Wait a minute. 48% of the population voted for the liberal candidate last election. Do you seriously think 48% of the country is anti-Christian? If not, what percent of the country do you think are anti-Christian liberals?
:dubious: Name some ? I’m a liberal rabid atheist, and I don’t want to ban Christmas.
This is sooooo tiresome.
It doesn’t take Every. Single. Liberal. to cause this effect (that of sweeping mention and image of Christmas behind closed doors and out of public view). Nor does every single liberal have to participate in banning it or wanting to see it banned.
All it takes is for it to be taken up by liberal teachers, liberal courts, employees of various companies who come into contact with the public (after having been so instructed by the company’s owners and/or bosses who fear the political correctness police) and to be taken up by the (here it comes) liberal media. And oh, I almost forgot…Hollywood.
You know, it happens in a fashion almost identical to the way that political correctness itself came to be.
It’s insidious, it’s relentless, and it flies in the face of the very freedoms that the Constitution was created to protect. But it doesn’t require the support of every single liberal for it to come to pass.
Actually, he just gave you the most comprehensive whoosh I’ve ever seen on these boards. That wasn’t a serious argument, that was a parody of what you’ve been posting in this thread, which has been every bit as stupid.
See above.
Perhaps, though I doubt it given what I’ve seen of Kimstu’s posting style.
And btw, Kimstu is a she.
Poll: Most celebrate Christ in Christmas
If every liberal in America isn’t working night and day to see that you are prevented from celebrating Christmas, I am surprised they manage to be so successful in thwarting your practice of your faith. Isn’t it amazing that 14% of the population (or less, if you subtract the closet Christian liberals who aren’t conspiring against you), without control of either house of Congress or the White House, could so thoroughly dominate the media, and force the rest of the country to abandon their faith. Now that’s power. No wonder they frighten you.
Well, be fair. I’ve seen your posting style, and I still give you the benefit of the doubt.
Tell me about it!
Okay, walk me through this. Liberals, of course, are a minority in this country, if only slightly. Now you’re saying that it’s only a minority of liberals who are trying to steal Christmas. So, how is it, exactly, that this minority-of-a-minority has the power to institute such a sweeping change to a cultural institution that is older than the nation itself?
So, where are all these liberals coming from, exactly? Why are liberals in schools so disproportionatly anti-Christian than liberals in every other walk of life? How is it that so many of them are able to become judges? How do they keep being elected? And who is consuming this anti-Christian media being produced by the liberal media? I mean, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be interested in paying to see a movie that called for the end of Christmas. I can’t think of any liberals who would want to see it, either. Where’s the audience for these movies? If they’re so influential, I’d assume they must be very popular. Which movies are we talking about, precisely, that are pushing an anti-Christian/anti-Christmas agenda?
That’d be pretty scary, if it weren’t also non-exsistant. This thing you are talking about, SA: it isn’t happening. It’s never happened in the past, and it’s not likely to happen in the future. You’re imagining it. It’s that tunnel vision I was talking about earlier: you’ve come to a conclusion, and then you’ve gone looking for evidence to support it. That’s not a good way to gain knowledge. In fact, it’s just about the worst way, because you tend to only see the evidence you want, and you miss all the evidence that points in another direction.
Precisely. It doesn’t seem to take much in this country for this or that liberal offense to take hold. If some liberal is for it (or against it), Hollywood and the media jump on it…and we’re off to the races.
(And hell, for all I know, Hollywood and the media might on occasion be the genesis of it themselves.)
I’m not ignoring you, Miller. It’s just that by the time you say something, I’ve pretty much already answered it in responding to someone else. Much of what I’d say in response to you can be found in my previous two posts. You know I have a fairly high regard for you in the main, so I don’t want to appear to be giving you short shrift.
And don’t take my posting activity the last few days all that seriously. There are some new posters here who have gotten my goat somewhat, and I’m pretty much just having fun taking them on and getting some things out of my system. I’m sure all of us say things from time to time that we don’t really mean literally and in the overall scheme of things…and I’ve just been indulging in an orgy of it the last few days.
Nothing gets by you, does it SA?
Just so I have it straight: atheist liberals bent on suppressing Christianity, despite being a minuscule fraction of the population, can spread their agenda like herpes in a hot tub. Yet conservative Christian values require the eternal vigilance of an overwhelming majority to keep from being snuffed out. What does this tell us about the relative strength of these competing philosophies?
No problem. Doesn’t matter anyway, as there’s clearly nothing you could post that would stand up to my indomitable logic.
Seriously, though, it’d be nice to see a few answers to some of my direct questions. You’ve responded to a few of the issues that have been raised, but you haven’t really answered anything.
I have said nary a word about atheist liberals. That is your own construct and it speaks to your conclusion-jumping ability quite well.
My belief is that many of the liberal contingent who would have us all running around chirping “Happy Holidays” to each other and bending over backwards to try to assure that no one of any other religion was ever exposed to mention of Christmas, are indeed Christians themselves. They are simply members of the protect-everyone-from-any-possible-offense crowd.
The remainder, in my view, are out-and-out anti-Christian types who feel Christians are the enemy and make up the “religious right” who interfere with the way they think things should be, and they therefore want to minimize the visibility of Christianity to the population at large in an effort to marginalize it and make it seem less pervasive, and less important, and thereby reduce its future membership.
Just to add to what other people have said, no, Starving Artist, liberals do not want to banish Christmas or Christianity from the public eye. In the upcoming holiday season, I assume that you will say “Merry Christmas!” to many people, and I’m willing to bet that most of them will welcome the wish (or won’t care, since “Merry Christmas”, just like “How are you?” and “Have a nice day”, is one of these sentences we just say to be polite without regard to what they actually mean). Maybe, and I say maybe, you will find someone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas and is offended by your wishing them a merry one. Those people do exist, of course. But think about it: what makes you even think that this person will have to be a liberal?
In my opinion, people who get offended at such things are much, much too thin-skinned. Most people, liberal and conservative, would agree with me there, I think. I also think that most people would agree with me when I say that being too thin-skinned doesn’t have any correlation with politics. There are liberals who would be offended at you wishing them a merry Christmas, but there are also conservatives and moderates who would be. I think that the only reason why you think that this kind of offense would only be seen in liberals is that given that a very large percentage of traditional conservatives in the US are Christians, an even greater percentage of them wouldn’t be offended by being wished a merry Christmas. So if someone is being offended, they must be liberal. In this case, you may be right, but our hypothetical thin-skinned conservative might later get offended at something else entirely which doesn’t deserve it. And do keep in mind that the majority of liberals in the US are Christians, and that even among non-Christian liberals, most of them aren’t offended by Christianity and Christmas.
As for the “Happy Holidays” phrase… what’s the problem with it? I don’t see anything wrong with stores wishing their customers happy holidays in general instead of saying the actual words “Merry Christmas”. Most people wouldn’t be offended with the traditional greeting, but the newer one is more inclusive, and it is certainly understandable why a store would want that. Same thing for someone telling “Happy Holidays” to other people.
Just an anecdote to finish this post: I am an atheist liberal. One day, my colleague from Romania asked me what you are expected to say when someone else sneezes. I told her that, in English, what I’ve mostly heard said was “God bless you”. Since that day, that’s what she tells me when I sneeze and I then thank her. I believe, Starving Artist, that you’ll find that I’m not at all unusual among liberals.
I don’t think that individual person has to be liberal. I think the movement (for want of a better term) to remove scenes of Christmas from public view and to replace “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays” comes from the liberal camp and has arisen from liberal idiology.
Sorry to interrupt, but that isn’t what I said. I never said this would only be seen in liberals. Certainly, there are some conservatives you would agree this is a good thing, and many of no particular political persuasion as well. Again, what I’m saying is that this movement and the impetus behind it is born of the liberal camp. I’m not saying only liberals embrace it or that no one who isn’t a liberal won’t embrace it.
There is nothing wrong with it, or rather there wasn’t, until it became code for “Don’t say ‘Merry Christmas’, it’s politically incorrect, you know.”
“Happy Holidays” has been around for decades. It wasn’t until it was appropriated as a non-religious substitution for a very obvious major holiday that I began to find the use of it objectionable.
The other problem I have with it is that it’s silly in the context it’s being appropriated to fill and it doesn’t make sense. If you’re going to try to avoid offending a non-Christian by making an attempt not to mention the upcoming holiday, why then turn around and say “Happy Holiday(s)” which includes Christmas? To wish someone a pleasant holiday without including Christmas, one would have to say “Happy Holiday”, which of course would be referring only to New Year’s.
(And of course, if we took this to its logical extreme – which may after all happen, given the way things have been going in this country – even New Year’s could be a cause for offense as other cultures may divide time up differently…and who are we to impose our definition of the year’s end on someone else? Now, I’m sure that sounds silly to you, but believe me, it’s no more silly that it would have sounded to the average American three or four decades ago that “Merry Christmas” be replaced by “Happy Holidays.”)
So, one way or another, we are left with this silly and ineffective way of attempting to remove mention of Christmas during the holiday season. Either way, Christmas is included in the greeting, and either way if someone wants to take offense there is something there to provide it. So it becomes merely a symbol, a symbol that is used in an attempt to diminish and marginalize Christmas itself by an element of society that wants Christianity itself diminshed and marginalized.
Well, you’re a good deal different that most of the ones I encounter here: You’re civil, reasonable, polite, soft-spoken and articulate. 
Nope, Miller nailed it. You’re right that I don’t usually just whoosh people with parodies, but honestly, Starving Artist, what else are we to do with you? You’ve made it explicitly clear that you don’t care at all about supporting your assertions with facts, that you don’t believe in fighting ignorance, that you have no intention of changing your mind about any of your opinions if they’re contradicted by facts, and don’t expect to change anybody else’s mind with facts either.
By your own admission, you just come here to the Pit to let off steam by throwing around unsupported assertions that anger the people that you want to “take on” (and, presumably, indulge your feelings of victimhood by getting piled on by the big mean liberals).
Well, my dear, if that’s what you’re after, I suppose you can have it. But I see absolutely no reason why I should waste my rational faculties on making arguments for you that are rationally defensible, when you’ve made it so plain that you don’t give a toot about rational argument.
[Starving Artist argument mode]
No, I already explained to you that it’s primarily just a form of cultural self-protection by Jews, which the conservative anti-Semites have been railing against because they hate Jews. It’s clear to me from my years of observing what’s going on in this society that the conservatives are attempting to establish a fundamentalist theocracy under the guise of preserving “Christian culture”. So their hypocritical pretenses of supporting Israel, as in the OP of this thread, are simply a cover for their millennarian expectations of Armageddon and the Second Coming when all the Jews will be cleared out of the way, either by conversion or damnation, and the only people left will be the Christian theocrats who’ll never have to be offended by hearing somebody say “Happy Holidays” ever again.
And there’s no point asking me for a cite because this simply reflects my opinion based on many years of experience of the conservative corrosion of our society. Besides, even if I did show you cites backing up my statements, it wouldn’t change your beliefs in any way or “fight ignorance”, so why should I go through the dance?
[/Starving Artist argument mode]
[Cripes, that’s kind of a scary feeling; I’d better not try this too often or my brain might get stuck that way! :eek: Sure makes it quicker and easier to compose posts, though. ;)]
Starving Artist, did it ever occur to you that the reason people started saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas is because you can’t tell by looking at someone what holiday they may celebrate? That rather than trying to hide Christmas away, they are trying to acknowledge that Christmas isn’t the only or even necessarily the most important thing happening during the season? Does it have to be a hit against Christians? Is it all just part the persecution Christians are promised for practicing their faith?
Do you realize that your unwillingness to back up your claims about anything speaks poorly of you to the lurkers? I learn things from this board. I share those things with other people IRL. What I learn from you is not flattering to the conservative movement and re-inforces the notion that conservatives are just knee-jerk assholes. Too bad you don’t emulate Bricker, I’ve learned tons about the conservative mindset from him and he has made compelling arguments that have adjusted my viewpoints. You, on the other hand, make me want to tear my hair out and remind me of why I don’t talk to my in-laws about the real world–just the one they think they live in.
Two wrongful statements there. I don’t “throw” assertions around, I state my view and why it is that I come to have it…if people become angry over that, that’s their problem. It isn’t my intent. There are a few people around here I can state my opinions to and we can have a productive conversation. But they are by far in the minority.
And I don’t come here to “take on” anybody. Usually I come here either to state my POV, as we all do…or I see something I disagree with and contest it. The fact that I challenge someone doesn’t mean that I “came here” simply in order to do so.
That’s right! You have to be quick around here if you’re a conservative or you’re going to be drowned in determined, angry and voluminious liberal pontification. Perhaps now you can see why I’ve developed the posting style I have. I’d never get a word in edgewise if I tried the wise old sage approach, and I have no doubt I’d be berated just as much, ala Sam Stone. (Sorry to keep using him as an example, but I view him as one of the most calm and inoffensive conservative posters here. And yet, look where it gets him.)
Excellent post, though. You’ve got me down to a “t”, whatever that means. More than a few inaccuracies, but, all in all a superb imitation.
[Starving Artist argument mode]
Typical ludicrous conservative nitpicking, pretending that you can’t recognize when somebody is speaking in general and stating opinions. Of course, I never actually claimed that Each. And. Every. conservative is an anti-Semitic fundamentalist theocrat, but it doesn’t mean that that perspective hasn’t strongly influenced the dominant conservative culture in general.
[/Starving Artist argument mode]
[Hey look, he’s talking about “inaccuracies”, as though the factual truth of statements actually matters! Isn’t that adorable? Folks, Starving Artist might yet be nudged into becoming a debater who honestly cares whether assertions are rational and can be backed up by evidence! Not holding my breath yet, though.]
Sorry to keep harping on this, but you still haven’t given us the “why” behind your opinions. That’s why we keep asking you for cites: because you keep saying things that don’t measure up against our observable reality, and we want evidence from your observable reality to measure your conclusions against.