Every time you turn around today you are almost sure to offend someone. In our land of victimhood it has become difficult to avoid saying or doing something which will cause someone else to feel bad or put upon or irritated.

The events of September 11, 2001 have created a whole new group of people to be offended. It is nearly impossible to criticize the terrorists, (all Muslims), without evoking an outcry from secular and religious organizations ready and waiting to impart their own brand of political correctness. The question is; how are the terrorists supposed to be identified? They are of different nationalities so that won't work. They come from different cultures, so, ditto. Their family histories vary widely. In fact, the only common threads are religion and a hatred of America and Americans.

Well funded organizations have sprung up, like mushrooms around a cow flop, that have no function other than to pander to the offended. It has become a cottage industry for the disaffected. Search the newspapers, electronic news media and the Internet for a person, preferably famous or at least wealthy who has made a statement that can be construed as anti-anything and find some person or group who doesn't like it and WHAM!, instant lawsuit.

It wasn't always that way, of course. In the past, if somebody said something about you that you didn't like you would reply in kind, punch the rascal in the nose or swallow hard and take it. That was before the recent proliferation of parasites, (Oops! beg pardon; lawyers) that now infest the land.

Attorneys aren't solely to blame,of course, they're just the primary financial beneficiaries. There are also a couple of generations of government school graduates who have no clue about what the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution means or how it should be applied.

The point is; you don't have a right not to be offended. You can shun the offender, rebut him, make fun of him or even risk prosecution by responding physically, but you shouldn't be allowed to use the police powers of the state to keep him from being offensive.

The current rush to enact "hate crime" legislation is a dangerous first step onto the slippery slope of criminalizing thought. Just as the NAZI Gestapo or the Soviet KGB or the Red Guards of Communist China or the Taliban kept their populations under the dictatorial thumb, there are Americans who think it right and proper for the government to control the thinking of its citizens.

Among the worst of the