The Grinch Was a Liberal: How the Left Stole Christmas

Yes, it’s that time of year again…when socialists, atheists, and malcontents (AKA – members of the ACLU and all who support the positions it advocates) get together to conspire – not necessarily by the fire, mind you – to spoil everybody’s good time. Let’s see what they’ve accomplished so far this Christmas season (yes, I said “Christmas” – sue me!):

Federated Department Stores – you know, of Macy’s and Miracle on 34th Street fame – has informally, and, supposedly without a specified edict, instructed all of its stores to, if they desire, remove all direct references to the word, “Christmas.” Dayton Hudson Corporation --Target, to be more precise -- evicted all of the Salvation Army workers from in front of its stores. The city of Denver eliminated all references to Christmas -- as well as a float -- from its annual Parade of Lights. Schools and local government buildings in various parts of the country have banned nativity scenes, and any specific Christmas references at their holiday gatherings and concerts. Pa rum pum pum pum.

Understandably, there have been a great number of articles on this subject, as well as a multiplicity of protestations by well-known conservative commentators that this is all an attack on religion, Christianity, God, and all things red and white. To be sure, there is a component of this, but just a tangential one. In reality, this is politics at its nadir, and much more precipitated by the recent election results than anybody’s aversion to Christmas carols or nativity scenes. In fact, Maureen Dowd makes this crystal clear in a recent New York Times column:

So now, on top of all the stress related to having a president and vice president who scared us to death about terrorists to get re-elected, I have to be stressed about the fact that my holiday stress might cause me to turn into an old bat…

Would Ms. Dowd be this depressed and Scrooge-like if Mr. Kerry won the election? Certainly not. She’d be proclaiming this as the greatest Christmas of her lifetime, and that God really is a Democrat after all. Alas, Mr. Kerry lost, and the left is not of Christmas cheer. Bah, humbug. However, there is more to Ms. Dowd’s article and its timing than the typical sore loser grousing that must not be overlooked, for high-profile minions like this are always part of the overall strategy being employed by those they support, and ours is to divine what it is. Fortunately, some recent polls give us invaluable insights as to what might be the nexus.

First, Newsweek determined that 38% of Americans do not believe what is written in the Bible, and 24% (59% of non-Christians) don’t buy into the Christmas story. Additionally, 26% of those polled are against teaching creation theory in public schools as an evolution alternative. Beyond this, a recent CBS News/New York Times poll found that 31% of Americans (including 47% of Democrats and 33% of Independents) believe that religion is having too much of an impact on President Bush’s policy decisions. On top of this, 21% of those polled (30% of Democrats and 19% of Independents) are concerned that religion will have an even greater impact on the president’s views in his next term. Finally, 51% (65% of Democrats and 53% of Independents) stated that they are worried politicians in general are too close to religion and religious leaders.

When one adds these recent findings to what is clearly a coordinated attack on Christmas almost immediately after Senator Kerry conceded, one must conclude that the Democrats have identified a religion gap in the society that represents an opportunity for them in 2006 and, most important, 2008. Obviously, in the weeks following November 2, most political analysts asserted that the deciding factor in this election was the moral values component that nobody had foreseen. The question moving forward is clearly how will the Democrats address this chasm in ideologies in the future. Some have suggested that they need to do a better job of presenting the case to the American people that they are truly the morality party, and that this will win back enough voters in upcoming elections. However, the problem here is that if the de facto leaders of your party are a serial adulterer and his wife who doesn’t seem to mind his improprieties, it is going to be difficult to represent real moral values to those who truly do care about such things.

So, where does this leave them? Likely, courting the portion of Democrats and Independents who voted for Mr. Bush this year that are not necessarily religious -- but not totally antitheist -- and could be swayed from voting Republican in the future if they are somehow estranged from conservative ideologies. Frankly, this is a target-rich environment, as almost twice as many Democrats voted for Mr. Bush than Republicans voted for Mr. Kerry. Furthermore, Bush and Kerry received roughly the same percentage of votes from Independents.

As such, for the Democrats to be successful in 2008, they will need to shift these numbers around a bit, especially in a couple of key battleground states like Ohio and Florida. To accomplish this, it appears that one of the initial strategies is to divide the religious component in the society from those who are less so. How? By making it clear to the marginally moral that the piety of others -- specifically, the Republicans -- is infringing on their rights. In this season’s instance, the more the left can weed out the religious component from the holiday itself, the better off it’ll be. In a broader context, the more people who can be made to feel uncomfortable by any public reference to God or religion, the less significant this moral values issue will be to them in future elections.

Phase two of this strategy appears to be an attempt to expand or redefine what moral values are. A recent San Francisco Chronicle cover story explains this for us:

Kim Bobo has spent the last 30 years trying to get people of faith to see the connection between their Bibles and the federal budget, to see "moral value" in tax policies that would bridge the widening gulf between rich and poor.

"Those of us who work with the religious community have not adequately made the connection between economic disparity and moral values," [said Bobo, executive director of the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice].

At first glance, one mustn’t miss the significance of a major American newspaper placing such a story on its Sunday cover page just two weeks before Christmas -- especially in the midst of the aforementioned holiday attacks. Recognizing this, the strategy by the left should be emerging: dilute and distort. The dilution is in doing everything possible to remove God and all religious references from the public purview, even during high-profile national holidays that inherently celebrate religious beliefs -- in effect, watering down such beliefs. The distortion is to expand the meaning of moral values beyond that which currently exists.

In Ms. Bobo’s case, to suggest that fairer tax policy -- meaning a redistribution of wealth from those who have to those who don’t -- is an issue of morality and not finances is an attempt to distort the nation’s concept of moral values. With this tactic -- especially if the messengers are going to be religious leaders -- the left is trying to include traditionally socialistic ideologies such as wealth redistribution to solve poverty into the moral values component. In doing so, they believe that a larger percentage of swing voters will see Democrats as walking on a higher moral ground during the next two election cycles than did so in the previous one.

In the end, this is all much less a fear of God or religion than a fear of losing. And that’s why:

About the Writer: Noel Sheppard is a business owner, economist, and writer residing in Northern California. Noel receives e-mail at slep@danvillebc.com

Phase two of this strategy appears to be an attempt to expand or redefine what moral values are...

This sounds like the "liberation theology" that the old Soviet Union womped up when they realized that the hold Catholicism had on the Central American "masses" could not be shaken by the preachings of the Sandinistas and the Sendaro Luminoso. So they came up with a "new" Christ, a bloodthirsty Christ, who preached a philosophy that sounded like a precursor to "the great proletarian revolution."

I've been expecting certain elements of the left to try this sort of approach in post-2004 America. I very much doubt it will work. It'll go over about as well as Gay Marriage ballot initiatives, Michael Moore, and George Soros went over.

(steely)

Here's an editorial in my local newspaper today:

Founders Didn't Intend to Deprive Us of a Merry Christmas

By Mike Myer

There's a reason we often refer to the upcoming celebration as "Xmas." It is because Christmas has become an X-rated event in our society - an obscenity, some hint.

Some of our children are told they cannot hold Christmas pageants in school. Employees of some businesses are told not to wish customers a "Merry Christmas." Say "happy holidays" if you must say anything, they are instructed. Our public officials are told that any link between them and the trappings of Christmas is not permitted. They've been ordered to take down Nativity scenes.

How long will it be before a mayor is sued because he wore a "Merry Christmas" label pin? How long will it be before the city of Wheeling is told that it is illegal to allow use of city streets for a Christmas parade? How long will it be before someone suggests that the Marines shouldn't be engaged in a "Toys for Tots" program because of the link to - shudder - Christmas? At what point will the logical next step, eliminating Christmas as a holiday for government workers, be taken?

When, in other words, will it become official policy that Christmas is just another day? How long will it be before someone insists that the Federal Communications Commission needs to view broadcasts related in any way to Christmas as the same type of offense as that Janet Jackson committed during the last Super Bowl? The airwaves are, after all, public property.

Go ahead. Snicker at the right-wing religious fanatic newspaper columnist in the role of little boy crying wolf. Then ask one of your children's public school teachers if she hasn't wondered whether she will retire before the year comes when her principal informs her that she needs to take down that miniature Christmas tree in her classroom.

It is all being done in the name of "religious freedom." Those engaged in a lawsuit campaign against Christmas claim that they are safeguarding the rest of us against a state-sponsored religion.

Bah, humbug. What they are doing is imposing a state-sponsored religion - no faith at all - on us. Officially, we are being required to be ashamed of our faith.

That is precisely what our nation's founders were attempting to prevent when they wrote guarantees of religious freedom into the Bill of Rights. Here is what they required, in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..." The so-called "establishment clause" has been used freely in attempts to stamp out Christmas. The "free exercise" clause, on the other hand, has been virtually ignored.

"Free exercise" does not allow us to impose our religion on others. Should we tell government workers who happen to be Jewish that they are not permitted to be absent from work on important religious holidays? No. Should we force Muslim children to take part in school Christmas pageants? Of course not.

But "free exercise" does mean that our own faith - even if it happens to be Christian - is not to be discriminated against. And that is exactly what is happening these days.

It is not the fault of Christians that they are, by far, the majority of Americans. Yet there are those in our society who would penalize us for that. There are those who insist that allowing us the free expression to celebrate Christmas in our own way is wrong.

They want us to feel as if "Merry Christmas" includes a four-letter word.

That should scare the dickens out of Americans of all religious faiths.

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