A Response to Ben Stein

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:

I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

--Ben Stein

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their "legislature" should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties." (Thomas Jefferson, 1802)

"We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries." (Thomas Jefferson, 1808)

It's not that America has become an atheist state, but this country was founded on the principle of religious freedom (i.e. the Puritans escape during the English Civil War, and a number of religious groups from both France and Germany). The problem comes in when religion is shoved down your throat constantly, and is used as a "legitimate" reason for keeping mine and other people's rights from them.

Do I think "God" should be in the Pledge of Allegiance? Hell no. It wasn't when I was a kid. Do I think one should be able to practice their own faith without fear of ridicule or persecution from the law or anyone else in anyway? Hell yes. However, when our Commander in Chief uses the CHRISTIAN Bible as a guideline when deciding on non-sectarian LAW (i.e., gay marriage RIGHTS)... well, this strikes me as a problem.

If you believe, in your heart of hearts, that gay marriage is wrong, I don't fault you. However, why shouldn't gay couples be afforded the same rights as heterosexual couples? And I don't want to hear any of that nonsense about how civil unions give gay couples the same rights as a marriage. Does the term "separate but equal" ring any bells for anyone?

And what about abortion? The Bush Regime has been trying their hardest for eight years to overturn Roe v Wade. Thankfully, they've been unsuccessful. I understand if you don't believe in abortion. I personally would probably never have one myself, and I hope I never find myself having to make that decision, but I support a woman's right to choose. The government has NO RIGHT to tell me what to do with my body. With any luck, one of the first things Obama will do when he gets into office will be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), and then MY rights to MY body are out of the MAN's hands.

Oh, and, Mr. Stein? The whole "it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees"? You're wrong.

People often ask me why I go "ape-shit" around the holidays, as my house often looks like Frosty and Rudolph threw up all over it. And the most common question I get asked is "why do you have a Christmas tree if you're Pagan?" The answer is I don't have a Christmas tree; I have a Yule tree. You fuckers stole it from us. (actually your ancestors stole it from our ancestors, but still... you get my drift...)

Think I'm kidding? For starters, watch for the History Channel special on it. They run it every year. Up until the late 1700s (I think) "Christmas" trees were BANNED in this country by the Puritans as being "too Pagan".

Early Germanic tribes would gather around a lit fir tree as a symbol of the return of the Light at Yule (the Winter Solstice).

Ancient Celts would chop down a fir tree - the only tree to survive the harsh winter - and it's base would become the Yule Log, while the rest of it was decorated with apples, for the Winter Solstice.

And, of course, there is the fact that the Catholic Church placed Christmas very specifically on the calendar, to coincide with the Rebirth of the Light (the Winter Solstice) in which the Goddess gives birth to the Sun.

A recent report was published that an astronomer in Australia used new computer software to chart the stars as they would have been in the year of Christ's birth, and it is scientifically impossible for him to have been born on December 25th. The software placed Christ's birth on June 17. Guess its time to send back those gifts, huh?