Before you make a public statement that will guarantee that you will become a poster-mayor for the usual “War on Christmas” battles, it might be wise to check legal history regardless of which position you take.
Mayor Miko Pickett, the “historic” first black mayor of Mullins, South Carolina, ordered this season’s Nativity scene removed from a public parking lot due to “separation of church and state.” The town happily ignored her. Not surprisingly, she had based her decision on “diversity” and “inclusion” principles and the “separation of Church and State.”
Naturally, she opted for the politically correct “Happy Holidays.” But the mayor may have had a point.
Well this is all I needed on a busy day that just included me re-injuring my leg after being pulled off my feet by Spuds. The post below is based on a hoax, and damn the hoaxers to hell. Spreading false stories on the web is unethical, and satire sites are obligated to signal when a post is intended as parody. A few notes:
1. Thanks to the crack EA commentariate for flagging this.
2. The fake story is still up on the usually reliable conservative commentary site Victory Girls, which linked to the fake story I used.
3. I was fooled because first, none of the quotes sounded unlikely given what we have heard and witnessed in Portland in the recent past, and
4. I had never seen a “butt plug” before.I apologize to Ethics Alarms readers and the City of Portland. I try to be careful, but this time I was fooled.
5. Apparently the hoax was inspired by Portland’s city officials this year referring to their annual tree lighting event as just “the tree” or “winter tree,” deliberately omitting the word “Christmas.” Typical dumb Portland wokeness at work: if the hoaxers had only made it clear what they were spoofing, I’d call it a successful and well-deserved satire.
6. I apologize to all, including the City of Portland, for my error.
***
I missed this, which happened about a week ago, in part because I view Portland as a lost cause. You know those zombie apocalypse movies where the survivors will say, sadly, “Boston’s gone, San Diego’s gone”? Portland’s gone, and has been for a long time. I would say it’s Patient Zero for Trump Derangement, woke insanity, anti-Americanism and The Great Stupid, except there are so many other candidates: New York City, California, Minnesota. None of them, however, have descended so far into incompetent cultural madness as Portland, as exemplified by the Christmas, sorry, Holiday Thing the city unveiled this month.
Portland officially replaced its traditional Christmas tree—to be fair, it’s so hard to find evergreen trees in Oregon these days—with that whatever it is above. Officials described the holiday display as “bold,” “inclusive,” and “a meaningful departure from tree-based expectations.”
How far gone do you have to be to utter the words “tree-based expectations” without feeling ridiculous?
City leaders, presumably the same ones who let Black Lives Matter take over parts of the city five year sago, explained the traditional Christmas tree ultimately failed to reflect Portland’s “evolving” relationship with holidays. Thus the “inclusive” replacement, officials said, is intentionally ambiguous, streamlined, and designed to invite interpretation.
I, for example, interpret it as “meaningless, joyless crap.”
In fairness, the spirit of Christmas, and because it’s just an excellent post that interprets the song in a fresh manner that I have never encountered, here is Dwayne Zechman’s rebuttal of the criticism by me and others of the popular Christmas song written by American composer Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941. Did you know that the song was first recorded by the Trapp Family singers of “The Sound of Music” fame? That alone raises it a bit in my estimation. I also note that Dwayne, wisely does not defend the wretched lyrics in the David Bowie-Bing Crosby version. That would be impossible.
I have to take issue with all the dunking on “The Little Drummer Boy” that I’m reading here. It’s a favorite of mine, and the reason has nothing to do with the ridiculous scenario.
The reason is that this song is a microcosmic allegory of the Christian experience.
I don’t normally speak of my faith and religious beliefs here. I’m a firm believer in the notion that Truth stands on its own; it doesn’t need the support of religion in order to be true. So this post is definitely a bit of a departure for me.
“Come, they told me.” “A newborn King to see”
This is how it begins. We learn from others about the Gospel of Jesus. We are encouraged to come along on the journey.
“Our finest gifts we bring” “to lay before the King” “So to honor Him” “When we come”
We begin the journey and quickly learn that, to those who invited us on this journey, it’s a big deal. There are songs we may or may not have heard. There are responsive readings that we almost certainly don’t know. There are people here whose whole lives are dedicated to their faith and their church. Am I expected to do that too? What IS expected of me? What does Jesus actually want from me?
The same Facebook friend who has previously endorsed idiotic comparisons between Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem and illegal immigration approvingly posted the photo above from St. Susanna Parish in Dedham, Mass. Its Nativity scene includes a sign reading “ICE was here” in place of Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus. Behold…
Terrific: bad history and bad analogies for ignorant progressive dupes! Merry Christmas!
Well, unfortunately I started thinking that it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas this week, so I’m depressed and miserable.
It’s my favorite time of the year because its the most ethical time of the year, but my wife, who was a Christmas fanatic, is dead; my son, who now insists that she’s my daughter, barely speaks to me though I have been nothing but supportive (because that’s my job); my sister is going to be across country for the holiday; and my mom, who was the center of every Christmas in my life as long as she was breathing, breathes no more. I have neither the time to decorate a tree properly (like I used to) nor the resources to purchase one, and half-hearted decorations will only remind me of 2702 Westminster Place glories past. But I can’t avoid Christmas, just as I can’t avoid ““It’s a Wonderful Life”” as you know. So I’ll be celebrating my favorite holiday here, on Ethics Alarms, with my five loyal readers and the other visitors who drop in, and pretty much nowhere else. That means, among other gifts, I will be bestowing various Christmas-related post from the Ethics Alarms Christmas attic. Like this one…
Other than the reality that Jesus’s mother and her husband were not in any sense of the word refugees, as they were traveling from one part of the Roman Empire to another, and the even more relevant reality that this was over 2,000 years ago in a different culture and time that make attempted comparisons with modern immigration policies, problems and legal enforcement ludicrous, it’s a great point!
Defaulting to the Bible and religion as the cheapest “appeal to authority” imaginable is persuasive evidence of a lack of genuine arguments and an IQ deficit, or perhaps a cynical desire to confuse the intellectually deprived. In either case, its an abuse of Christmas. Indeed, the defenders of illegal immigration literally have no valid justification for their beliefs at all. A church that would engage in this cynical, ahistorical deception can’t be trusted.
I typically play untrustworthy news source roulette every morning as I have that crucial first cup of coffee. Today the silver ball landed in the Fox News slot. Even before that ad I just posted about made my head explode, spraying bone, brains and blood all over the room (and my dog), one of the fungible Fox Bleached Blondes had already made me wish I had stayed in bed. All the Fox Blondes are the same. though some have worse voices that others, and Dana Perino is interesting to watch because her botoxed face is completely immobile except for the occasional blink and her lips, which make her face resemble those creepy “Clutch Cargo” cartoons where moving human lips were superimposed on cartoon faces.
But I digress. This particular Fox segment featured an interview with the actor I had never heard of who plays St. Peter in a new Fox movie or series or something. The Fox News hostess said that the thing was about “the incredible life of St. Peter.”
Incredible is right! There are absolutely no credible accounts of St. Peter’s life, no evidence, no documentation, no historical accounts, nothing. “Tradition” has him founding the Catholic Church, but that’s impossible, so people who aren’t incredibly gullible pretty much agree that at best there were two different Peters, the disciple and the first Pope. We don’t know much about either of them.
Fox News is supposed to be a trusted news source. Its alleged journalists shouldn’t be proselytizing, promoting Christianity, or representing Bible apocrypha as fact. It’s not fact, but faith, or legend, or mythology, but whatever it is, if a Fox News journalist will tell viewers that it is fact, what else that is of dubious provenance will Fox News call true?
Unethical, unprofessional, misleading and stupid.
But at least Fox News runs ads showing the President of the United States hawking cheap watches….
One would think that a Congressional resolution calling for the condemnation of communism and socialism would be an easy one to vote for, but one would be wrong. Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), the daughter of Cuban refugees, introduced a non-binding resolution to Congress this past week called “Denouncing the horrors of socialism.” Most of the historical villains referenced in the resolution —Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, and Nicolás Maduro—were Communists. Nevertheless, not only did 100 members of the Democratic Party vote against a statement of principles that flows directly from our founding documents and core values (Jefferson wrote, “To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it,” and Madison added that it “is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest…), they were confident enough of the effectiveness their party’s pro-socialist propaganda to go on the record as opposing that statement. All the worst villains are there: the “Squad,” Pelosi, Jaimie Raskin, Maxine Waters.
The number of Democrats unwilling to condemn socialism, and therefore its nasty offspring communism, was even more damning: in addition to the 98 naysayers, two Democrats voted “present” and 47 weenies refuse to vote at all.
Democrats are now telling us exactly who they are and what their agenda is.
We are finally at the last installment of the Make Fake Ron Howard Eat His Words Ethics Alarms Challenge, and it is the longest and most thorough of all. Again,I would be impressed greatly if one of our progressive-minded readers would rise in “Ron’s” defense, but “his” facile, talking-point besotted declaration of liberal pride is as indefensible as much as it is pandering to the Left’s fondest delusions—as the four posts including this one demonstrate. Fake Ron’s manifesto is here; rebuttal #1 is here, #2 is here, and #3 is here.
Now you have #4, a thorough fisking by John Paul, masterfully done.
Take that, Fake Ron!
***
I’m a liberal, but that doesn’t mean what a lot of you apparently think it does.
Good for you? But I’m willing to bet 95% of the time, I know exactly what it means. Studies (I can cite them if you want) often show I know you a lot better than you know me. The big problem with a statement like yours is that your views are often highlighted and celebrated, while republican views are not. Because quite frankly, I’m getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for.
The same, but see point one. If you don’t like this characterization, maybe you should do a better job of reigning your side in. If people actually cared about things, they should spend more time looking inward than outward.
Spoiler alert: not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:
True. No one is the same. But giving where this is going, I’m having a hard time not seeing you about to do what you accuse us of doing.
I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. PERIOD.
Great in theory….You do know republicans do this? But that really isn’t the issue. The issue is how it should be done. The biggest question: Who’s gonna pay for it?
I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that’s interpreted as “I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all.”
No, its not. As far as I know, never in human history has it been. Since you’re claiming it is, the burden of proof is on you. You can’t just make a statement. Also PERIOD? What are you five?
“I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all.” This is not the case. I’m fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it’s impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes “let people die because they can’t afford healthcare” a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I’m not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.
Strawman. Has any republican ever said this? There was a lot of (justified) critiques of the ACA (not to mention subterfuge). Also, if you don’t know better critiques of cheaper healthcare, you’re not listening to them. Additionally, everyone has access to it. You can walk into any ER and get anywhere in the country, but that’s not what you’re talking about, is it? I bet you’re also talking about Hormone therapy and abortion. But I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Tell me how you would get healthcare cost down without making someone do their work for cheaper/free. This is going to be a problem with one of your later arguments.
I believe education should be affordable. It doesn’t necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I’m mystified as to why it can’t work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.
Setting aside the big problem with a significant number of colleges, the short answer: it can be. Trade schools, community colleges, military, are alternative methods to higher education that don’t break the bank. I’m willing to bet 999/1000 an employer doesn’t care where you went to college, only if you can do the job. I know one of Charlie Kirk’s talking point was almost 50% of people working aren’t in a field they got their degree in (I’ll admit, I don’t know if this is true). Still, this is you’re talking point. I also understand (Maybe I’m doing exactly what you accuse me of doing earlier) that colleges are one of liberals sacred institutions. If you think there is a problem, maybe, as I suggested earlier, you look inward towards a solution instead of asking for the government to step in and fix it.
I posted about the “why I am a liberal” social media post that has been surfacing on Facebook and challenged the Ethics Alarms commentariate to dissect its rampant generalities, facile assumptions, and logical fallacies. As I wrote in the post, some previously intelligent people of my acquaintance have been reposting and praising the thing, attributing its authorship to Hollywood nice guy director Ron Howard. He didn’t write it, so this is a textbook “appeal to authority,” especially since the arguments “Ron” makes are flawed at best. They are, however, typical progressive talking points. There is no reason to believe the real Ron Howard has any political science or philosophical acumen or expertise, as he has spent literally his whole life in front of cameras or behind them.
Four EA comment stars took up my challenge, and they all shined. As promised, I am posting all four, each of which would make an excellent civics class topic, if there were high school civics classes that didn’t focus exclusively on leftist cant. (Are there any any?)
You can review Fake Ron’s manifesto here. Rebuttal #1 is by Gamereg; his numbered points correspond to “Ron’s”:
Ethics Alarms 