December 27, 2011

Whose Country Is It, Anyway?

Half a century ago, American children were schooled in Aesop’s fables. Among the more famous of these were “The Fox and the Grapes” and “The Tortoise and the Hare.”

Particularly appropriate this Christmas season, and every Christmas lately, is Aesop’s fable of “The Dog in the Manger.”

The tale is about a dog who decides to take a nap in the manger. When the ox, who has worked all day, comes back to eat some straw, the dog barks loudly, threatens to bite him and drives him from his manger.

The lesson the fable teaches is that it is malicious and wicked to deny a fellow creature what you yourself do not want and cannot even enjoy.

What brings the fable to mind is this year’s crop of Christmas-haters, whose numbers have grown since the days when it was only the village atheist or the ACLU pest who sought to kill Christmas.

The problem with these folks is not simply that they detest Christmas and what it represents, but that they must do their best, or worst, to ensure Christians do not enjoy the season and holy day they love.

As a Washington Times editorial relates, the number of anti-Christian bigots is growing, and their malevolence is out of the closet:

In Leesburg, Va., a Santa-suit-clad skeleton was nailed to a cross. … In Santa Monica, atheists were granted 18 of 21 plots in a public park allotted for holiday displays and … erected signs mocking religion. In the Wisconsin statehouse, a sign informs visitors, ‘Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.’ A video that has gone viral on YouTube shows denizens of Occupy D.C. spewing gratuitous hatred of a couple who dared to appropriate a small patch of McPherson Square to set up a living Nativity scene.

People who indulge in such conduct invariably claim to be champions of the First Amendment, exercising their right of free speech to maintain a separation of church and state.

They are partly right. The First Amendment does protect what they are doing. But what they are doing is engaging in hate speech and anti-Christian bigotry. For what is the purpose of what they are about, if not to wound, offend, insult and mock fellow Americans celebrating the happiest day of their calendar year?

Consider what this day means to a believing Christian.

It is a time and a day set aside to celebrate the nativity, the birth of Christ, whom Christians believe to be the Son of God and their Savior who gave his life on the cross to redeem mankind and open the gates of heaven.

Even if a man disbelieves this, why would he interfere with or deny his fellow countrymen, three in four of whom still profess to be Christians, their right to celebrate in public this joyous occasion?

This mockery and hatred of Christmas testifies not only to the character of those who engage in it, it says something as well about who is winning the culture war for the soul of America.

Not long ago, the Supreme Court (1892) and three U.S. presidents — Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter — all declared America to be a “Christian nation.”

They did not mean that any particular denomination had been declared America’s national religion — indeed, that was ruled out in the Constitution — but that we were predominantly a Christian people.

And so we were born.

Around 1790, America was 99 percent Protestant, 1 percent Catholic, with a few thousands Jews. The Irish immigration from 1845 to 1850 brought hundreds of thousands more Catholics to America. The Great Wave of immigration from 1890 to 1920 brought millions of Southern and Eastern Europeans, mostly Catholic and Jews. As late as 1990, 85 percent of all Americans described themselves as Christians.

And here one must pose a question.

How did America’s Christians allow themselves to be dispossessed of a country their fathers had built for them?

How did America come to be a nation where not only have all Christian prayers, pageants, holidays and holy days been purged from all government schools and public institutions, but secularism has taken over those schools, while Christians are mocked at Christmas in ways that would be declared hate crimes were it done to other religious faiths or ethnic minorities?

Was it a manifestation of tolerance and maturity, or pusillanimity, that Christians allowed themselves to be robbed of their inheritance to a point where Barack Obama could assert without contradiction that we Americans “do not consider ourselves to be a Christian nation”?

What are these Christmas-bashers, though still a nominal minority, saying to Christians with their mockery and ridicule of the celebration of the birth of Christ?

“This isn’t your country anymore. It is our country now.”

The question for Christians is a simple one: Do they have what it takes to take America back?

Tagged as: ACLU, America, Christmas, COPYRIGHT, Jimmy Carter, slider, Washington Times

The views expressed by the authors and editorial staff are not necessarily the views of
Sophia Institute, Holy Spirit College, or the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.

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By Patrick J. Buchanan

Patrick J. Buchanan is a columnist, political analyst for MSNBC, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. Mr. Buchanan has written ten books, including six straight New York Times best sellers, served as a senior advisor to three Presidents, was a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.

Crisis Magazine relies on the generosity of our donors to keep our apostolate going. Please support our work today!

Bill Curry

Thank you Pat!! You say what I always think. keep fighting…and get on a TV station that respects you…NOT like MSNBC !!
pammie

I wish I could believe it. It seems as though the Christians who are more likely to do so always have far more foreign policy concerns and interests which keeps their attentions away from the dangers at their very doorsteps.
Alecto Papadakoleitis

This notion of separation of church and state is confused, I believe. Americans do not have, it is true, a “state” religion, but the idea that one cannot or should not celebrate one’s religion publicly has never, ever been part of our heritage. The other part of the First Amendment, is, after all, the free exercise clause, isnt’ it? Does that mean we’re only free to practice religion in our cars and homes? Of course not! It’s absurd, completely inane to think that we should not be free to demonstrate our beliefs in public. For private spaces neeed no protection. As owners, it is understood already we have the right to do whatever we want on private property. The First Amendment is intended to protect our public rights. Why not set up Ten Commandments in courthouses or Nativity scenes on public property!

The constitution does not contemplate freedom from religion. Why should we respect or defer to anyone’s attacks on our rights as believers? If atheists are nothing more that negaters of all that we believe, with no unique philosophy apart from that, do they possess “rights” that need protecting? In my humble view, they have none. They exist to divest you and me of our constitutionally-protected beliefs. And that isn’t protected!

I do wish some justices would get this “right”. Until then, I’ll keep praying.
Thomas C. Coleman, Jr.

There is nothing mysterious or accidental at all about this state of affairs. It was planned, and at the execution of that plan began decades ago beginning with the near occupation of the academic world by materialists and pseudo-rationalists, some of whom might have sincerely believed that science could disprove the existence of God and others who knew that the religious faith of the masses would keep them from being controlled by an all-powerful state. Until the post WWII era most Americans could live their lives without being called idiots if the did not believe in Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Kinsey, Sanger, Mead and the lot. Certainly there were always scoffers, from Jefferson to Twain, but then such men and women did not dicatate what was to be deemed enlightenment. No, this was not done by accident, and its undoing will not be accomplished without prayer and courage!
Michael PS

The Pilgrim Fathers were firmly of Gillespie’s opinion in rejecting Christmas and other festival days: founding on Galatians 4:10 and Colossians 2:16, he condemned them as “the wares of Rome, the baggage of Babylon, the trinkets of the whore, the badges of Popery, the ensigns of Christ’s enemies, and the very trophies of Antichrist: we cannot conform, communicate, and symbolize with the idolatrous Papists, in the use of the same, without making ourselves idolaters by participation.”

Most Protestants took the same view (except Episcopalians and Lutherans) As late as 1899, the PCUS declared “There is no warrant in Scripture for the observance of Christmas and Easter as holydays, rather the contrary (see Gal. 4:9-11; Col. 2:16-21), and such observance is contrary to the principles of the Reformed faith, conducive to will-worship, and not in harmony with the simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”
Thomas C. Coleman, Jr.

@Michael PS. I’m sure we all know of the Puritan rejection of all pomp and ceremony. We all also know that later waves of immigrants brought not Catholics but a different strain of the Reform, all of which has nothing to do with the modern contempt for christiams and every other expression of Christian belief. The current was on Christmas is not a Puritan war on popery but secularist war on Christianity. some make war oin Christinatiy imaging that is their suty to right against a believe system that suppresses science and makes promotes homophobia, while other make war becuase they know that faith stands between humanity and the secualists’ totalitarian dreams.