Happy Holidays

I came in at 8am and a Muslim woman at the desk, whom I admire, get along with well, and whom I am quite fond of, greeted me with the salutation, "Happy Holidays". I responded "Happy Holidays".

A few minutes later I was talking to some young workers in the back office, one of whom is a nice, naive, quite uneducated, uninformed Bangladeshi girl. I told them about my greeting exchange with the Somali woman. The Bangladeshi girl asked me why the Somali woman uses the phrase, Happy Holidays, instead of Merry Christmas.

I explained that Merry Christmas is offensive to educated, committed Muslims that do not want to reminded, by the Christian majority, of their religious preferences and predominating cultural influences.

They feel that Christians should suppress the expression of their values and cultural customs so as not to infringe upon Muslims in their midst.

Just then I saw the Somali woman standing behind my chair, and listening to the whole exchange. She just smiled, turned around and left.

We cannot become highly civilized, coexist peacefully and grow into a society of super-acheivers unless we have maximum tolerance, practice significant zones of privacy and moderate acceptance of the presence of differing others around us.

That requires that guarding one's speech and mores practiced in public and private for fear that one's politically incorrect speech and one's politically incorrect writings or actions will offend Muslims or other minorities--or the majority for the fact--is something that must disappear.

We need to be fearless intellectually, allowing others maximum lawful liberty to express themselves as they will.

There is nothing wrong with being respectful and diplomatic. These are are social virtues. There is a moral obligation to reject, block and disavow racists and haters of every description.

That said, we must insist that each American work to individuate, live as an individuating anarchist and supercitizen, practicing radically free speech and radically free actions, with minimum government or societal interference and quenching.

Only a people of advanced individualists, pursuing their private lives--replete with public policy applications--of maximum legal liberty enjoyed and executed as they chase after life, liberty, amassing property and the pursuit of personal happiness, will take us to Utopia, or get as close as any group of humans can.

It would not hurt American Muslims to say Merry Christmas to each and every Christian and non-Christian American like me at Christmas time. It would serve as an important and significant advancement in their ethical and cultural reformation as they learn to adopt and assimilate to the American Way, now that they are Americans too.

American Muslims must moderate, modernize, pacify, tolerate, individualize and promote personal liberty and personal intellectual search for truth. If they succeed at this, they will still follow Allah with honor and faithfulness, but they will demonstrate to Muslims all over the world, the way that they must go in order to promote world peace, and to help guarantee the survival of humanity.

Next year, I hope that Somali woman greets me with a heart, well-meant greeting of "Merry Christmas", but I will not bet the rent on it.