Are people just crazy, or what?Listen: If someone says "Merry Christmas" to you, take in the spirit it was meant and then go home and celebrate Festivus, if that's what you do.
If someone says "Happy Holidays" to you, take in the spirit it was meant and not as some bizarre attack against Christianity. People who do not celebrate Christmas will not naturally have those words rolling off the tongue. They mean "Merry Christmas;" they don't have to say it.
Lighten up, everybody. And by the way, it is a Christmas tree, so just call it that. Christmas is a religious holiday, and everybody needs to respect -- and accept -- that it is, even if it's not your own. Sheesh. Here's something that really gets me: people in minorities who expect everyone else to give up what they've got so they won't feel bad that they don't have it. I am a member of a religious (or in my case, ethnic) minority. Why should it bother me that other people have some different belief system? It never has, nor should it; I wasn't raised that way. If I expect people to honor my spiritual beliefs -- and you can bet I do, thank you Roe v. Wade -- I fully expect to respect others'.
I'm also annoyed by the way we've had to create holidays where they didn't exist so that no one will feel disenfranchised. I had no problem as a child knowing that Chanukah was a minor holiday which sometimes happened to coincide with the big Christmas to-do going on out in the world. What must they have to create for Muslim children, since Ramadan is a) not an opportunity to commercialize gift-giving on a huge scale, and b) doesn't line up nicely timing-wise with ChrismChanuKwaanizikah? And hey folks, you know, there are plenty of people in this country who don't fall into step as Christians or Jews or African-Americans or even Muslims. The little Zen children, at least, aren't bothered by any of it, but come on. There are plenty of belief systems out there. Let's just let everybody do their thing and say what they damn well please.
Speaking of national insanity, can someone tell me exactly why we send troops into war? I know we were attacked and all; the supposed rationale for all of this is that we are defending our way of life, is it not? Which way of life is that? Because the way our leaders are doing things is not representative of the life I believe deserves defense. We are a nation of law, or so I have always believed. So I have been taught, at my parents' dinner table and in any classroom I have ever sat. We are a nation of ideals. This administration does not represent American ideals, and it flouts American law. I am disgusted.
President Clinton, as you recall, was brought to impeachment not because he took part in oral sex in the White House, but because he lied about it. The law he broke was perjury. Of course, this was perjury that had nothing do with the responsibilities of his office, but with oral sex with an intern. He was raked over the coals for that, because, as the opposition made clear, the president is not above the law.
Is President Bush above the law? He should not be, and he has broken serious laws. He has established precedent for the government to persecute any of us at any time. Let him be taken to task for what he has done; let the law apply to him and to Cheney and to Rumsfeld and Rove and all of them. Their arrogance is repulsive to me, these people who think that they are above the law. They say it is in the name of security, but like everything else, it is really in the name of preserving their own power. Let us recall the words of Benjamin Frankilin (1859):
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
