Keep It Pithy (7 page)

But in recent years, the traditions of Christmas began to be portrayed in some quarters as somehow “controversial,” which really teed me off. So, in the fall of ’05, I set out to alert the nation that Christmas traditions were under siege and behind the action was a well-thought-out S-P campaign to marginalize the national holiday (which was almost unanimously approved by Congress and signed into law by President U. S. Grant on June 28, 1870).

Night after night on my TV program, I presented the evidence: Giant retailers like Sears (and others) had banned the mention of the word “Christmas” in seasonal advertising. The Lowe’s Company told its store managers to sell “holiday” trees, not Christmas trees. The city of Boston changed the name of its Christmas tree on the Common to “Holiday Tree.” (It was changed back after Mayor Thomas Menino intervened.) There were scores of other examples.…

[Simply put, the ACLU began targeting Christmas. They lost in court on several occasions but won in the long run
because small communities were intimidated by the expense of fighting the group’s lawsuits against various Christmas displays, including a visit from Saint Nick.…] Eight out of ten of us in America are Christian and celebrate Christmas as a “religious occasion.” But in the interest of
inclusion
I suggest that we allow the S-P movement to celebrate their version of Christmas. Let’s call it “Feel Good Day.” And a Happy Feel Good Day to you!

While the religious aspect—Christianity—is certainly in the forefront of the Christmas controversy, the political agenda in the war on Christmas has remained largely hidden. It is a decidedly covert operation, in other words. In fact, many people were surprised when I said on TV and radio that politics, not religion, was the driving force behind the attempt to keep Christmas behind closed doors.

Here’s my explanation in a nutshell: Almost every social change the secular-progressive movement wants to achieve is opposed by religious Americans. Therefore, the more the S-Ps can diminish religious influence in America, the faster their agenda can become a reality. For example, the S-Ps are furious that gay marriage initiatives keep getting voted down, even in the most liberal states, and believe that the primary opposition comes from organized religion rallying their flocks to oppose homosexual nuptials with sin-based arguments.…

So, for the S-P agenda to succeed, religion in America must be deemphasized, just as it already has been in Western Europe and Canada, where secular-progressives have made huge gains.… Goal number one is to secularize the
American public school system in order to drive children away from religion and into the S-P camp. And what is the most wondrous display of religion worldwide? Why, Christmas, of course. Little kids seeing a manger display just might develop a curiosity about this baby Jesus person. What’s this Christmas deal all about, anyway? There is no danger of that happening with winter solstice or with a holiday tree. Is there?

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photo credit 4.2
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With no moral shield, millions of American kids will fail.… The secularists don’t care; they want children to be at the mercy of a materialistic society and a greedy media. They
want kids to rely solely on parents who are often irresponsible and self-destructive. Right now all we can do is pray for the kids and fight the secularists hand to hand.

And if you want some empirical evidence to back up that opinion, listen to this: A study of college students seeking psychological counseling has found that their emotional difficulties are far more complex and more severe than those observed in the past. Researchers at Kansas State University studied students from 1989 to 2001 and concluded that those seeking help for depression doubled during that time period. Also, the percentage of students taking some type of psychiatric medication increased twofold.

That trend is not limited just to Kansas. In a 2002 national survey, more than 80 percent of 274 directors of counseling centers said they thought the number of students with severe psychological disorders had increased over the previous five years.

Now, you can argue all day long
why
this is happening, but I’ll give you one huge reason: Many young Americans simply do not have a force in their lives that can relieve their emotional suffering. They are drifting away from our religious traditions—and religion can be that force, at least in part. If you are able to believe that a higher power will look out for you and will balance bad times with good times, your stress level will not get out of control. Religious faith is generally bad for the “shrink” business, but honest mental health workers know what’s going on. “People just don’t seem to have the resources to draw upon emotionally to the
degree that they used to,” the director of counseling at the University of Nebraska, Dr. Robert Pomeroy, told the
New York Times
. “What would once have been a difficult patch for someone is now a full-blown crisis.”

The rise in dysfunction parallels the rise in secularism, no question about it.

There’s a reason that the cross is the symbol of Christianity. It is a powerful statement that a good man suffered for me, that a just God was looking out for me, and if I lived a good life, I would be rewarded after death. Those beliefs, sincerely held, can get a human being through many hard times.…

I believe that a concentration of believers has made America a strong, noble country. As I got older and learned more about history, I saw how the Founding Fathers used Judeo-Christian philosophy to forge the Constitution, perhaps the most perspicacious political document ever designed.

In our personal lives, we do actually enjoy full freedom of religion in this country. But publicly that is no longer so in America. Because of the rise of secularism, a philosophy that argues there is no room for spirituality in the public arena, religious expression in public is under pressure from
some in the media and, of course, from the intolerant secularists who hold power in many different quarters. They are
definitely
not looking out for you.

One of the biggest frauds ever foisted upon the American people is the issue of separation of church and state. The American Civil Liberties Union, along with legal secularists like Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens, are using the Constitution to bludgeon any form of public spirituality. This insidious strategy goes against everything the Founding Fathers hoped to achieve in forming a free, humane society.

I said “fraud,” and I meant it. Let’s look at some historical facts. There is no question that Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and most of the other framers encouraged spirituality in our public discourse. Letters written by these great men show that they believed social stability could be achieved only by a people who embraced a moral God. Time after time in debating the future of America, the Founders pointed out that only a “moral” and “God-fearing” people could meet the demands of individual freedom. That makes perfect sense, because a society that has no fear of God relies solely on civil authority for guidance. But that guidance can and has broken down. All great philosophers, even the atheists, realized that one of the essential attributes of a civilized people is a belief that good will be rewarded and evil will be punished.

In 1781, Jefferson said the following words, which are engraved on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation
be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”

I wonder what Jefferson would think of the ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California that the word “God” is unconstitutional in the Pledge of Allegiance. I also wonder what ol’ Tom would think of the American Civil Liberties Union suing school districts all over the country to ban the use of the word “God” in school-sanctioned speech. Here’s how ridiculous this whole thing is: At McKinley High School in Honolulu, an official school poem has been recited on ceremonial occasions since
1927
. One of the lines mentions a love for God. After the ACLU threatened a lawsuit, that poem was banned from public recitation, a seventy-five-year tradition dissolved within a few weeks.

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photo credit 4.3
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This is tragic insanity. To any intellectually honest person, it is apparent that the Founders wanted very much to keep God in the public arena, even uppermost in the thoughts of the populace. What the Founders
did not
want was any one religion
imposed
by the government. Jefferson, and Madison in particular, were suspicious of organized religion and of some of the zealots who assumed power in
faith-based organizations. But the Founders kept it simple: All law-abiding religions were allowed to practice, but the government would not favor any one above another.