Happy Sparkle Season

I haven't bothered much with the "War on Christmas" this year, mostly because other people aren't bothering as much with it. You see Conservatives thrive on portraying themselves as persecuted (as do many liberals), and at a time when they run everything (like they did from 2002 to 2006), well, it's hard to find examples of persecution. So you are stuck pretending there's some kind liberal War on Christmas in order to show how rough Conservatives have it.

There are other elements explaining why that debate bubbled up, such as the Bush Administration's lack of enthusiasm for fulfilling the desires of traditionalist conservatives, and the sense that the War in Iraq was moving from being a winning to a losing issue. Suffice it to say those elements that made the War on Christmas such good policy in 2005-2006 are in 2008 no longer that big a deal. In 2008 they have lost the House, the Senate, and the White House; rather than complaining about trumped up Persecution, they have actual problems to confront.

But that doesn't mean there aren't some Conservatives out there fighting the good fight; in this case Floyd and Mary Beth Brown are taking on a group from Wisconsin who put up an Atheist Sign in Washington, in their latest article.

The saga all started in October when Washington State gave a permit to a Wisconsin-based atheist group to display its sign alongside a Christian Nativity scene in the state's Capitol in Olympia.

It turns out that Freedom From Religion is a national group, headquartered in Wisconsin. I guess the implication that this is an example of Wisconsin's picking on Washington is not factual.

Then there's this touching bit.

Stickney summarizes: "The constitutional right to exercise free speech anytime and anywhere applies to liberals and their politically correct causes and classifications only."

Outraged by this sign that mocks religions, this week more than 500 demonstrators rallied on the steps of the state Capitol to protest.

That's Larry Stickney, President of the Washington Values Alliance. So Stickney is upset that Christians don't have freedom of speech and then, in the very next line, the authors note that Christians exercised their freedom of speech to protest, seemingly, their inability to exercise their freedom of speech.

I suppose I must also point out the hypocrisy of complaining about your freedom of speech being trampled when your argument is basically that somebody else shouldn't be allowed to speak. Freedom of Speech for Christians only, eh? I'll also note that this offending sign was set up near a nativity scene, implying that equal space was given to the Christian Point of View. Probably more than equal.