War on Christmas? There are those who complain that failing to put “Christ” into every missive during this season is, somehow, a threat to Christianity and western culture.
From Yoism.com
Here in Dallas, First Baptist Church, the big one downtown, put up a site tracking businesses (GrinchAlert.com) they deem not sufficiently saved, who manifest their imagined antipathy to Christianity by failing to say “Merry Christmas” at every turn. Some businesses substitute what these busy-body Baptists regard as near pagan rite: “Happy Holidays!” (Sample complaints: “No Christmas Tree, No mangerscene” (sic); “Excessive use of ‘holiday’, no mention of Christmas. With a name like American Airlines, come on.”)
You may roll your eyes now.
Renowned preacher Fred Craddock, in a column in Christian Century, inadvertently reports that it is the self-appointed defenders of overweening Christian-ness themselves who do damage to the cause of Christianity. Everybody is so busy having Christmas, they forget about the Christian tradition, the necessity of Advent. “Forget Advent,” they appear to say, “Have a ‘Merry Christmas,’ or else!” Craddock’s words come here through the bulletin of the Church of the Saviour:
Inward/Outward from Church of the Saviour
We Wait
Fred Craddock
Every year for four weeks we wait. Ours is not a passive waiting; we wonder as we wait. We wait in the heavy joy of repentance, which cleanses us to be ready to receive the One Who Comes. We renew baptismal vows. We encourage one another in order to be a community of fresh expectancy.
And we pray, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Come, O Long Expected Jesus.” At times we fuss at God: “How long, O Lord? How long will you tarry?”
Our generation is impatient. Advent lasts too long. Nasty notes are passed to the choirmaster: “We don’t know these Advent songs. Why don’t we sing some carols?” Everybody is already having Christmas except the church.
On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black passengers to relinquish seats to white passengers when the bus was full. Blacks were also required to sit at the back of the bus. Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system and led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation.
Rosa Parks made a nearly perfect subject for a protest on racism. College-educated, trained in peaceful protest at the famous Highlander Folk School, Parks was known as a peaceful and respected person. The sight of such a proper woman being arrested and jailed would provide a schocking image to most Americans. Americans jolted awake.
Often lost in the retelling of the story are the threads that tie together the events of the civil rights movement through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. As noted, Parks was a trained civil rights activist. Such training in peaceful and nonviolent protest provided a moral power to the movement probably unattainable any other way. Parks’ arrest was not planned, however. Parks wrote that as she sat on the bus, she was thinking of the tragedy of Emmet Till, the young African American man from Chicago, brutally murdered in Mississippi early in 1955. She was thinking that someone had to take a stand for civil rights, at about the time the bus driver told her to move to allow a white man to take her seat. To take a stand, she kept her seat. [More below the fold] Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Somebody linked over to Red State. What a creepy site.
First, it looks like those old ’50s school films about the creeping “Red Menace,” the way they paint every state Commie Red (no, I know they’re not conscious commies, but let’s call the color what it is). It’s as if they have no knowledge of history over there, and they’ve never noticed. It’s pretty clear that they have no desire nor need for white and blue, even to make “red, white and blue.”
If you have it on vinyl, you know what we mean.
Second, they brook no dissent at all. Their terms of use (no open discussion) show the Red Staters get to decide whether you’re with the Red State Big Brother program — and if for any reason they decide you’re not toeing the party line, you’re vanquished. No appeals. “It’s not really an echo chamber, it’s unison singing.”
Third, there is the astonishing sucking sound where brains of skeptics should be. Pick the stupid side of almost any issue, and it’s represented in spades there. On the sciency front, for example, Red Staters have no use nor knowledge of Darwin, they think the warming temperatures of the climate are faked, probably by unholy, non-Red Stater weathermen, and they are convinced that the UN and others are using malaria for “population control” — so they favor massive amounts of DDT.
Remember Mr. Urquhart, the Delaware Tea Partier who, by the grace of God, lost the race for the state’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and his claim that “separation of church and state” was Hitler’s idea? Urquhart appears to drift in the mainstream at Red State.
CNN, of all outlets, let Anderson Cooper roam through Michelle Bachmann’s absurd, hoax claim that President Obama’s trip to India would cost $200 million a day. Cooper really owns Bachmann on this one.
When you’re fed up with the hysteria that Glenn Beck offers instead of true history, when your neighbor complains about how government regulation should “get off my lawn,” point them to this story.
It’s truer than Beck, righter than Limbaugh, and it deserves a wider audience:
The fiercely independent Democratic Blog of Collin County compiled a series of Burnt Orange Report posts that make the case that Rick Perry should be retired from the governorship, at a bare minimum.
Will voters wake up before Tuesday, and do the right thing?
Alice and the Red Queen – illustration by Sir John Tenniel
Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the name Lewis Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland, 1866
[Yes, the illustration is from Through the Looking Glass, 1871]
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
