I have very little use for right-wingers whining about how — based on a few stores telling employees to say “Happy holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” — there is some diabolical liberal secular conspiracy to wage a “war on Christmas.”

Unfortunately, conservatives are so used to playing the victim card that this has now become a seasonal fixture. So it’s not surprise that Wall Street Journal editor Daniel Henninger has devoted a column to explaining how the War On Christmas has brought about the economic meltdown.

Henninger’s theory is that “A nation whose people can’t say ‘Merry Christmas’ is a nation capable of ruining its own economy” because if we take away religion, we take away all the moral props that keep financiers behaving morally instead of greedily. As a result: “Banish Merry Christmas. Get ready for Mad Max.”

I hate having to take the time to argue with anything this dumb, but here goes:
•Christmas isn’t banished. If it was, we wouldn’t be seeing Christmas commercials before Thanksgiving.
•The Puritans hated Christmas and legally banned it (because it was tied to early pagan festival dates, and was in those days a time for wild partying and fun).
•We’ve had financial panics in 1797, 1819 and 1837, all back in the days when we were supposed to be a devout, god-fearing country, and certainly before the non-existent “war on Christmas.”

Afghan journalism student Parwez Kambakhsh has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for blasphemy, because he asked questions during class about women’s rights under Islam (according to Associated Press). The appeals court did overturn the death sentence in the case.

I remember after the invasion that Bush started claiming we had to go into Afghanistan to rescue the women oppressed by the Taliban …Of course, it was a lie at the time, but it’s depressing to think Kambakhsh’s fate can happen under a government we brought into being.

From his interview this weekend: “I’m also troubled by, not what Sen. McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said such things as: “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is: he is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian.

But the really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is: No, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she can be President?

Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion: he’s a Muslim, and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”

Two delightful ones on Sunday:
•A FWB “offended Christian” asserts that “For many years now, our children have not been permitted to pray in school.”
This is, of course, codswallop: Students are permitted to pray; the courts have reaffirmed their right to pray; and the ACLU has defended that right in court. Students are allowed to pray, read Bibles at recess, wear crosses, say grace.
What isn’t allowed in school is organized prayers or religious events where the whole student body is expected or pressured to participate. That’s a big difference.
And that restriction also applies to Buddhists, Wiccans, Jews, Baha’i, Muslims, Taoists and atheists, so Christianity is not being singled out for persecution.
As a member of the reality-based community, it’s my pleasure to straighten that out.
•A Navarre resident asserts that Democrats “have an inability to show respect to their fellow Americans” — in contrast, I presume, to those Republicans who are so well-mannered when they assert that everyone who questions Glorious Supreme Leader Bush is a stinking traitor who wants al-Qaida to conquer the world.
The writer then defends the Iraq invasion by claiming that “Hussein created a threat that required an urgent response” — and what threat would that be? He didn’t have any WMDs, he didn’t have any capacity to threaten us, so what were we invading to stop?
The writer points out that Hussein “had used WMDs in the past on his own people,” which hardly reflects well on Republicans, since the Reagan and Bush I administrations fought any Congressional attempt to censure or otherwise slap Hussein’s wrist over his dropping chemical gas on the Kurds. And when Hussein used poison on the Iranians during the Iraq-Iran war, our only concern was that supporting him made it hard to criticize governments we didn’t like for doing the same thing.
And my personal favorite: “Mr. Cheney does not advocate torture, but he does support strong interrogation techniques that do not inflict bodily harm.”
Wrong. Those techniques — waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, etc. — are torture. Cheney and Bush both sanctioned them and fought to preserve the government’s authority to use them, despite the violation of national law, international law and multiple treaties. That alone makes them morally bankrupt as far as I’m concerned.
On the plus side, since the writer concludes that he’s voting for the party of “truth, life, justice” obviously he’s going with the Democrats.

Yep, a post devoted to some quotes from the man who said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” and was also the most suppressed author of the 18th century. In his lifetime, he was arrested for his writing, many of his books were banned and some were burned.

Voltaire’s death hasn’t made him less controversial: In 1929, Boston authorities seized copies of Candide on their way to Harvard and the Post Office, in 1944, would not allow a mail-order catalog to list a copy. A few years ago, a play about Mohammed was banned in Geneva in response to Muslim protests.

Without further ado, the quotes:

“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”

“All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.”

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

“Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.”

“The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.”

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”

“Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.”

And for pure snark: “All I have asked of God is that he make my enemies ridiculous—and behold, he has granted my wish.”

Mary Ready, in Saturday’s columns, grumbles about what she sees as anti-Christian bigotry, mentioning some examples:
“In Illinois, an employee of a national insurance company was fired for writing a piece in a local newspaper in support of traditional marriage even though it was on his own time and on his own computer. On the day Jerry Falwell died, A CNN contributor referred to him as ‘a toad… horrible little person … an evil old man… .’
While I didn’t always agree with Rev. Falwell’s sometimes insensitive remarks, that twisted eulogy on a man’s death was more an attack on his Christian conservative life than it was a report of breaking news.”

Setting aside that I don’t know any backstory on the Illinois man, I agree that if that’s all there was to the story, he didn’t deserve firing (though, of course, people other than Christians have opposed gay marriage, so I’m not sure this is “anti-Christian” per se). But I’ve heard plenty of stories of people being fired or told to keep silent on their own time about left-wing views so the idea Christians have been particularly singled out doesn’t hold water (and I can match the sneers about Christianity she quotes later in the article with 10 times as many about Islam).

As for Falwell, is there the slighest evidence this comment was based on dislike for his “conservative Christian life” rather than his loathsome post-9/11 statements that America deserved the attacks (because of abortions, feminism, gay rights, etc.)? Or his bearing false witness against his neighbor on multiple occasions (lying that Jimmy Carter planned to put gays in his cabinet, for instance–something Falwell admitted he knew was untrue when he said it)? Or his general support for making America a “Christian nation?”

I’ve read that he was an excellent pastor, so maybe it is unfair he should be judged primarily as a Republican political tool. But he made that choice.