Thanks Pottel for re-opening. I really understand your concern, discussions about politics and religion can ruin friendships.
That's not the intention, so I hope people read the posts of Irisrose and me and try to react with in mind the view of people who grew up in a different country.
To make a comparison:
When you are grown up on a place on earth with hardly any food an water, you are happy to improve the quality of life by having a job and earn money. You are happy that you can buy food every day for yourself and your family and you feel rich.
We grew up in countries where it's all luxury, we have food, drinks, computers, concerts, buy stuff like TV's, laptops, iPhones, iPads, dishwashers etc. When we have to go back (say 5%) because of crisis everyone starts whining and grumbling because we have it so bad. We can't buy it all anymore, "only" one holiday a year or not a big flatscreen only a small one. Not able to buy a new laptop after 3 years but have to wait another 3 years. We feel poor.
Same goes with freedom of speech: when it was worse, you feel happy to have more freedom.
A lot of us only know that freedom of speech is a first right and we start to overreact sometimes:
You are allowed to say everything ..... but there's no NEED to say everything you might think of sometimes.
So try to think before you speak, others may be insulted or hurt. We have to live in a multicultural environment which is called world, everyone is living and thinking from a different perspective.
The french have a very good saying:
C