Before the law

A characteristic of totalitarian states is their fluid law that can be interpreted in an arbitrary subjective way by the state hanging like a Damocles sword over its citizens who never know from one day to the next whether they are breaking the law or not and the design of this is to create a permanent state of chronic uncertainty and fear to cower the population into silence passivity and compliance.

Non objectivity in law is the sine qua non of all dictatorships.This is the essence of the government's newly announced hate crimes crackdown and its consequence will be to have a chilling effect on free speech as its net will be cast far and wide to encompass the expression of any views that fall outside the narrow state dictated political liberal consensus.

The incoherence and vagueness of the language the government is deploying is a deliberate  attempt to conceal its true objectives and it requires inexact terms and wooly  ambivalences to cloak its intent. We are now told the new legislation will be employed to combat indoctrination.This is Orwellain territory indeed.Why not just call it the Thought Crime bill and have done with it?