The Holiday Whose Name Dare not be Spoken
Starbuck's new apparently occasionless winter holiday cup has been a source of significant controversy; even among Christians. Some argue, with merit, that since Starbuck's cups have never been religious, then what's the big deal.
However, those who would have us just ignore the Starbucks cup are missing the point; the problem isn't the cup, but the vicious and bigoted attack on Christianity the cup represents. Why is Christmas the only holiday whose name cannot be mentioned? The cup design is based on the idea that mentioning Christmas at Christmas offends the people who are celebrating Christmas -- through their shopping habits if not through any sort of theological affinity.
We never hear of how businesses fear to mention Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Eid Al-Fitr because they think it will alienate their customers even though 70.6% of American's are Christian while only 1.9% are Jewish and 0.9% are Muslim.
Why then do business hesitate to mention the name of a holiday that the vast majority of Americans celebrate?
In a moment of snarkiness one might propose that it's because liberals fear the power of Christ's name just as the characters in Lord of the Rings refused to mention Sauron's name because they feared it would attract his attention. After all, why else use Xmas instead of Christmas?
The reality, however, is that businesses are buying into the liberal's bizarre view of tolerance, where the majority must tolerate whatever any minority likes but minorities never ever have to tolerate anything that the majority likes.
Essentially, liberals are advocating the inverse of Democracy where the minority makes the rules, not the majority.
In the liberal view of tolerance, Christians must tolerate quotes from atheists like Nietzsche in valedictorian's speeches but atheists must never have to tolerate the voluntary mention of Christ in any public setting. Similarly, liberals believe that Jews are so intolerant that the mere mention of Christmas will offend them. Needless to say, Jews are not that bigoted.
This liberal concept of one-way tolerance is the basis for many of societies' ills ranging from PC speech -- which is really censorship of any idea liberals don't like -- to "safe spaces" -- where only liberals can speak.
The reality is that what liberals call tolerance is just censorship of any ideas they don't like such as Christianity.
Liberals use their inverted view of tolerance as a tool in their war on America and specifically as a way to force Christians to be silent in their own country; imagine if anyone were to argue that the call to prayer could not be allowed in Saudi Arabia because it might offend the handful of Christians who live in that country.
America has always been about true tolerance, in the ideal if not always in how people live. While there has been a lot of anti-Catholic bigotry, for example, it's never been hard to find fish on the menu on the Fridays in Lent. Similarly, few if any Christians object to synagogues, Buddhist temples or Hindu shrines. American Jews have never demanded that restaurants don't serve pork or that they must be allowed to refuse to drive a truck that carries pork products.
The reaction of many to the Starbucks cup is a sign that people are fed up with being forced to be silent in their own country. Just as Americans are thronging to support candidates who want to slow down the illegal, and legal, invasion of America by people who don't share the American dream of freedom and individual responsibility, many Americans are figuratively sticking their heads out their windows and yelling "I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it any more!" about the second-class citizenship liberals are forcing on Christians.
And who can blame them? Day after day they see courts imposing anti-Christian morality on America in direct contradiction to the votes of Americans. Those same courts have declared, based on their personal beliefs not on the intent of the authors of the Constitution, that Christian speech is to be censored in public while atheist and non-Christian religious speech is to be extolled.
It's no accident that the courts have ruled that the statue of a Mesoamerican god can be built with public funds and that works of "art" that attack Christianity can be funded with taxpayer dollars but that a Cross paid for with private funds on Federal land is an unacceptable violationof the First Amendment.
Since the 1950s, liberals have been waging a war on Christianity in America. They use the dictatorial powers of the courts to oppress Christians in a Christian land. Whenever a court rules to condemn Christianity there are always just enough liberal legislators to ensure that the huge effort needed to overrule a court can't succeed.
The Iran Nuclear "deal" and the TPP are recent secular examples of the liberal ideal of rule by minority. By inverting the Constitutional intent in both cases Obama managed to get what he wanted even though he couldn't even get a majority vote in Congress, much less the 2/3rds majority vote required by the Constitution for any treaty.
To protest the Starbucks cup then is not to merely be hypersensitive, though according to liberals "micro-aggressions" are a valid basis for public outrage, but rather to express justifiable anger at the ghettoization of Christianity that the liberal establishment and the MSM are pushing.
It's bizarre that in a world where liberals can declare that the phrase "hard worker" can be an aggression against blacks those same liberals can mock Christians for being upset about a concerted effort to celebrate Christmas while never actually being allowed to say just what it is we're celebrating.
The reality is that it's liberals who are intolerant and motivated by bigotry and hate. The truth is that just as the majority must tolerate the minority, the minority must also tolerate the majority. While it's wrong to demand that people pray it's just as wrong to demand that people not be allowed to pray when they want to.
So feel free to be upset not about the Starbuck's cup but about the fact that a business which is eager to profit off of Christmas is unwilling to say the name of the holiday they're profiting off of.
It's time for Americans to demand that the rights of the majority be protected. To acknowledge that while a government by the people and for the people must protect the rights of all it does not have to do so by denying the rights of the majority.
You can read more of tom's rants at his blog, Conversations about the obviousand feel free to follow him on Twitter
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