I couldn't put my finger on what was giving me such an awful sense of deja-vu. Then I remembered a thread I started nearly two years ago

BS: Blasphemy law in Ireland
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=126211#2802095

in which I wrote:

Happy new year. When I drank my auld-lang-syne toast, I raised a silent glass to the founding fathers of the US Bill Of Rights. [#ironyalert]  

Tonight, on another website, a friend put up a YouTube link to something that was very funny, and HARMLESS, but could certainly be interpreted as sacrilegious. He's now taken it down. Whether or not he would have been prosecuted, that is intimidation. He censored himself, voluntarily, because he didn't feel safe otherwise. How Orwellian is that?

Never knowing whether you're on safe ground or not is intimidating - and there are no fear-police like the ones in your head.