Hijacking Christmas

It's Christmas season again which means it's time for cherished American traditions like chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Yuletide carols being sung by a choir, and folks fussing over what decorations are appropriate in public spaces. The latest to-do is taking place as we speak in Knightstown, Indiana, (pop 2,182) where local townsfolk are aghast over one of their own, Joseph Tompkins, who filed a lawsuit against the city over their tradition of placing a cross on top of a Christmas tree in front of city hall. Rather than facing a costly ACLU lawsuit which they most certainly would lose, the local burghers begrudgingly decided to remove the cross, much to the chagrin of the local populace. 

I don't know Mr. Tompkins but can only assume the man has a load of chutzpah, going against his neighbors in a small town whose population is overwhelmingly Christian and in favor of keeping the cross. I can imagine he's not the most popular guy in town these days. I also don't know his motivation for filing the suit, nor do I really care.

Despite claims by the local citizenry that the removal of the cross is a violation of their first amendment rights to proclaim their faith. (I keep hearing the statement that nowhere are the words "separation of church and state" found in the constitution), the very first clause in the first amendment of our constitution declares unequivocally that government shall not make any law respecting the establishment of religion. One could argue whether or not a cross atop a tree on government property really constitutes the establishment of a religion. Whichever side you're on concerning that question however matters not in the slightest, as courts all over the country have decided that indeed it does, which is why the local government in that small Indiana town wisely captiulated rather than face an expensive court battle they had no chance of winning.

Mr. Tompkins certainly has the law on his side, but the question has to be asked, is this really a battle worth fighting? Some would say that court battles over Christmas decorations are petty, they further divide an already divided nation, and go a long way to take all the fun out of what is supposed to be the most joyous time of the year, the one time when people are actually nice to each other. In other words, political correctness imposed by the no-religious-decoration-on-public-property crowd, some feel, is hijacking the holiday.

A small part of me agrees with that sentiment.

On the other hand...

Some Americans take it for granted that this is a Christian country. While it's true for now anyway, that the majority of people in the United States identify themselves in one way or other with Christianity, as we just saw, our constitution states this is no more a Christian country than a Jewish, Muslim or Atheist country, but a nation of laws irrespective of creed. This indeed is as it should be.

To Christians, myself included, the cross has deep symbolic meaning. I won't go into all of that here but suffice it to say that in a nutshell, to Christians the cross is the symbol of God's enduring love for all of humanity. At least that's how I read it. Needless to say that symbolism falls upon deaf ears to non-Christians, many of whom see the cross as representing not God, but people throughout history who have been indifferent, intolerant, and at times openly hostile to others who do not share their beliefs.

To many, the cross is a symbol of oppression. Under the cross, the Spanish government expelled all non-converted Jews and Muslims from their country in 1492. To the indigenous people of the Americas, the cross symbolizes European conquerors who brutally imposed their faith upon them. The Ku Klux Klan during their reign of terror in this country, chose the burning cross as the symbol of their own brand of cruelty, hatred and oppression. And sadly today, the cross is becoming a symbol of the intolerance of many white American Christians whom as we saw this past election season, would just as soon everyone not like them go someplace else.

Ironically, the Christians who voted for Donald Trump last month, supported a man who at least from his outward actions, could not be farther from representing Christian ethics and values. I can only assume that what appealed to the Christians who voted for him, or at least justified their vote, was his bullet point style of addressing issues close to their hearts. Although in the past, Trump stated he was "pro choice", in this cycle he came out as staunchly anti-abortion. He also claimed to be pro-Israel, anti Muslim, and pledged that when he became president, people would no longer substitute the greeting "Happy Holidays" for "Merry Christmas". How he planned to accomplish that I have no idea, make a law I suppose.

It's true that I vastly prefer wishing people a Merry Christmas to the insipid Happy Holidays. If you're interested you can read my reasons here. Yes I understand that many people do not celebrate Christmas, at least not as a religious holiday. But while there is definitely a religious component to Christmas, it is by no means strictly a religious holiday, it never has been, and in fact, the holiday predates Christianity by several centuries. Having a winter celebration commemorating the birth of the son rather than the birth of the son was simply a palatable way for Emperor Constantine to introduce his new found faith to his pagan subjects, For the first three centuries of Christianity, the followers of Christ never even thought of commemorating his birthday.

Yet today all over the land we hear voices crying out to "put Christ back into Christmas." As I mentioned in my earlier piece on the subject, we Christians can't have it both ways. If we want the emphasis of the holiday to be on religion, we can't expect people who do not share the faith to participate, even by extending the simple gesture of wishing others a "Merry Christmas."

I have to admit being slightly perplexed at the attitude of some of my fellow Christians regarding the holiday as in reality, the secular and the sacred Christmas seasons don't even overlap. As we all know, in the U.S., the secular Christmas season begins officially the moment folks begin to digest their Thanksgiving dinner. In reality it begins as soon as the stores take down their Halloween decorations.

To the purely secular, Christmas ends on Christmas Day. For my father, an a-religious person if there ever was one, it ended even earlier as our family tradition was to have Christmas dinner and the opening of presents on Christmas Eve. Like clockwork every year, after the last gift was unwrapped, my father would proclaim gloomily: "well another Christmas is over."

Of course it hadn't even begun!

To believers, the real feast of Christmas does not begin until Christmas Day, and is celebrated for the famous twelve days, culminating with the feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. In church, the four weeks preceding Christmas Day are not considered Christmas at all, but Advent, a solemn time of prayer, almsgiving, and fasting, much like the forty days (not counting the Sundays) of Lent before Easter. Just as Lent, Advent is a time of preparation, in this case not just preparing to commemorate the historical birth of Jesus, 2,000 years ago, but more importantly, preparation for the next coming of Christ which will signal the end of the world and the beginning of eternal life. Pretty heavy stuff, small wonder why that part of the Christmas story isn't mentioned in any of the holiday songs or stories we're inundated with every year at this time.

I could be wrong but I can't remember much of a conflict between secular and sacred Christmas during the first half of my life. Then about thirty years ago I began to notice a slow but steady decline in the use of the word Christmas.

The operator of the train I was riding last night announced that at the next stop we would be able to board the Christmas Train featuring Santa Claus and his minions, something that has been a Chicago tradition for a number of years. As soon as the words came out of his mouth he corrected himself saying: "Excuse me, I meant to say the Holiday Train." As you can see in the picture, I met Santa and he personally wished me a hearty "Merry Christmas". Apparently Santa is not on board with CTA policy as far as their idea of the proper nomenclature for the holiday. To illustrate the universial nature of the holiday, Santa Claus is a Christmas tradition whose origins can be traced back to pagan times.

So of course is the Christmas tree.

Neither the secular nor the religious seem to have much of a problem with the public display of the Christmas, excuse me, holiday tree, Santa Claus, and other religious-neutral symbols of the season. Chicago seems to have worked it out pretty well I think in their approach to decorations in our most public government space, Daley Plaza. For many years there was a tradition of placing a creche in the plaza at Christmastime. When people objected to the overtly religious symbolism of the life size figures representing the characters in the Christmas story, raising of the funds for the display of the creche was taken over by the Knights of Columbus and new signage made it absolutely clear that not a cent of public money was spent on the display. Then a giant menorah was placed adjacent to the creche as were symbols of other faiths, including in recent years, a nod to Pagans in the form of a tribute to the Winter Solstice. All this in the midst of our version of a holiday festival market found virtually everywhere in Germany this time of year. No one even seems to mind its name, Christkindl Market, an anglicized version of the original German,

A local official in Knightstown was asked why a similar gesture to give tribute to other faiths couldn't be made in their public square. He said that they would have no problem with that but there were no Jews, Muslims or Pagans in Knightstown. Perhaps that's true or perhaps he hasn't bothered to check.

Meanwhile many of the citizens of Knightstown, appalled by the removal of the cross from the tree, have vowed to display crosses in every front yard in town, which is certainly their right. But it seems to me that as the self-proclaimed keepers of the holiday, we Christians could do better by keeping the Christmas spirit, not by advertising our faith, like football fans during homecoming week, but by extending an olive branch to our brothers and sisters who don't share our faith. Isn't that the true meaning of Christmas? Wouldn't that be the "Christian" thing to do?

By overtly proclaiming our faith this time of year, isn't it we Christians who are hijacking Christmas? Besides, who ever heard of putting a cross on top of a Christmas tree?

Demagogues

A couple posts ago I wrote about how our political process is being affected by the combination of few credible candidates, a preponderance of citizens receiving the majority of their news through late night comedy shows, and above all, anger. My conclusion was that all of the above have turned Americans into cynics, but this op-ed piece in the Washington Post ups the ante a hundredfold. The author, Dana Milbank interviewed Nazi Holocaust survivors who see frightening similarities between the xenophobic, race bating rhetoric of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and other candidates and the reaction from their supporters, to what they heard and saw in the twenties and thirties in Germany.

Now I'm very leery of comments equating contemporary individuals and issues with fascism and the Nazis, and need to state unequivocally that I as much as I dislike their platforms, I don't believe that Trump, Cruz, or any of the other candidates spewing hate speech, espouse to be junior Hitlers. To the best of my knowledge, none of them have published an equivalent of Mein Kamf or have gone on record, as Hitler did, advocating genocide as a solution to the problems of their nation. I'm not even sure they truly believe some of the words coming out of their mouths, they're simply telling people what they want to hear. And what they want to hear is what scares me.

Phrases like "let's take this country back, carpet bomb the enemy, go after their families, then build a fifty foot wall to keep them out", are music to the ears of many Americans who feel threatened by people coming into this country, (and many who've been here a very long time), who have different values and opinions. Of course this feeling has only been exacerbated by the threat, both real and imagined, of terrorism.

Desperate for votes, these candidates find tailor-made audiences in angry, frustrated, predominantly white, Christian Americans who feel that privilege, power and success in this country are their birthright. That birthright they feel, has been stripped of them in recent years, and it doesn't take much reading between the lines to see the slogan, "let's make this country great again", coming out of the mouth of a Donald Trump, as a call to arms to restore that birthright to its proper place.

Trump supporters find their candidate's willingness, even glee in trampling upon currently accepted standards of decorum and decency, refreshing. When he attacked Mexican immigrants calling them thieves and rapists, much of the country was aghast at his insensitivity, but not Trump supporters. When he made his statement that no Muslim should be granted entrance into the United States, even his staunchest right wing critics flinched at the un-American-ness of that idea. Meanwhile his supporters jumped for joy. And most recently, Trump's on-going feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly has brought to light the many repulsive and degrading comments he has made about women. One would think that insulting half the population of this country would make a dent in his poll numbers, but not so, in fact a recent profile I read of the Trump crowd claimed a typical supporter of the billionaire real estate tycoon turned presidential hopeful, more than likely is a woman. To those supporters, Trump stands out as a beacon of light amidst a sea of that old bugaboo, "political correctness."

Ted Cruz is going after a different angry crowd, specifically evangelical Christians who in addition to the domestic issues that irk Trump supporters, are particularly upset about moral issues like the legalization of abortion and gay marriage. In his speech after winning the Iowa caucuses last week, Cruz pointed out that his campaign was guided by the "Judeo-Christian values that this country was built upon." However he didn't ingratiate himself too much with the Judeo part of that when he blasted Donald Trump recently for his "New York values", what many consider a thinly veiled reference to Jewish values. 

What both campaigns share is their apparent disdain for government and the characterization of their candidates as political outsiders. It would seem that Trump is the bigger outsider of the two as he has never held elected office, but both try to outdo the other in proudly claiming themselves to be the one most unqualified for the job.

In another Dana Milbank piece for the Washington Post this week,  he wrote:

I followed both Cruz and Trump this week at multiple campaign events across New Hampshire. It was, in a sense, a pleasure to see them use their prodigious skills of character assassination against each other. It was demagogue against demagogue (emphasis mine): lie vs. lie. Both men riled their supporters with fantasies and straw men. 

Getting back to the original Milbank piece I sited at the top of this piece, it is the sheer demagoguery of the candidates that sends shivers up the spines of some Holocaust survivors. Here he quotes Irene Weiss, a survivor of Aushwitz:

I am exceptionally concerned about demagogues, they touch me in a place that I remember. I know their influence and, unfortunately, I know how receptive audiences are to demagogues and what it leads to... 
...“It has echoes, and maybe more so to me than to native-born Americans, I’m scared. I don’t like the trend. I don’t like how many people are applauding when they hear these demagogues. It can turn.

To my ears it's not the demagogues per se that Irene Weiss fears, it is the applause of the audience. I couldn't agree more. This current election season has brought out a tremendous ugliness that once resided just below the surface in our country. The current front running Republican presidential candidates don't scare me very much as their popularity is limited. After all, demographics show again and again that white people will not be in the majority in this nation for very long, and there will always be a lot of white people, myself included, who wouldn't vote for a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz if their life depended on it. Consequently, appealing ONLY to right wing whites is not a recipe for success in winning an American presidential election anymore. Along those lines, here's a critique from the right of the current Republican  front runners in this article in The New Republic.

What truly scares me is that this country is only one or two terrorist attacks and another financial crisis away from being pushed over the edge. If that happens, it wouldn't take much for a group with truly nefarious intentions to forge a much broader coalition of angry people, focusing upon one or two groups of minorities as scapegoats for all the problems of the country. That minority could be Muslims, it could be black people, or it could be that age-old scapegoat, the Jews. Yes, it could even be white Christians who will soon find themselves in the minority of this country.

We may like to think that could never happen here, as a nation we're better than that. But these last few months unfortunately have proven otherwise.

The Blame Game

As if comedians didn't have enough material from this election season, who should come along but Sarah Palin, sent to them from on high like manna from heaven. In her latest attention grabbing stunt, Palin made a public appearance to announce her endorsement of Donald Trump for the Republican party's nomination as their candidate for president. As Trump stood next to her at a campaign rally in Ames, Iowa with a dumbfounded expression on his face, Palin went into one of her trademark stream of consciousness rants of gibberish that sent the pundits' hearts all a flutter. So much nonsense came out of her mouth that it was truly hard to make sense out of what she was saying, other than she thinks Donald Trump is really good and all of his opponents, and especially Barack Obama, are really really bad.

One thing she did make crystal clear is her contention that the current president is directly responsible for her adult son's behavior problems.

Palin's son Track has had numerous run-ins with the law, and the former governor of Alaska contends her son's issues are a direct result of post traumatic stress disorder, (PTSD), resulting from his service in the military in Iraq. Whether there is a connection between the two is debatable as A) young Mr. Palin had behavior issues before entering the service, and B) there is serious doubt as to whether he actually saw combat during his time in Iraq. What is certain is that President Obama has made veterans' health care a priority of his administration, making Governor Palin's accusations that the Obama administration turns a blind eye to veterans' needs, absurd. Of all the legitimate criticisms of the Obama administration, this is not one.

At lunch with a wise old friend the other day, I asked him why he thought President Obama when compared to all the other US presidents, is reviled by so many Americans. I expected my friend to bring up the easy answer of race, but instead he said that people right now in this country are simply angry because they are dissatisfied with their lives. They may be un-employed, under-employed with poor job prospects, in the hole with their mortgage, and/or headed toward retirement without enough put away. Some Americans may have plenty of money but are just struggling with that ol' ennui. Regardless, who better to blame for your funk and anger than the man sitting in the White House?

With her ridiculous accusations that have been panned, even by the right, Palin is tapping into a current trend in society that has reached epidemic proportions, namely blaming public figures, especially the president, for personal problems.

The good news for him is that Barack Obama is not a bi-partisan scapegoat. The grumblers and whiners on the left blame all the problems of the world including their own on the the Tea Party, the Koch Brothers, the Bush family, the police, Dick Chaney, the one percent, Monsanto, evangelical Christians, and white people, especially if they themselves are white.

Of course Obama is not the only scapegoat for the other side. Minorities, immigrants, the Clintons, political correctness, homosexuals, gun control, atheists, universal health care, little league participation awards, big government, and scores of other concepts and individuals all give the president a run for his money as the favorite scapegoat of the right.

One may ask, we've gone through bad times before without having to resort to blaming government officials or everybody with whom we disagree for all our personal troubles, why now?

Here's my half-baked answer:

In the past, no matter how desperate the situation, Americans used to believe in the promise of this country, as they looked toward a brighter future. Sadly for many of us today, The American Dream has become an ironic term. We no longer believe in ourselves, our country, or really very much at all for that matter. True, the Trump campaign uses the slogan, "time to make America great again." but the greatness they are espousing is not meant for everyone to share. They're not alone. Gone from the vision of both sides of the political spectrum I'm afraid, is the idea that all of us, no matter how divergent our backgrounds or beliefs may be, make up this country. You heard me say it before and I'll say it again, our great strength as a nation is born out of our differences. At least it used to be.

I heard a radio story this afternoon about people who date folks with different political opinions from their own, (spoiler alert: there aren't any these days). One woman interviewed for the piece said she would never date a person with different beliefs because "conservative ideas are ignorant." It seems the only thing we respect these days is keeping a tenacious grip on one's own ideology, come hell, high water, or rational discourse.

We've all become cynics, not too surprising since most of us get our news from the late night comedians. Politics, and by extension, government, has become a three ring circus, nothing more than a punchline for Steven Colbert and his peers. Nothing is sacred anymore, not school, not the church, not our families,  not our country, and least of all, not politicians and the pinnacle of their profession, the office of president, and the person who happens to hold that office. I've used this quote before but I think it's worth mentioning again. It's attributed to Oscar Wilde but I believe he lifted it from an old Irish proverb:

A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Since you can't put a price tag on hopes or dreams, they have no value to cynics (here I'm quoting myself), that is until they're gone. And when they're gone, the price we pay as we have seen in recent years, is that instead of being a nation of builders, makers and doers, we've become a nation of worriers, whiners, and complainers.

And we wonder why no one in their right mind wants to be president.

PC-Good intentions gone bad?

The talk radio show host's schtick is to point out the absurdities of what we call PC or political correctness. Today's rave was the Remembrance Day parade in a town in England that banned rifles. He devoted nearly an hour to the subject.

It does seem rather absurd to prohibit the principal tool of the people you are commemorating. Some folks might be offended by the sight of guns but what the heck, that's what war is all about, or so the argument goes. With that I agree. It's foolish to honor men and women who have gone to war without acknowledging war itself. I also agree that political correctness has gone haywire, that in our attempts to avoid offending anyone at all costs, we are creating a society that is afraid to address anything.

But I don't believe it's "political correctness" per se, whatever that may be, that's at fault. The problem lies in the very human flaw of mistaking the letter of the law for the spirit of the law, something that goes back to biblical times and beyond. For millennia, the religious of all stripes have famously been guilty of being obsessed with the tiniest details of the laws of their faith while missing the bigger picture.

Catholics for example are made fun of for seemingly arbitrary customs such as abstaining from eating meat on Fridays. The purpose of the custom which is virtually as old as the Church itself, is filled with deep significance and is quite beautiful. It revolves around performing acts of penance through personal sacrifice, commemorating Friday, the day Jesus died on the Cross. Not eating specifically the flesh of animals reminds us of God's works of salvation, particularly bringing to mind the animals that accompanied Noah and his family on the Ark. All of this of course all in the name of giving thanks and praise to God. This somehow got lost in the translation and for centuries many Catholics dutifully followed the rule without understanding it, either having forgotten their third grade catechism, or simply not bothering to ask why. Fridays became all about finding a suitable substitute for meat rather than a day to reflect upon God's supreme sacrifice for us.

Religious law in all faiths works this way, dogma serves the greater purpose of bringing the believer closer to God. Without that, a law is utterly pointless. Yet so many believers focus only the law, and not the meaning behind the law.

I think the same can be said about political correctness. The very term conjures up notions of absolutism and dogma, which is why it has been whole-heatedly grasped, most often by those on the right, as an ironic and pejorative description of their left leaning adversaries.

The first time I heard the term used in conversation, it was not as a slam against the left. It was used by a left leaning friend who described (without any irony in the least), a political candidate as being "politically correct". That is to say, the candidate's positions were exactly the same as my friend's. I was immediately struck by the arrogance of the statement, he essentially said: "either you think my way, or you're an idiot." That arrogance is unfortunately quite pervasive on the left, especially among the highly educated.

Small wonder that those on the right have grasped the opportunity to mock the other side, in particular their dogmatic approach to so many aspects of society, especially education and speech. But if PC is indeed dogma, then as is the case with all dogma, it has at its core, significant meaning and substance. Many of its adherents have simply over-reached by grasping onto the trivial, while forgetting the important stuff.

To put it simply, at the core of PC, (a term I use grudgingly for lack of a better one), is the idea that people of every gender, race, age, ethnicity, economic status, sexual orientation, physical or mental limitation, religious belief, or lack of one, in short all human beings on this planet, deserve a fair shake. This very simple idea is one that has not been around for very long. We all know that in our own country, citizenship was limited at one time to male property owners. Slavery was officially abolished only after the costliest war in this nation's history in 1865. Women did not have the right to vote until 1920 and poll taxes were used in the South to discourage poor African Americans from voting until the ratification of the 24th Amendment in 1964 that forever banned the poll tax. Here as in the rest of world, hatred and intolerance based upon our differences, continue to contaminate society. Even genocide, something we foolishly thought was finished after the terrors of World War II, goes on to this day.

This idea of equal rights for all is not a left vs. right issue. Granted there are still people in society who proudly proclaim their intolerance of those of different races, genders, you name it. We call them racists, sexists, homophobes, the list goes on and on. These folks are for the most part on the fringes of society as they should be. It is not appropriate to speak in language that expresses and encourages hatred of others. I believe this to be right, appropriate, and by golly, correct.

Please note for the record that I said hate speech is and should always be considered inappropriate and unacceptable, but not illegal.

There are words that are unspeakable in every language. In the old days swear words referred to bodily functions or the sex act. The late comedian George Carlin based a popular routine around the "seven words you can't say on TV". Carlin's point was that it's really silly to single out words that cannot be said, after all, "they're just words."

But Carlin was wrong. Words are by far our most powerful tool, more powerful than any weapon. They have the power to shape lives, to inspire people to greatness and to despair, to inspire love and to inspire hate, to create and to destroy people as well as nations. Certain words in every language are reserved for the purpose of expressing unmitigated anger, to incite, to arouse or to disgust. They serve a very useful purpose (as we all know when we hit ourselves on the thumb with a hammer), when their use is limited.

Today you still can't say those seven words on broadcast TV. But in common language they are as ordinary as the air we breathe. As a result they have lost their edge, and by definition their very reason for existence.

I can think of only two words in the English language that rate as truly unspeakable. The mere utterance of these words marks the speaker as a vile lout, an unrepentant sexist, or worst of all a bigot. One is a disparaging word for African Americans, the other, a vulgar term for the vagina, used as a disparaging word for women. You know what they are. I'm guessing that were he alive today, even George Carlin wouldn't dare say those two words in public.

If political correctness has succeeded in making the worst words you can possibly utter out loud to be words that degrade people instead of the old time "potty mouth" language, I'd say that's a pretty good thing.

However in my opinion there is a huge distinction between hateful, degrading language and merely offensive language. That distinction seems to have been lost somewhere along the way.

As far as education is concerned, the movement described with derision as PC has opened up the eyes of educators to be more inclusive, to encourage the study of new ideas, thinkers and cultures that simply had not been on the map in the past.

This is a good thing too.

However...

The flip side to all this, what has made PC despised by traditional educators, is that some of its proponents in opening the door to a world of different cultures have ferociously slammed the door shut on their own culture, creating a new kind of selective education, an intellectual intolerance if you will.

The intolerance in a large portion of academia today is directed toward the works of the dreaded DWM, the dead white male. I dare say that Western Culture, both European and American, the culture that paved the way for democracy, civil rights, women's rights, for freedom of religion, freedom of the the press, freedom of speech, not to mention PC itself, is filled with these DWMs. That is certainly NOT to say that DWMs are solely responsible for all that is good about our society. Far from it, although they have played a part. Nor is it to say that all's well with the West, and the DWMs can claim more than their share in that as well.

But to throw some 2,500 years of collective knowledge out the window, as some universities have been doing, seems a little extreme in the least.

-

To those people who say that PC is ruining society I say this: "Get that bee out of your bonnet and don't get yourself all worked into a tizzy, everything's going to be ok."

The events of the sixties that gave birth to PC, namely the civil rights and women's rights movements, and the many other movements they inspired, are the step children of revolutions for the rights of individuals and against oppression that go back thousands of years. Every revolution begins with the shout: "off with the king's head." Gradually as the foot-soldiers of the revolution become more emboldened and convinced that they are more true to the cause than the next guy, they demand the heads of the king's petty officer, the king's barber, and anyone who may have ever met the king.

Inevitably however, at some point reason and common sense start to take over. We may not have reached that point in the PC revolution yet, but it is coming.

In a time when political consensus is difficult to achieve, all men and women of reason should still be able to grasp the core values of the revolution that has in part resulted in PC. Today it is difficult to argue against this truth that we hold to be self-evident, as found in Thomas Jefferson's words (with the critical exception of one), that all people are "created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Those were and are still revolutionary words indeed.

Fortunately no one lost their heads, in the literal sense at least, in the PC revolution. The Great Books are still in print and thank goodness there will always be talk radio hosts to let us know when we screw up.