How to Have a Politically Correct Merry Christmas

There is little doubt about the tone Obama has wanted to set for the nation. His song has been about bailouts, spending, class warfare, circumventing Congress with executive orders, abortion rights and LGBT.

The president has made his point very clearly for all Americans to hear and ponder. In a single succinct and clearly stated proclamation, Obama’s doctrine for America, as it relates to global tensions believed to be caused by Muslims, is clear. In a 2009 speech in Cairo, he said the tension “has been fueled by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were often treated as proxies without regard to account their own aspirations. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”

No one would argue that we need to seek peace with all our neighbors in the world community, but now the president has declared that we must ignore the universal cry for jihad coming from the Muslim world and tone down the rhetoric. Maybe you’re right. Toning down the rhetoric might calm things down a bit, but toning down the resistance to a universal and global Muslim caliphate can never be diminished or abandoned.

Muslims are doing more to create tension and a bad reputation than the next dozen speeches in Cairo could smooth over. Jihad is not a trend, trend, or hula hoop mentality among Muslims. It is a way of life, a teaching of the Koran and a commitment made by nearly all of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims. This is not my data, this is our data, and it belongs to anyone in a modern world who owns a television, has an internet connection, or can afford to buy even an occasional edition of a reputable newspaper.

Much more than politics, the president of this nation also sets the tone for the general population. The United States became deeply involved with its own spectacular natural resources when Teddy Roosevelt took office. The Gipper took humor to new heights in Washington during his administration, not to mention a new interest in old movies.

More than anything, he may have left in his legacy the bravery, iron will, and patriotism of George Washington that brought out the best in every American in his day. That was something without which the United States would not have sustained itself during its nascent years.

Is it different today? I tend to cringe when angry bloggers resort to coming up with nasty names for Barack Obama because I think his message is compromised or completely lost when he’s biased, with nothing but anger. The messages may be true and necessary to be written or spoken, but when embellished with mean appellations, they tend to curl downward and are almost lost.

Some of them may be true, others have been earned by the president, and others fit neatly into the larger scope of his entire affectation of the nation. Some call him Barry because his name in the past was actually Barry Soetoro. Aside from all the birth claims that Mr. Obama may not have been born in the US, the use of the name and when he changed it remains a mystery. That’s one won by the president.

Some like his Capone-era administration in Chicago’s Prohibition days. With completely uninvestigated and highly mysterious connections to Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Acorn, and an Attorney General who appears to be waging war on the states, we may want to hold back, but there’s more. Add to that, Holder’s mishandling of Fast and Furious and now what we have is yet another case of the president getting something well earned. Does it look like the mobster days? You’ll have to answer that for yourself and I won’t remind you of the adage about looking like a duck.

These kinds of unknowns, or known but dubious, masked, and spurious bits and pieces, exert the same kind of influence. Between the lines you can tell from the comments of top bloggers, pundits, writers and correspondents that they aren’t just scolding the Obama sycophants or just making fun of them. Rather, they are drawing the attention of our citizens; they are offering a wake-up call, a chance at a moment of truth, and some real enlightenment rather than more hype and adoration.

It could be like trying to convince your teenage daughter that the creepy guy next door isn’t really a knight in shining armor who has come to lure her away from the humble abode he is now providing for her. It seems pointless, but Americans can only be fooled for so long if we believe in Abraham Lincoln, you know; the something of the people, the whole thing of the people.

We want to see what the president has done that, after all, may be good for the nation. There is one thing that Barack Obama has advanced during his administration that no one else has ever attempted. He alone has advanced the cause and purpose of the gay agenda beyond all expectation. Sadly, this has also divided a nation where more than half of the citizens still see all of this as just old-fashioned perversion, rather than the new 1960s-style freedom movement.

The mixture of truth and misrepresentation, falsehood and fabrication has served to produce a mood or set the tone. What is the tone? The easiest way to explain that would be to look at what has come out of the wood with increasing intensity and frequency. All the activist judges who want to enforce a radical new ruling, all the Hollywood icons who have lost all vestiges of morality and decency, all the politicians who once learned to lie to their constituents are now bragging and showing their true colors.

Slippery business practices, waste of taxpayer money, and government waste in general have become more of the same. Occupy Wall Street is a prime example of what happens when the ‘get something for nothing’ crowd decides to organize and unions that use thug tactics, criticize and manipulate to affect public policy, come forward in time to occupy the rear.

It’s the frenzy of a free-for-all in a nation that was founded on integrity, honor, freedom and best principles. Our founders, being true realists and anything but starry-eyed idealists, would indeed turn in their graves at the thought of all of this, but it is we who are burdened with the thought of all of this. Who would have thought!

As we head into the 2011 holiday season, it’s encouraging to see a little more of the true American spirit resurfacing in various parts of the country. One such place is the small town of Athens, Texas, in East Texas, where more than 5,000 residents of that town and surrounding areas have gathered to keep the Christmas display open to the public throughout the season. County Judge Richard Sanders has ruled that residents are complying with the law.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation may be in a state of disbelief about the overwhelming support from locals and it seems, to many Americans across the country, judging from bloggers and news reports, that they are totally supportive of the people of Texas who wants the Bethlehem left in its place and respected.

Here is a case of a leader setting the tone. Rick Perry, who just a few months ago led a crowd of 30,000 Christians at a prayer rally at Houston’s Reliant Stadium, is an outspoken Christian who makes no secret of his belief that the nation needs to continue in the Christian faith that so many of the founders once openly professed. This is a clear example of how one leader can set the tone for an entire state.

Some of the renewed interest in Conservative candidates goes beyond their backgrounds, past achievements and performances in public debates. America still needs matriarchal or patriarchal figures to look up to and set the tone for the nation. It is something that speaks to the very spirituality of the nation and to the best of our collective humanity. This is not naivety of the past, but an extreme necessity of the present. The change in trends seems to indicate that we are once again pursuing something transcendent and much more satisfying in our national experience.

Christianity is more than just America’s predominant religious bent, it is part of our heritage. It is a part that apparently we are not going to forget or leave aside because of the dark tone that an American president put. Americans still don’t want a preacher for president, but they are always willing to elect a president who got some of his best things from some of our best preachers.

Stories abound of some memo circulating inside a government office banning the seasonal greeting, “Merry Christmas.” Now it is Congress that has been warned against the dreaded seasonal greeting. Have we gone from being a nation of laws to a nation of silly notions and politically correct gimmicks?

Have our leaders forgotten that it was not King George who led our ancestors to America by himself? The pilgrims and founders came here because long before Jorge became tyrannical, they had discovered a new freedom within themselves. Their sins and guilt were lifted at Calvary and they discovered that without that inner freedom it really didn’t matter where they lived.

They believed in Christ when he declared that he could set them free once and for all, starting deep inside, even if they were sitting in one of George’s prisons. Jesus said, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)

It was that freedom that made them hungry for even more freedom for their families, aspirations, and hope for a better life. It was that first freedom that gave birth to all other freedoms and, subsequently, to this very nation. It is still that same freedom that Americans see in depictions of the birth of Christ in the quaint and simple nativity scenes. It is the freedom that they reflect to each other with a simple act of good will and the declaration that they wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas.