Broadcast quality MP3 (40 MB)
Decent quality MP3 (14 MB)
In Brief
A mostly lighthearted look at the right wing's favorite fantasy. Which is: that "secular progressives" have declared a "war on Christmas"--part of their larger war to destroy Christianity, promote drug use, legalize prostitution and narcotics, etc., etc.
We'll hear ravings by Bill O'Reilly, a funny rebuttal by Jon Stewart, personal reflections by KD, and a short history lesson. (The only real wars against Christmas were fought by the Puritan Christians.) We end with selections from a fine comic audio collage on the subject by Scooter.
The uncut, 30-minute version of Scooter's collage (and other interesting audio) is available from his Web site, www.aksisofevil.org.
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2 comments:
As a British citizen (who isn't subject to culture war - the BBC tells me what my culture is and forces me to pay for it !) this seems like a very strange post.
Your premise seems to be that there is a progressive culture of truth and an anti-progressive culture of lies ? However, isn't all culture lies - some more harmless than others ? Santa, Jesus, Dickens etc ... These things aren't physics ! Thus all culture warriors are liars ? They fight over who gets to impose the lies.
The reason there is a culture war in the US is because the US is not a country like Denmark but a continental and global empire. If in the British Empire control had been centred in London there would have been culture war between Bill O'Reilly in London and progressive 'truth tellers' in Toronto. Or the other way around ! If the EU becomes a single country the culture war could easily spill over into a shooting war.
All 'progressives' would have to do, if they REALLY wanted to end the culture wars, would be to set the states free and decentralise power. This will not happen. The progressive lie is that there is a magical thing called the USA where people in Maine have more brotherly love for Chicanos in LA than they do for 'foreigners' a few miles down the road in Quebec, who live across an imaginary line on a map. There are no red states and blue states only the magic unicorn of the USA !
The idea of a "War on Christmas" was fully developed by the John Birch Society, but actually has its origins in the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the American Right, particularly Henry Ford's work The International Jew. According to Ford (considered a great influence by Hitler) and his ilk Jews conspired to run Christianity out of the public sphere in order to weaken white America for their world conspiracy. I have updated the Rational Wiki page on the "War on Christmas" to reflect the disgusting racist roots of popular American Right-Wing ideology.
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