Sarah Palin: Is There a War on Christmas?

Sarah Palin has written a new book entitled Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas. Palin objects to what she and others on the right have often referred to as the “war on Christmas” being waged by secularists. Typically, the left responds to this complaint by scoffing at it dismissively in incredulity, and if you wander around the web looking for reactions to the things Palin has said, that is what you will generally find. My aim today is to take a closer look at what has changed about how our society treats the holiday season that offends Palin and those who share her views. What makes this portion of our society feel alienated in this way?

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Bill O’Reilly Agrees with Reza Aslan

Bill O’Reilly appears to have written a book called Killing Jesus in which O’Reilly argues that Jesus was killed because he opposed the Roman occupation of Judea (I say “Judea” because that is what the Romans called it at the time) on the grounds that the Romans were redistributing wealth away away from the people of that province, shipping it back across the Mediterranean to Italy. In sum, O’Reilly portrays Jesus as an anti-tax hero, in the mold of the Tea Party. The left has, of course, jumped all over this, emphasizing that O’Reilly neglects the various parts of the Bible in which Jesus defends the poor. What I find so interesting about this is that while O’Reilly has placed the emphasis on specific, narrow parts of the Bible, he is expressing a view that is more or less consistent with the one expressed by Reza Aslan, the man who was the subject of that famous interview with FOX in which they malign him for being a Muslim yet nonetheless writing about Jesus. I wrote about him here. Continue reading “Bill O’Reilly Agrees with Reza Aslan” →

The Isolationism Label

Lately I have found the internet awash in accusations that those who are opposed to US intervention in Syria are isolationists. These columnists are routinely comparing the Assad regime to the Third Reich and skeptical citizens to the members of the American isolationist movement of the late 30’s and early 40’s. This is a bad analogy. Here’s why.

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The Many Defeats of the Schools

A friend of mine recently directed me to an obscure old piece from The Atlantic published in 1939, entitled “The Defeat of the Schools” by James L. Mursell. I find the piece fascinating in no small part because the critique it makes of American school systems is more or less synonymous with the modern critique. All of which raises an interesting question–is the perceived decline in educational standards overestimated, or has it been going on for much longer than most people think?

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Why Do States Kill Civilians?

In recent days, there’s been much talk of how the Syrian government is killing civilians in Syria. Most people have been inclined to view this as manifest evidence that the Syrian government is run by malevolent and/or insane individuals. I think this response is too quick and too dismissive. Throughout history, states have often killed civilians. The individuals who give the orders that civilians be killed are not all uniformly evil or crazy. There is some purpose that states seek to achieve by targeting civilians, and today I wish to shed some light on what that purpose is.

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