Afterlife

A man of none-too-exemplary character passed on, and was met cordially on the other side by a creature with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork. He was surprised by the gentility of his host, and happily allowed himself to be shown around.

"Just as with my counterpart above," the creature told him, "there are many rooms in my home. And, as in His house, you will be allowed to choose for yourself which one of those rooms will be yours for the rest of eternity. The only difference is, here, you have to make your choice without first seeing what's behind the door."

The man nodded and indicated he was ready to consider his future more thoroughly. As they approached each door, though, the screams and lamentations behind it seemed to be more pained and horrified than from the door before. After hearing hundreds of options of this sort, though, they finally came to a place where, beyond the closed portal, only a calm murmur could be heard. The man sighed with relief, and announced that this was the room for him.

"Done!" cried the creature as he opened the door. In the room was nothing but a pit filled with stinking manure, and every person was in the manure up to the edge of his lower lip, whispering, "Don't make waves... don't make waves... don't make waves...."

So, now we have press and politicians who seem to think that this is our current position, especially as it applies to Islamists. If we speak out against the building of a mosque in an inappropriate location, if a jackass preacher in a piss-ant church threatens to burn Qurans, if a cartoonist proposes everybody draw anything and call it Mohammad, that person is making waves, and everybody else is going to get... well, you can see where that will go.

We may be in deep organic waste matter, but it isn't that deep, yet. We still have a Constitutional right not merely to have, but to express our opinions. We still have freedom, at least in the West, to choose our own path of Faith (or not, as the case may be), and to express both privately and publicly that belief. As long as we continue to stand for our principles, we will keep that manure pit from filling. But, every time government and press insist that we self-censor out of fear that somebody might be hurt, and we comply, they empty another septic tank into the pit.