Governments throughout the English-speaking sphere are creating and then ratcheting the torque on "hate-speech" laws with frightening eagerness.

I'm still an obsessive personality, and I still think I'm right, and I still believe my literary balls hang far lower than nearly anyone else's alive.

There were people whom I considered friends or loved ones who either abandoned me or betrayed me in ways I'd never have suspected. But there were others who had been barely acquaintances of mine whose loyalty and efforts on my behalf made me realize that not everyone was as inherently rotten as I'd previously believed. So it caused a violent split in my view of humanity - people turned out to be far worse and far better than I'd ever dreamed possible.

I've realized there are far more efficient and devastating methods of disturbing people than merely sloshing around in the pigpen with obvious, profane, scatological, flat-brained, grade-school offensiveness.

Mind you, I live in an area of Atlanta that is nearly 88% black. But in six days in and around Melbourne, I saw maybe three people of African origin and maybe one easily identifiable Australian aborigine.

I can't tell you how many times people - through the anonymity and safety of the Internet, of course - have told me 'You beat women' as if it was an ongoing, daily thing. The only person ever brave enough to say it to my face quickly surrendered his courage when I said, 'Would you like to step outside and see if I can beat men, too?'

You could paper the globe with evidence that there are demonstrable cognitive and physical disparities between what are crudely called human "races." But you could fit all the evidence of innate equality on your pinkie fingernail with room to spare.