The reason for the season: persecution complexes

Everything Is Terrible found a video about the persecution complex Christians have about Christmas, and they want you all to watch it.

Let’s count up the implausibilities. First, that anyone would make laws forbidding Christmas or Christian personal effects under any circumstances. Second, that someone would actually get fired for violating the Establishment Clause in a country that seems to love having public figures flout it publicly. Third, that anyone is actually attacking Christmas as a public holiday. Fourth, that a biker gang would be necessary to help lift a cardboard cross up to a building, or that lifting a five foot cross up the side of a building is even the best way of getting it to the top. Fifth, that a video ending with the main subject of the video getting blown up, and the cameraman too, would somehow be considered acceptable to display unscreened at a nativity play. Sixth, that Aron Ra would play God.

Okay, that last one, he might do it tongue-in-cheek.

You poor Christians, making up the majority of your country, are being persecuted, just by being forced to acknowledge that you don’t make up the ENTIRETY of your country and that forcing your religion on the rest undermines the whole reason your country was founded? Hah.

Nobody’s preventing you from worshipping privately however you want. The Establishment Clause just means you can’t do it on government grounds, using government taxpayer-derived funds, or in a way that encourages your religion over any others while doing work that nets you government pay, to steal Crip Dyke’s wording in comments. That’s not an abrogation of your rights — it’s a protection of them. And I know you get this, viscerally, because you absolutely hate the idea of a Muslim or, heavens forbid, an atheist in office. If you try to allow your government to enshrine your religion within it, that’s when you risk losing the most should some other person of some other religion comes into power.

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The reason for the season: persecution complexes
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10 thoughts on “The reason for the season: persecution complexes

  1. 1

    or in a way that encourages your religion over any others.

    I get what you’re saying, but this is wrong. You’re free to encourage your religion over others.

    You are not free to do so while doing work for which you receive a government paycheck (in the US, save for military chaplains and a very small number of other positions considered ‘ceremonial’ but which nonetheless draw a salary). You are not free to do so indirectly using the funds or legal powers of the government, again, save with certain exceptions around the edges, like having tax deductions for gifts to propagandizing institutions.

    Not as pithy, but far more accurate. In canada it’s even a bit weirder, what with the 1763 proclamation and the legal duty to protect the French Catholic minority that has led to constitutionalizing religious school infrastructures. It’s also weirder b/c religious freedom because constitutionalized per se only in 1982, so we’re still dealing with things that simply haven’t been challenged yet or that have been grandfathered for one weird reason or other. The trend in Canada, outside of constitutionalized school regimes, however, is to generally towards getting to a better place than the US about this stuff.

  2. 3

    This year I got written up at work for poor customer support (part of my job involves dealing with customers for IT matters). My crime? Not saying “Merry Christmas” to a customer as I was resolving his computer issues. Mind you; I didn’t say “Happy Holidays” or any other seasonal stuff that unhinges so many idiots this time of year; I simply fixed his computer as requested and kept my conversation to the job at hand. This outraged him so much that he reported me to my boss, and now I have a shiny new ding on my record. Yay, Christians!

  3. 5

    The whining about the non-existent WoC is a “pre-emptive strike”, a kristallnacht. Claiming to be “victims of discrimination” is part of their goal: to seek excuses to be perpetrators of discrimination.

    Even those who claim it don’t believe it. But they know it works because like white surpremacists (of which many are both), you have to create the situation before you can act. You can’t just lash out without “justification”.

  4. 6

    Ok…when the father said, “For a long time, people have been trying to pass laws getting rid of Christmas all together.” I just couldn’t take in more of it. And that was just about 30 sec. into a 5 min. video.

    The technical quality of the trailer is pretty bad as well. At least IMHO. The change from one scene to another are far too abrupt, just suddenly flipping form one to another. This doesn’t really have anything to do with their statements (even though I feel their statements are ridiculous) but it does make the production seem cheap and would disincline me to watch it even if it was a message I agreed with.

  5. 7

    Jason wrote:

    If you try to allow your government to enshrine your religion within it, that’s when you risk losing the most should some other person of some other religion comes into power.

    It’s been my experience that when confronted with the idea that their personal religion might not always be the majority, Christians (of various sects!) simply deny the possibility. This despite the fact that gazillions of Protestants were once worried that JFK would infest the country with Catholicism, and more recently a Mormon was the Republican nominee for President.

  6. 8

    As a Canuck who hasn’t lived there for 30 years,do we still have Christmas displays on public property? I remember most government offices displaying Christmas lights and decorations.

    My own municipality of Coquitlam used to get complaints- but that was because we were home to, as we proudly proclaimed, the largest Francophone community east of Manitoba, and the lights on the municipal hall used to say both “Merry Christmas” and “Joyeux Noel”, which got the local right-wingers steamed for bowing down to those damn ‘F-word’s

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