Repeat After Me: There IS No War On Christmas

There aren't any serious threats to Christians' abilities to celebrate Christmas. They exist only in Bill O'Reilly's mind. (And even in his own mind, he's completely making stuff up.) But that doesn't stop the Religious Right from getting all up in arms and trying to swing the pendulum completely back in the other direction. I've spoken to a few of my religious friends, and many of them are convinced that there's a war being fought with the PC police on one side, them on the other, and their right to celebrate their holiday hanging in the balance.

As a result, you see a number of people who you would normally consider intelligent writing in to whatever publications will run their letters, offering up arguments that essentially boil down to "Christians are the majority. Deal with it."

It makes me wonder where some of these people were educated. It was hard enough dealing with the notion of people failing to aspire to ideals that don't include freedom of speech (e.g. - the "dissent is un-American" debate still lingering today). It was even tougher dealing with the notion that many people really don't dig religious tolerance anymore (e.g. - post 9/11 Muslim-bashing). Now we see behavior that's indicative of people failing to understand that their own Bill of Rights protects them from the "tyranny of the majority" types of situations that are so well summed up by a "Christians are the majority, deal with it" attitude.

This all makes me think that we need to, at a minimum, send everybody back to history class for some lessons on the ideals to which our forefathers aspired.