Freedom of thought
From Free net encyclopedia
Freedom of thought (also called freedom of conscience) is the freedom of an individual to hold a viewpoint, or thought, regardless of anyone else's view. The suppression of freedom of thought is a prominent characteristic of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, while freedom of thought is one of the fundamental principles of most democracies. Freedom of thought can be limited in several ways — through censorship, arrests, book burning, or, more subtly, through propaganda. Examples of effective campaigns against freedom of thought are the Soviet suppression of genetics research known as Lysenkoism, the book burning campaigns of Nazi Germany, and the radical anti-intellectualism enforced in Cambodia under Pol Pot.
Freedom of thought can also be stifled without institutional interference when the views of the majority become so widely accepted that other ways of thinking are repressed. For this reason, some condemn political correctness as a form of limiting freedom of thought. For instance, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that thought is inherently embedded in language, would support the claim that an effort to limit the use of words of language is a form of restricting freedom of thought.
A possible counter-point is that such efforts have increased the number of terms available for use in describing social groups and events, contributing to freedom of thought rather than stifling it.