David Needs Slingshot, as do we all.

Sometimes you have to speak truth to power.  Sometimes before you speak truth to power, you announce the speech.  Sometimes, when people want to hear the speech about truth and power, they ask you to travel long distances and advertise the event.  Sometimes the Power part of the equation gets nervous, does one of those anticipatory arrest things, and really toss the spanner, mucking things up, and all before a single word is spoken.  It's called prophylactic protection of the public from nasty concepts such as preservation of one group's rights in the vast patchwork of humanity.

Apparently, promotion of a particular group can get you arrested in Germany.  Promotion of the rights of this group, to their historic, cultural and religious background, celebrated with symbols, gatherings, writings, exchange of ideas, is all very dangerous in today's culture of correctness.  This means, one group apparently is no longer "correct".

Still, when speaking truth to power, it also helps that the media, the town crier, the internet bloviators, and whatever passes for Nooz, actually have a record of admissions that all prior statements, while good for circulation figures, are not even close to the concept of truth.  Speaking truth to power always is best done when you start from a position of truth.  Truth today should demand clear statements of biography, speeches and writings.  If those are directed at or about the group that is no longer "correct" you can get arrested for it, pilloried for it, and denigrated without cause for it.  In other words, the lie today is Ruler, the Truth a pale semblance of its former Kingship.

Such is the case of Dr. David Duke, an historian, supporter of human rights, outspoken advocate of cultural preservation.  Dr. Duke, our David, went into the Coliseum, also known as Cologne, Germany, to speak about his views that the culture of the European, white, Christian peoples is getting the short shrift in today's endless campaigns of political correctness.  It's his opinion.  He's entitled to it.  'Nuff said.  Move along.  Nothing to see here.

Except, that's not what happened.  Dr. Duke got arrested.  His speech was supposedly cancelled, although some brave soul had a copy so everyone that got to the hall heard the contents, but not the proper, from the source, delivery. Dr. Duke was simply going to make a speech about the current dismal state of affairs in teh age of correctness that gets the rights of one group all wrong.

Unfortunately, the media seems to cotton onto Dr. Duke's former, as in no longer a member, membership in a Klan organization and won't let that tidbit go.  Dr. Duke is not now in the Klan.  Then again, Angela Merkl is not in the Communist Party any longer, but she was for a long time a Communist.  Interestingly, she is not introduced as "member, albeit likely formerly, of the Communist Party.  How many of us belonged to groups we'd rather forget than admit?  Be honest, because someone knows if you're lying.  Count me into that group, as I have belonged to some groups I'd rather never admit associating with, and I'm not naming names here either.

All that Dr. Duke wanted to convey is the message that protecting the heritage, customs, symbols and history of the European, and those of European origin, is important.  Those are the people that came from Europe, bringing Christianity, along with the customs of their country of origin, and are now found mostly in North America, as well as their home countries of Europe.  These are the formerly correct, but now disparaged, majority group of the US, who are discouraged from celebrating with Merry Christmas, public square displays of Creches, and gatherings where foods of the 'home' country are celebrated with similar customs also being part of the festivities.

Sure, a generation ago, White people were sometimes, even often in cases, racist.  These days, White people cannot have a part of the public square for a Christmas tree, nor can they greet one another with Merry Christmas.  We are so intimidated, we don’t even flinch when we’re told we can no longer greet another with Happy Easter, except inside the church building itself.

Now, I am as against racism, discrimination or someone telling me who I must be nice to when I don't feel particularly like being told in the first place.  However, I am also bone weary of the insipid "Happy Holidays" foisted on Christians when the expression works just as well for the Fourth of July, or Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving.  I don't want the thought police telling me what I can and cannot say in a supposedly free society.

December for Christians is Merry Christmas.  It's Happy Christmas.  It is the holiday that celebrates the birth of my Lord.  After all, Holiday didn't get born in a stable and Holiday didn't upset the Powers that Were back then, resulting in a tortured murder and resurrection that gives meaning to the entire Christmas season in the first place.  But, I digress.

The problem with Dr. Duke is that he went into the land of political correctness run well and truly into a whole different zeitgeist run amok, and tried to speak his mind.  Using facts.  Facts he had unearthed through talking with historians, reading historians, and dropping a few, not so well liked minds.  Bishop Williamson could tell the same story.  Dr. Duke's mind, which if you take what is said by and about him, has been pretty open.  He repeatedly says and writes that every culture has a right and a duty, to preserve and celebrate its history.  (The italics is my surmise of what Dr. Duke says and writes.)  These are not the views of a monster supremacist, which Dr. Duke is not.  Not for decades.  Not at all.

He's likely not so happy about his own youthful decisions regarding organizational alliances, because they tend to catapult all that supremacist, propaganda type language.  Like most of us, when we realize our membership somewhere is not a hot idea, we are stuck without that big eraser to remove stupid actions of youth from the ‘permanent record.’  He is also consistent over the last decades at least, with the ideals of truth in history, not just that story that best pleases the victors.  (Apologies to Napolean.)   The big Kahuna of history that The Powers That Are The Real Powers want to remain untouched is the whole issue of who's controlling what for what ends, and to who's benefit.  Cui Bene?

Why is it that there is only one religious group that cannot celebrate its own BIG Winter Holiday, using the culturally correct symbols of Creche and Merry Christmas greeting, when 85 percent of us claim that Christian heritage?  Why is it that promoting cultural events of import to people of easy sunburning skin, have to be 'amended' in order to be 'acceptable' to Culture Cops?  Why is it that even in communities where not a single non-Christian is graduating from the local high school still cannot vote to have a brief non-denominational prayer blessing the newly graduated?  Why is a Creche banned but a Menorah blessed?  Why can children celebrate Kwanzaa, but not learn about Pentecost (for Christians and for Jews, as both have the same holiday with different focus, but still...)  Yes, I do know Kwanzaa is a secular holiday.

Why is the cross around my neck banned when I am wearing it as a sign of my own faith?  What exactly is so upsetting to anyone about a simple Christian symbol?  (I promised I wouldn't get into how radical Christ really is.  That's for another day.)   Why is it that my own WASP culture seemingly the target of all this suppression?  It appears pretty clearly that Dr. Duke needs us all to pull out the metaphorical slingshot and let a well aimed shot go against these political correctness police and put them out of business.

I know that I am not the most likely person to defend Dr. Duke.  I am a Yankee, and Northerners are not too fond of many things Southern.  I came of age in the era of Political Correctness.  I actually thought it was a good thing, until I read the "Mene Mene tekhel ...", not of Daniel, but of my own heritage being ignored in favor of 'Anything But My Heritage."  

As much as I might try, I cannot get past one truth.  Dr. Duke is right.  I am a White Christian female and I am bone weary of political correctness. My Christianity informs my love for all my fellow humans, and yet I can easily be called a racist for wanting to celebrate my own Christian holidays with people from the lands of my ancestors.  My Scottish grandmother taught me about feast days and fast days, and the importance of prayer and love for all in all aspects of life.  Mum taught me that Christmas and Easter are not just holidays but signposts on the path to guide us all from birth to death.  Today, in the 21st Century, Christianity is the bastard child no one wants to admit belongs at the table where humans share all feasts.

The truth is, I read about a hundred writings of Dr. Duke, including his books. I do my homework.  His speech is reasoned, well supported, documented as appropriate, and measured.  He is not a supremacist in any sense of the word.  He si not a radical.  Dr. Duke espouses the support of all groups in celebrating their own customs, culture and holidays.  He favors the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday and the celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday.  Every people should celebrate their own culture.  It is part of what makes us who we are as a diverse people.  Just as it is not right to exclude all but a certain group, it is wrong to exclude any single group from its or their celebrations.  Yet, today celebrating or publicly displaying a German Christmas tree or a Palestinian Creche, saying Merry Christmas, or wanting to preserve a display of the Ten Commandments is banned on the false premise that these are promotions of a particular religion.  Saying Merry Christmas is First Amendment speech.  The Ten Commandments, no matter what the Supremes in DC say, is a foundation of our legal culture.  A Christmas Creche is a symbol of the historic birth of Jesus Christ, an event we acknowledge every time we write the year 2011, as it is 2011 AD, Anno Domini.  Yet all of this for Christians is no longer encouraged or even allowed.

Why is this?  Why is celebrating Christ, Christmas, Lent and Advent such a bad idea for Christians that still make up the majority of Americans?  Why does it seem a concerted plan is in effect to make Christians a really invisible part of the fabric of society?

Yes.  There it is. I said it.  We all need the proverbial slingshot to strike down these idiotic thought police and controllers of the public square that hound out my own people.  My own clan cannot gather in most cities to celebrate our own clan holidays, the celebrations of my own tribe, if you will.

Dr. Duke is correct in this.  The Caucasians are getting restless, or should be.  The Christians are getting restless, or should be.  The European settlers that came to the US are getting restless, or should be.  We want to celebrate our holidays, in our own parks, with all the trimmings that are closely associated with our own group.  White people are also an ethnic group, despite having been told that ethnic for a blonde Swede means someone with brown hair and different religion than we experienced in our own churches as children.

This is how I see the issue.  We, members of the now almost former majority of people in the US, are now constrained to avoid talk that is dangerous in the public square.  Christian holidays celebrated in ethnic mode for us is obviously dangerous.  Were this not so, we'd see blazing signs of Merry Christmas over the Creche right at the side of City Hall in many communities.

We are unable to celebrate Christmas and Easter in the schools and public places we hold dear.  If a graduate wants to say a little prayer to bless the proceedings where those stunning sheepskins are passed out, well bless them.  Even if a public school is the soon to be alma mater, and the class knows none will be offended, that is.  Etiquette means you don’t hurt the feelings of others, but laws ought not control this.  If White people want to celebrate European history, or want to eat ebel skeevers, hot-cross-buns during Lent, or Easter Eggs decorated beyond all good taste, well bless them also.  (Ebel Skeevers are little doughnut like delights originating in Scandinavian countries, and one of the few non-white foods from the area, unlike potatoes, cod, cauliflower, on white china, jokingly known as Norwegian colorfully haute cuisine.)  Pass the latkes, bagels, and requisite schemar, for the other guys too.

It has nothing to do with the segregation or whites only, of prior decades.  It has to do with wanting to keep my own valuable heritage, including Christmas trees to light the park.  It has to do with wanting Easter dresses, not Spring frocks.  It is that recently uncomfortable intersection of Christian holidays and White heritage.  We can do this even as we light candles at the Creche, then turn and light Kwanzaa candles. At the same time, our pale faces want to gather together to celebrate our Swedish antecedents, or our German roots.  And we don't want the ACLU telling us we can't.

I've heard the speech Dr. Duke gave in the Czech Republic.  I've heard the speech that Dr. Duke was to give in Germany.  There was nothing in it that warranted his arrest.  That is, nothing except the danger to those that want people of one specific ethnic type to forgo their own heritage and move away from the deeply held beliefs that Christianity as celebrated by Christians for millenia in our European homelands, where now it is dangerous to speak of such seditious beliefs.  What is so frightening about White People celebrating their own White heritage?  If it is good for all groups of whatever ethnic heritage, to celebrate their history, traditions and religious background, then it must be equally good for Caucasians, Christians, and what was formerly disdainfully referred to as the Majority, also to celebrate. 

We don't make a swath of humanity cognizant of its heritage by banning that group from the public square.  All we need to do is ensure that all groups are allowed to celebrate their heritage.  When Christmas comes around, that heritage includes celebration of He who offers riches to all, and whose birth is the reason we celebrate Christmas in the first place.

As for Dr. Duke, his image has been highly burnished, albeit falsely, by a controlled press, constantly repeating his long ago group memberships making him little more than a racist cracker, not the PhD holder, well spoken, well researched, clear thinking, and soft spoken person he truly is.  His books put the lie to the now outdated unreality that is our press made image of him.  For that, we all need a slingshot to let the hot air out of the thought balloons, that form our caricature of Dr. Duke.  Remember, if you have changed opinions over the years, you too could be saddled with a life long fondness for Tiddly Winks or the beloved mullet, to say nothing of being tarred with the racist label for insulting some group or other, even in jest.

We also need to deflate those caricature balloons for most figures whose reputation depends on information that might be more than 5 years old.  People change, and societies change.  Now that the easily sunburned parts of society have opened all sorts of doors, and Christians have meekly turned the other cheek as our Creches and Crosses disappear from hilltops and parks, it is time to reclaim that which we are too close to losing.  Most urgently, we cannot remain silent in this thought police arrest of Dr. Duke over in Germany. 

What is next?  Should we voluntarily start signing up for 'reeducation' centers?  Should we preemptively surrender our First Amendment rights?  I realize that Dr. Duke was arrested in Germany, and yet they do have a thing called comity, which means Dr. Duke's First Amendment rights traveled with him tucked inside his passport.  Shame on Germany for his arrest.  Shame on us all for silence in the face of this massive miscarriage of and justice.

If you think I am wrong, well thank you for your opinion.  Before you conclude that I am wrong, think on this.  What would you do if your bio were so slanted in public that it didn't reflect your present stance on issues?  What would you want to have done if you were arrested for your thoughts?  What would you do for your brother or sister in the same circumstances?

Well, umm indeed.

Religious Freedom USA?

Lately, we've heard a lot about that troublesome Mosque, the Cordoba Center, in New York City.

Local authorities found that the project, slated for construction near, but not exactly on, the site of the former World Trade Center, was permissible under zoning laws.

Many of the supporters of the project noted that the Imams in New York City have assisted in the very difficult work of mending broken fences, broken walkways, and broken paths to dialogue between Christians, Jews, the non-religious and the Muslims.  Add to the mix the fact that this is the month of Ramadan.  It is that holy month in the Islamic religious calendar, and as such, has only drawn more attention to the fact that Muslims live and worship in America.  And, some want to set up a community center and mosque in New York City.

The outcry against the mosque has been disheartening.

Based upon the terrorism of the few, the most minuscule portion of Muslims in terror activity, the entire population of Muslims have been labeled terrorists.  Or violent.  Or irrational.  Or, and this is a personal un-favorite, Un-American.  That last one goes for US citizens and not, without distinction.

Now, this may not make sense to those spouting hatred at an entire population for the acts they had nothing to do with, did not participate, would not participate in, and share no ideology with, those 'terrorists.'  But, ever willing to crawl out on a limb, I am crawling here.

If we don't value religious freedom for Muslims, or any religious creed we do not share, or know little about, then we don't value religious freedom for anyone.  That includes the Christians.

The Cordoba Center can be built wherever local authorities find that it can be built based on zoning laws.

Whether it is in good taste is another matter, and not one that I am touching with a ten foot pole. 

But, please don't protest Islam as Islam.  The Imams of New York didn't fly the planes in September, nine years ago.  None of them gave the terrorists the papers which allowed those terrorists into this country without much question. 

Some of the protests have even stated that our 'Christian' society is being dragged down into the depths of depravity, lo these past decades since Hugh Hefner brought Playboy into the mainstream press, and the Supreme Court still maintains that it cannot define porn, except to say they know it when they see it.  And so, our movies, television and other entertainment goes further and further into that territory where the conscience can be, and will be shocked.

Seeing these protests, and hearing the fearful cries that the Muslims want to turn this into a Sharia law driven theocracy, I have to laugh.  The Pew Center has conducted surveys of religious thought and distribution of various faiths in the US population, and Christians are still the clear majority.  You can view the results here.

If this country becomes ruled by Sharia law, then our lawmakers are really more out of touch than I would think possible.

In other words, we don't have anything to fear from the Cordoba Center in New York.  Is building this center a good idea?  That is a question that won't be answered for a long time, and after much debate.  But, if we don't recognize that Islam as a religion has as much freedom to be part of the US religious landscape, then we shall surely lose all religious faith.

Someone ought to ask the protesters that want Islam run out of the US, for good, one question.  What will you do if the government of this nation decides that no religious faith gets any tax, assembly or other benefits?  What will happen then? 

Where will your mega-churches and blow-dried ministers be then?  Where will your leaders, who have blamed everything from tornadoes to hurricanes wiping out major cities on the sins of film makers, parades by certain groups or whatever attack on marriage is the debauchery du jour?

Freedom of religion means freedom for all religions.  No one is forcing anyone in the US to participate in any faith.  Americans are free to worship in any way they see fit, or not to worship at all.  Personal faith cannot be imposed on anyone, and only the individual can make that decision.

That is, unless we go back to state sponsored religion.  And then, there will be no individual faith, no choice, no rights.  Do we want to start on the path to exclude one religion based on the illegal and reprehensible acts that that religion has already decried? 

It could be analogized to government condemning Catholicism due to the criminal actions of the Mafia.  There was not overt connection, the Catholic Church decried the criminality of the Mob, and the analogy holds.

Do we want to mark the twenty-first century with a new form of Crusade or Inquisition?