Fearing the Tooth Fairy in the Blue States

Some Americans must be living in fear that the Tooth Fairy is going to force them to believe in her. I am convinced they must live in mortal terror that the Easter Bunny is going to hop into their homes and force them to color hardboild eggs turning their homes into some multicolored slave labor camp. Perhaps they are worried beyond measure that a Leprechaun will take away their freedom and cast them in an ocean of bad green beer and make them wear funny green bowler hats everywhere they go. I would posit that this fear laden segment of the US population is wholly ensconced in the fabled Blue states, as well.

Sound absurd? Well, it is, of course. But so is this overblown fear that many on the left have over public displays of religious symbols. On second thought, I must narrow that down to Christian religious symbols because no one on the left is exorcised over Jewish or Muslim symbols.

One of the biggest reasons that many secularists attack the Christian religion so vociferously is that they believe that religion itself and the Christian religion in particular is an ideology left over from the Dark Ages, one particularly dangerous and, well, just plain stupid. They imagine they have become "smarter" than their ancestors and that they are certainly smarter than those lunk heads in the Red states who pray once in a while or attend a Church service here and there.

They imagine themselves as the saviors of science and government, education and discourse, by eliminating religion for all of us whether we want that religion eliminated or not. They feel that they are being more "tolerant" by making sure religion is unwelcome in the public square, in polite discussion and in the world of ideas. And, since they don't believe in any such silly notion as "God", which is the foremost proof that they have achieved a level of intelligence to be admired by all, they want to make sure the rest of us live up to their standard.

They scoff at religion and call people who believe in it fools and idiots. They deride them saying that they live in “Jesusland”. Yet, at the same time they act as if they are in mortal fear of public displays of Christian religious symbols. So, here is the question: If religion is so silly and is not to be believed or even taken seriously, how can they be so upset over public display of its symbols? It seems to me that they are getting awfully upset over what they consider a myth! That is why I wonder if they are as upset over the encroachments of the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or the odd Leprechaun or two.

In truth public display of traditional symbols do not force people to observe the religions from whence they come. In truth the majority of Americans are Christian and are perfectly happy with such displays. In reality no minority's rights are being violated when they end up among such symbols in the public square. They are perfectly free to disbelieve or ignore any display that they do not appreciate, but they do not have the right to take away those symbols that the majority of their neighbors are perfectly happy with.

To follow their logic to the bitter end we would have to run around asking every single last citizen what upsets them before we agree to display or sponsor anything, wouldn't we? That would be a tyranny of the minority if ever there was a tyranny at all. I'd say, at that rate, that we must ban sports in our public schools because someone will be upset at them. We must eliminate art class in those same schools for the very same reason. We wouldn’t want a child expressing himself and upsetting some stray citizen somewhere, would we? In fact, this constant caucusing of opinion would paralyze government in every way and is the main reason that a true democracy could never work.

So, we must all realize that having a Manger scene on public property or having the kiddies sing a Christmas song containing religious terminology will not cause forcible conversions to any particular religion. We must realize that the majority have no problem at all with such displays and that it is an oppression of people's rights to remove these well accepted symbols from the public square. We really should come to the sensible realization that this crusade to eliminate the Christian religion is wrongheaded and simply demagogic nonsense.

And I certainly hope that a few therapy sessions will dispel some of our blue state neighbor’s phobias about Christ, the Easter Bunny or Leprechauns.

Love Letter to a Liberal

As a new member of the “hard right” I feel compelled to convey to you, my dear liberal, the journey that has brought me to this place. There is a bitter animosity among many liberals today toward those that would believe as I do. As many conservatives will tell you, there is no point in hating liberals. They are as much a part of us as they are a part of the American fabric. It was once said that most conservatives start out as liberals in their youth. So how do we get to the other side of such opposing views?

For this writer, it took many years of seeing the world outside my parent’s protection to arrive at my current beliefs. In my younger years as a lower middle class American, I believed in the total goodness of mankind. I knew nothing of hate, racism, wars or politics. I was taught at home and in my schools to love everyone regardless of nationality, gender or religion. Those days where full of hope and possibility. I was once certain in my heart that the world we live in is full of people that only want to live and let live. My thoughts were that those who did not take my views need only to be given a touch of that all-powerful love and they would see how things could really be. It was devastating to find out that there where those that truly hated beyond any reasoning and that no amount of kindness or love would dilute their way of thinking.

As if it wasn’t enough to learn of real hate and wars, I learned that there are political leaders that use those wars to bring themselves to power. I became keen to maneuver through this political trickery. I learned that the worst politicians where those that preyed on the innocents. They tell opponents of hate what they want to hear, that war is very seldom necessary and blame it on the greed of their political opponent. They defy the facts of struggle after struggle, war after war throughout our human history in order to find favor in the American heart. I learned about those amoral, power hungry brokers that seek to widen the divisions in our country, using well chosen words that “sound” eloquent and intelligent to pit race against race, gender against gender, rich against poor to increase their own support in their quest for power. My eyes where opened and I knew there must be others that thought as I did. So I sought them out and found that they were called Republicans. I joined the just cause to bring back those things that I valued most, the ideas of my youth, that where taken from me by the real nature of this world. There was still hope.

Then, on September 11th, just when I thought I had seen every species of hate that the world had to offer; I learned of the islamic extremists. Without any room for doubt, they made their goals be known. Their calling in life was to promote their higher power by erasing us from the face of the earth because we are what they call the “infidels”, the ones that dare to tell them that we do not agree with their spiritual beliefs. They teach their children in their so-called schools that we are less than dogs, sub human. Without remorse, they attack the innocents. They applaud the effort to deliberately murder women and children in the most gruesome way possible to further their cause of fear and intolerance.

There is only one party that can help us to survive in this newest world of hate and insanity. It should not be surprising that the US has taken a “hard right” Republican shift and I suspect that the rest of the free world will follow in the next few years as the newest threats gather.

I long for the liberal days of my youth when everything was brightness and light, before I learned about the hate, before that one bright morning when the reality of the madness of the world came crashing in.

Liberal, I support you in your journey to find the sad truth. The reality is that the world is not what any of us want it to be. Unless those that would kill the liberal-at-heart are removed from power, the world will not ever be what we all want it to be. I am one of those people who will forever dream of peace on earth, but dare to see things for what they are today For you that have not found it acceptable to face these unbearable truths, there will always be those of us on the right who are willing to protect you from the hate and madness of these killers, even if you despise us for doing so. For those who can see that the dreams of our youth are still so very far away and that more work needs to be done to bring back the hope, won’t you please join us in this fight for our freedom?

Sincerely, One Conservative

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