They have their own hollidays, and you don’t see me running around trying to interfere with them.
And I’d be very interested to know why you appear to think I don’t give a fuck about them having a happy holliday and good New Year simply by virtue of the fact that I like to see Christmas celebrated out in the open? Are Jews telling me to fuck off and have a shitty year when they celebrate Hanukkah? Of course not! So how am I telling people of other faiths I don’t give a fuck if they have a happy New Year. And why the fuck should I wish them a happy holliday when it’s not their holliday?
Damn, I did it again. Make that “holidays.” You guys are making me dyslexic.
And as much fun as this has been, real life intrudes. I must bid you adieu for now.
If that’s your attitude, what’s the point of posting anything at all? If nothing you say will ever change anyone’s mind, and nothing anyone else can say will ever change your mind, what’s the point of participating in the board in the first place?
I can’t tell you how bad this line of reasoning make you look. It’s as good as admiting that your opinions have no basis in reality. People may take issue with your cite, or may argue with the conclusion you’ve arrived at, but at least you’ve shown that you’ve got some grounding in objective fact.
Look at it this way. I’m a liberal. All my friends are liberals. Most of my family is liberal. I tend to read liberal news sources and watch liberal television. I’m pretty steeped in liberal views. So when you post something like, “liberal activists are opposed to Christianity in public,” and I look around at the people I know, and the books I read, and the TV I watch, all of it overwhelmingly liberal, and I don’t see one single thing that even remotely resembles that… well, I gotta think that maybe you’re just totally fucking insane. I mean, I’ve got some pretty fringey friends, but not even the most stoned-out, crystal-gazing, Nader-voting, neo-communist fruitcakes among them advocate anything like what you’re accusing the entire left side of the political spectrum of.
I think your problem is that you’ve got blinders on when it comes to politics. You only seem to perceive the absolute worst in the other side of the aisle, no matter how small a minority they may be. I think when you open a political thread, you zero in on people like rjung or ElvisLives, while totally overlooking posters like Left Hand of Dorkness or FinnAgain, and then make judgements about the entire left of this board on the basis of a few clowns with no credibility with either side of the aisle.
Which is why you will continue to be perceived as another duffer or New Iskander, and not a Bricker or John Mace. Which is a shame, because I think you’ve got a lot more in common with the latter than you do with the former. You’re not an idiot, goddammit. Stop posting like one. Stop making broad, unsupportable statements and then whining when someone calls you on it. Stop looking just at the evidence that supports your own preconceptions, and look at the broader picture. None of this requires that you change your politics one iota. It just means that you’d be a better spokesman for them, and that’s something the SDMB can always use more of, especially from conservatives.
Conservatives control the White House, the House, the Senate, a whole bunch of governorships and state legislatures, and they’re looking pretty damned strong in the judiciary (Supreme Court, as well as other federal court systems). And, as conservatives love to point out, Bush won my a bigger margin in 2004 than in 2000. Where do you get this notion that liberalism is runnning rampant across the country, spreading its evil ideals among an unsuspecting and defenceless citizenry?
Well, i’d only be willing to criticize such behaviour if it could actually be demonstrated that such behaviour actually occurred somewhere other than in your mind.
As a member of this message board, i realize that even if i persuade you or Sam Stone or duffer of something, it’s not going to change the big picture. But i have enough intellectual integrity that i feel some obligation to back up factual assertions with evidence. If i were going to allege that some people have been “trying to have Christian images removed from public view even if on private, non-government property,” you can bet your ass that i’d be ready to back up that assertion with some evidence.
Why do you need greater insight into the “liberal thought process”? After all, you’ve made very clear that you believe it’s pointless to try and counter liberal positions with coherent arguments and evidence of your own, and that you’re not willing to look at other people’s evidence when making your own sweeping generalizations. Seems rather pontless for you to be here at all, exccept simply to sound off randomly with no connection to actual reality.
If you want to do that, by all means go ahead. But when you refuse to take the whole thing seriously as an exercise in rational discussion, don’t complain when you aren’t taken seriously.
Thing is, you also don’t see anyone running around trying to interfere with your Christmas celebration. At least, I’ve never seen it. If you have a cite to the contrary, I’d be keenly interested, but if you don’t have one, why should I bother listening to you when your statements are in such diametrical contrast with my own, first-hand experiences?
As soon as I read this, I am visualizing Lorne Green in the original Battlestar Galactica series uttering his favorite line with an overemphasis on the vowels to sound like…
I wish I could be the Center Hand of Dorkness…or I suppose the Cock of Dorkness, swinging in the middle somewhere. Oh well, its something to aspire too I suppose…
I saw the same O’Reilly Factor you did. A couple of businesses, in very ethnically/religiously diverse areas, recognized that Happy Holidays was universal, while Merry Christmas wasn’t. So they decided to change store policy.
And this is a terrible thing?
Cause you want to say Merry Christmas to everybody, and are soooo hostile to using Happy Holidays instead?
Christmas celebrated out in the open? You are crazy!
Christmas the forbidden holiday!
Keep those presents under wraps!
Hide the eggnog!
The liberal Grinch is coming!
Well when you say Merry Christmas to Jews, it is a kinda fuck you, isn’t it? ;j
If I only heard it for the 24 hours before Christmas you’d be right!
The MC&aHNY thing starts getting heard after Thanksgiving, sometimes right after Halloween (heard it 3 times today myself).
Go look at the site I linked to, look at how many religious holidays occur in November & December.
It’s not who’s holiday?
To all my,
Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Baha’i, Sikh, Orthodox Christian, Buddhist, Catholic Christian friends out there,
Have a merry,
All Saints’ Day {Christian} Diwali (Deepavali){Hindu} End of Ramadan (Eid al- Fitr){Islam} Birth of Baha’u’llah {Baha’i} Birthday of Guru Nanak Dev Ji {Sikh} Nativity Fast {Orthodox Christian} Christ the King {Christian} Thanksgiving {Interfaith USA} Martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur {Sikh} Day of Covenant {Baha’i} Advent {Christian} Ascension of Abdul-Baha {Baha’i} St Andrew’s Day {Christian} Advent continued {Christian} St. Nicholas day {Orthodox Christian} Bodhi Day (Rohatsu) {Buddhist} Immaculate Conception {Catholic Christian} Feast day (Our Lady of Guadalupe){Catholic Christian} Los Posadas {Christian} Yule {Christian} Yule/Winter Solstice {Wicca/Neo Pagan} St. Thomas Day {Catholic Christian} Christmas Eve {Christian} Christmas {Christian} Feast of the Nativity {Orthodox Christian} Zarathosht Diso (Death of Prophet Zarathushtra){Zoroastrian} St. Stephen’s Day {Christian} Hanukkah {Jewish} Holy Innocents {Christian} Feast of the Holy Family {Catholic Christian} Watch Night {Christian}
Actually, a lot of people who say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” are Jews, and the campaign of complaining about it is the result of anti-Semitic activism and influence. So Starving Artist, why don’t you and your fellow anti-Semites just head on over to Iran with your buddy Ahmadinejad where you’ll be appreciated?
Sorry, but when I see a bunch of hypocrites pretending to get upset about anti-Israel sentiment on the part of Iran and then jumping on every opportunity to squeeze in some anti-Semitic rhetoric of their own, I find that offensive.
[Gee, it’s kind of fun to argue like Starving Artist: just disconnect the rationality filter, turn mindless invective up to 11, and let fly! :)]
This thread is really depressing. If conservatives really believe that most liberals want to wipe Israel off the map and ban Christmas, then I don’t know how we’ll ever find common ground on anything. The idea that liberals want to ban Christmas, destroy Israel, love the Iranian government, etc., is so far from my reality that I don’t even know what to make of it.
Sorry, I can only stay a moment, but I can’t let this go by.
I see, Kimstu, that you aren’t immune to the idiot bug yourself.
To extrapolate from my remarks that most of the people who say (and by implication, I presume those who want to see it replace Merry Christmas) are Jews, and then to accuse me of anti-Semitism on those grounds is a prime example of the type of liberal-think that I’ve been talking about. Thank you for providing your knee-jerk response which also arrives at an erroneous conclusion and brands a perfectly innocent person as being a bigot that he is not. This same type of thinking has been behind accusations of sexism, racism, bigotry, etc. that you people have been throwing around every time you hear something you don’t like for decades.
Well, you’ve certainly accomplished that.
And Raja Raja Chola, don’t be completely disheartened. I don’t believe liberals love the Iranian government, although I think they could be far more critical of it; and I don’t think liberals want to destroy Israel, although I think they don’t care much for it and tend to side with the Palestinians. I do think liberals largely want to ban Christmas.
:smack: Here I go again. Must be because I’ve been posting a lot in a hurry.
I meant to say, “To extrapolate from my remarks that most of the people who say ‘Happy Holiday’ (and by implication, I presume those who want to see it replace Merry Christmas) are Jews…etc.”
I wish I could be the Center Hand of Dorkness…or I suppose the Cock of Dorkness, swinging in the middle somewhere. Oh well, its something to aspire too I suppose…
