Texas, of course, isn’t the only place where the religious right is promoting the lie that Christmas is under attack by alleged Christian haters and secularists. Americans United for Separation of Church and State takes a look at how the religious right has distorted — or just plain made up — stories supposedly showing Christmas is under siege. AU’s Rob Boston notes one example — a list of scare stories promoted by FOX News (who else?) in 2005:
What we found, in every case, was that relevant facts had been omitted or that the stories were fictitious. For example, one school in Texas was accused of ordering students not to wear red and green clothes during the month of December. When I called the school, an official there just laughed. There was no such policy in place, but the school was getting so many calls on the matter it actually had to post a statement on its Web site debunking it.
Things got a little testy when I challenged the veracity of Gibson and the entire Fox network. In fact, we ended up screaming at one another. It was perhaps not my finest moment on television, but I have to admit I was angry. Hard-working people in the public schools were being slimed because some folks dislike public education and have an axe to grind.
As we’ve pointed out before, the ‘war on Christmas” nonsense is little more than a cynical fundraising gimmick for far-right groups. In fact, the religious right has even found a way to commercialize it.
I first heard of this story about the child in Taunton when I paid a brief visit to the Free Market Foundation website yesterday—something I don’t do very often. It sounded suspicious to me, so I identified myself as a Christian and posted my doubts about the story in a very simple, balanced, sensible, and nonaccusatory sort of way. No one could have ever called that post trolling or being impolite. However, I did make some assumptions in my post that turned out to be incorrect. Well, they deleted my post. In some past cases over there, my posts have been held up as “awaiting moderation” for several months, as if someone there does not know quite what to do when a fellow Christian tackles some of their nonsense.
After this most recent deletion incident, I can only conclude that the Free Market Foundation does not tolerate any dissent or disagreement with the content of the lead posts on their blog, even if that content is highly suspicious or factually incorrect. It is sort of chilling really because one can plainly see that any theocratic society run by people of a “like mind” as the blog keepers at the Free Market Foundation would run a totalitarian society like in Orwell’s “1984.” At the same time, I commend TFN for allowing posters who disagree to post their disagreements on TFN Insider, even when they are indignant and attack-oriented. It is plain to me that the “Free” in Free Market Foundation represents something other than the traditional American democratic ideal whereas the “Free” in Texas Freedom Network really does mean free in the best spirit of 1776.
I have a special Christmas religious message for the Religious Right, the Texas Free Market Foundation, the Tea Partiers, and the other opponent’s of health care reform. David Barton believes that Washington was protected from musket balls by divine intervention. I happen to believe that Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol” was written by the Holy Spirit using Charles Dicken’s hand in the exact same way that he imparted the words of scripture to Moses, the prophets, and the apostles.
If the video will not play, go to You Tube and play it there. The exact words of this scene are quoted from the original text of “A Christmas Carol” below the video. Examine yourselves and pay heed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6MFN8yiVc0
Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,’ said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, ‘but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?’
‘It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,’ was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. ‘Look here.’
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
‘Oh, Man! look here! Look, look, down here!’ exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
‘Spirit, are they yours?’ Scrooge could say no more.
‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, FOR ON HIS BROW I SEE THAT WRITTEN WHICH IS DOOM, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And abide the end!’
‘Have they no refuge or resource?’ cried Scrooge.
‘Are there no prisons?’ said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. ‘Are there no workhouses?’
The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.