Crimes, that get you hauled into court, ought to be things you did, not thoughts you had. To be a free country, like we claim to be, one should be free to think anything they like. Only actions can be criminalized.
And not too many actions either. I believe Moses got the number just about right, and Moses lived and died thousands of years ago.
Take that newsie's Watergate Wail, "What did he know and when did he know it?" That's a cry to pursue a thought crime. "Knowing" is pure thought. It's perfectly legal to know damn near anything. Why do the newsies go about siccing cops and courts on people just for knowing something? A far better question is "What did he do, and when did he do it?"
A lot of places have passed new laws penalizing "hate crimes". These are things already crimes, they just added some extra jail time if the crime is motivated by prejudice against minorities. I don't hold with that. The law should punish actions, crimes, the same way no matter what the perp was thinking, before during, or after committing the crime. Murder is murder, doesn't matter why the accused committed murder.
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