The War on "the war on Christmas" (new post)

[The Witch]

New at The Last Midnight:

There is a connection between the progressive agenda and religion. But it doesn't work quite the way O'Reilly is insinuating.

Good policy has a number of reasons -- secular and/or religious morality as well as good financial sense as well as proven results as well as improved perception of government, etc. etc. etc. But these things are one-legged policies, and if you knock out the stool of religion from beneath them they go crashing to the floor. So the Far Wrong needs religion. They're using religion. And they're using you by making you think religion's under assault. The truth is, were their policies really sound, they'd make sense even without religion as a prop.

Read more.

[Dhalgren]

1. I had a woman tell me the other day that she was really irked

at all of this anti-Christmas stuff going on. That "they" shouldn't be trying to oppress the Christian majority; if someone doesn't like Christmas, they should just ignore it. But "they can't simply force everyone to be politically correct and...blah, blah, blah...

I asked what she thought about Bush sending out Christmas cards that only said "Happy Holidays", should he have put "Merry Christmas" on them, was he wrong to do that? She said, no he wasn't wrong; he could put anything on his cards that he wanted to - they were his cards. Then I asked her who made Wal-Mart put up "Happy Holidays" signs and not "Merry Christmas" signs? She said she supposed Wal-Mart did it on their own. Right, I said, no one is making anyone stop using "Merry Christmas" - those who have stopped using the phrase have done so for their own reasons; not because some big somebody made them do it. If Wal-Mart thought that there was more money in saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays" they would do it. No one is forcing anyone to say or do anything regarding Christmas. This is a false conflict drummed up to deflect some of the attention off of Dub's dismal failures and the Republican/Fascist Party's legal woes - that's all. I could tell that she had not considered this before, but she was still angry so she just shut up. This woman is not stupid and not a Republican; it is scary how these false fault-lines get insinuated into the culture without anyone really thinking about them...

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. I have never seen a church

surrounded by armed men, tanks, etc.

These folks need to get real.