Yes, it's the atheists, as though they were a group: it's the atheists, the non-believers who are getting in the way of her cheerful enjoyment of Christmas and the atheists who should be treated like "Internet trolls." That, I presume, means to ignore them. Of course, in Fox speak, that means to continue their mythical battle between retail Christianity and the nefarious forces of religious freedom.
Gretchen Carlson, who apparently has a good shot at surpassing Malkin for sheer vituperative viciousness disagrees, saying that religious freedom will be the death of Christianity.
"If you don't stand up and fight for it, it might just disappear! I'm talking about Christianity!"No, you're not, you're talking about forced unanimity and mandatory expressions of official faith. Christianity thrived actual persecution for enough time to make me doubt that it's future is in jeopardy, at least from other religions, and it has thrived through persecutions of it's own, but it's having a tougher time in some places that leave everyone alone to celebrate if and when and how they like and restrain them from forcing their practices and rituals on others.
Back before Christianity was coopted by those who play to the stupid and ignorant and hateful; back before Fox News and the Aryan Nation, it was an inclusive holiday. As a non-Christian and an atheist and someone who knows all too much about Christian history, about early Christian, Greco-Persian, Roman and Norse practices that form the basis of Christmas: as someone who knows how the holiday (and yes, it's a goddamn holiday) owes more to Coca-Cola, Hallmark and Charles Dickens than to some Jewish baby born to a teenage mother in April of an indeterminate year about 2000 years ago, I've always celebrated it anyway. After all Christmas as we know it is an American holiday and one that used to bring about a spirit of tolerance, brotherhood and generosity to a unique degree. It was a holiday that brought out the liberal in most of us.
Now that it's become a bloody piece of meat in the claws of harpies like Malkin and Carlson, now that we've become as stupid and superstitious and as ready to rend our neighbors as any of our subhuman cousins at the behest of Fox and its stable of demons, I'm no longer interested. Its just another hot poker in the dungeons of the Fox inquisition.
Of course if their were any real Christians in this country they might propose at least to ignore this attempt to make it a holiday of hate, but perhaps that, like liberty and the pursuit of happiness just another lost hope of the secular humanists who first dreamed of it.
8 comments:
Damn well said, Captain. This is an excellent piece of work. I wish I could express myself as clearly and coherently.
But hey - I admire your writing very much and a compliment from you is a big deal - thanks.
Merry Christmas, BTW.
They keep referring to "atheists" because they are too P.C. to say Jews. The Jewish mother who nearly got Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer booted from a kid's "holiday" concert. The Jewish father who counted the number of times Christmas was mentioned and demanded an equivalent number of Hanukkah references.
Believe it or not, even Fox has its P.C. limitations.
All of our Xmas trappings have far more to do with the old Yule celebrations that Christianity... No matter, the talking heads at Fox will drum up the faithful: they'll spend more time condemning others than helping the poor, calling attention to societal inequality or anything else that has to do with actual "christian" virtue.
And of course one can always find two or three or ten Jews you can use to be an example for the millions. It's the logic of bigotry, which is pretty much what I've been talking about.
Of course if I were to take a dozen Arabs and claim that all twelve hundred million of them were death-crazed murderers, that would be different, right? It would be terrible if I mentioned the Muslims in the town I used to live in who were constantly trying to pressure the school board into teaching or ignoring history and science so as to vilify Jews and glorify themselves. Shall we call them "typical" or shall we be honest for once.
I don't give a flying damn about who celebrates Christmas or how, but of Course I and my family have always celebrated it and I've never met one single Jew who gave much of a damn either, or who tried to get you to celebrate Simchat Torah, or Shevuot, or Purim but you've got your example so you can feel justified in such outrageous calumny.
RR
I don't think I've ever met a Christian, but then anyone who sold all they had and gave it to the poor wouldn't live in my neighborhood.
Of course you personally don't give a damn about Christmas, just like most other non-Christians.
Unfortunately, there are self-appointed "leaders" who purport to speak on behalf of large groups and manufacture issues to advance their anti-Christian agendas.
http://www.adl.org/issue_education/december_dilemma_2004/displays.asp?m_flipmode=5
Being perhaps the largest religion on the planet, I doubt they have anything to worry about. Inventing anti-Christian agendas is something they have been doing for millennia however and both Muslims and Jews have suffered from it.
It happens that I agree with the ADL on this. It's silly to make a fuss about acknowledging religious holidays in public schools, but there is a difference when they are used to sell a religion to the students. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is exactly what is deliberately being done in many cases.
Before people began to put their feet down in the 60's, kids like me had to learn to sing about "Lord Jesus" and "Christ the Lord" in school. PC is just a rhetorical tool to dismiss what's right. What's right is standing up for religious freedom and that means no proselyting with public funds.
Sure civilization has its discontents, but no religion is free from that and I'm getting tired of hearing how intolerant Jews are. The facts don't bear it out.
If God can't handle tolerance and respect, then screw him. I'll invent one that can.
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