ACLU steals much more than Christmas

By Chris Adamo

Americans who hold to traditional values are expressing outrage this Christmas over the blatant double standards with which the enemies of this country's Judeo-Christian heritage seek to completely expunge any vestige of it from their midst.

Almost everywhere they look, Believers are confronted with legal actions of zealous individuals in authority positions, displaying outright hostility towards Biblical symbols of the Christmas season, while simultaneously encouraging every possible alternative, whether secular or otherwise.

The very manner in which traditional America now seeks to defend itself, not on the basis that these actions result from a grotesque distortion of the First Amendment, but rather that Nativity Scenes ought to at least be allowed equal billing with Frosty and Rudolph, and that Silent Night should be as permissible as Jingle Bells, gives clear indication as to just how advanced this malignancy is, and how much lost ground needs to be retaken.

But while these situations are indeed cause for concern, a far greater double standard, and therefore a far greater danger, exists. At the heart of this controversy is the organization known as the "American Civil Liberties Union," or ACLU.

By its actions of recent years, the ACLU has inarguably proven that it not only knows how to use the law as a weapon with which to destroy freedom, but that it obsessively endeavors to do so. Recent experience also shows that in those cases where its goals aren't supported by the law, fear and intimidation will apparently suffice.

This is why the ACLU continues to threaten school districts and other municipalities with legal retribution over such issues as student-led Bible studies on public property, despite legal precedent that is inarguably in favor of the inherent rights of students to engage in such activity.

For far too long, the ACLU has gotten away with its iron-fisted tactics on the absurd notion that it is upholding the "Establishment Clause" of the First Amendment. But contrary to the present day assertions of the ACLU, America's founders never intended that passage as a license to expunge every vestige of religious thought from public life.

The real intention of "Establishment Clause" was simply to guarantee that the Congress did not legally compel citizens regarding which religious or philosophical doctrines they must believe. The notion that the founders might have been worried by the possibility of anyone "taking offense" to religious teachings or symbols is nothing more than a modern-day fabrication.

But, having successfully constructed just such a caricature of the Establishment Clause, the ACLU now claims responsibility for ensuring that certain individuals and groups go through life in America, free of ever being "offended."

And since every conceivable action holds the potential to "offend" somebody, a decision must be made as to which actions do and don't constitute legitimate cases of "offense." Of course, the ACLU presumes itself to be the absolute arbiter of this role.

Meanwhile, the apostles of "political correctness" diligently spread their religion by way of "Sensitivity Training" sessions, occurring at government institutions from the highest cabinet level offices to the tiniest rural school districts, where subjects are mentally bludgeoned into compliance. But rather than decry these "tent revivals" of the counterculture, the ACLU supports them, and in some cases, demands that they be conducted.

While proper codes of conduct have always been a fitting part of any reasonable working environment, "Sensitivity Training" is clearly intended to accomplish far more. Ultimately, its goal is nothing less than to instill an immutable structure of ideas into its participants. Though an absolute affront to anything traditionally regarded as "religious," it promotes a mindset that is every bit as foundational to the counterculture as the Bible is to believing Christians.

In the public arena, these tactics are justified as a desperate defense against the ostensible "dangers" of an America eventually ruled by omnipotent Bible-believing dictators. Yet, in the meantime it is the ACLU that is amassing and increasingly wielding just such power, aided and abetted by the collusion of activist courts and the extra-constitutional decisions they now willingly hand down.

The real danger to America's future does not emanate from a display of the Christ Child on the courthouse lawn anymore than from the verses of a Christmas Carol. Rather, it is present in any governing entity that presumes the authority to control thought. A government that will forcibly eradicate any particular creed is one that will just as forcibly supplant that creed with one of its own.

© Chris Adamo