung for gaol, jailed for saying something that displeased our modern day Nero.)
Patrick Gathara was on the receiving of an acerbic keyboard recently. Peter Mwaura, writing in the Daily Nation, gives six reasons why journalists should not name innocent third parties in news stories. He meant, I believe, that the cartoonist Patrick Gathara should not have named the President, Uhuru Kenyatta, in a cartoon of Moses Kuria, the Gatundu South MP, because "dragging the name of an innocent friend or acquaintance in an act or charge of crime is, in journalistic practice, unacceptable."
One of the ways of policing thought/speech crimes is through censorship, and what Mr Mwaura is suggesting is the most insidious type of censorship - self-censorship. Self-censorship requires someone - a cartoonist, say - to not only know what some other party is thinking, but also to know what will injure them and then to draw a cartoon that will not injure them. It is ridiculous line to walk because a sedition rule always works against the party being accused. In Kenya it used to be that to e accused is to be guilty. Therefore, it did not matter to Mr Mwaura what Mr Kuria is recorded to have said, including name-dropping the President with aplomb, Mr Gathara should have known that the President is innocent and, therefore, he should have drawn the cartoon without alluding to the President.
However, the endgame of a thought/speech crime environment is being told what to think. Now that we have established that we can have wrong thoughts, that those wrong thoughts, once verbalised are seditious and punishable, the next step is to tell us what to think - and how to think it. That is thought-control. And that is what the gods demand.
"But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." ~ Matthew 5:28.
Thought control, the ultimate goal of the gods, is visited upon us mere mortals when we dare to think independently. It is why those with a tendency for the Stalinist prefer the automaton-like obedience of the ones "who follow orders" and thus are always creating quasi-military "youth" organisations that emphasise "discipline" as a means to "empower" the youth. Young people who are drilled to respond without question have little to offer in the field of innovation, especially innovation about how far the envelope can be pushed in the name of liberty. If you cannot think freely, then you cannot be free.
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