“The Big O”

Would that be Obama? Oprah?

Not in this story.

The holiday season is here and that means it’s time to engage in the time-honored Christmas tradition of objecting to every time-honored Christmas tradition.

Examples abound.

But the point is the right not to be offended is now the most sacred right in the world. The right to freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement, all are as nothing compared to the universal right to freedom from offence. It’s surely only a matter of time before “sensitivity training” is matched by equally rigorous “inoffensiveness training” courses.

I keep wondering if the people who claim to be offended by other people’s traditional expressions of belief, or just expressions common to public discourse, decided they were offended at the suggestion of some high profile atheist or media hype. It has gotten out of control, which articles like Steyn’s here best illustrate with a little humor.

For example, when I said the right not to be offended is now the most “sacred” right in the world, I certainly didn’t mean to offend persons of a non-theistic persuasion. In Hanover, New Hampshire, home to Dartmouth College, an atheist and an agnostic known only as “Jan and Pat Doe” … are suing because their three schoolchildren are forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

(Sort of ties in with Michael Newdow in the post below.)

Because the Pledge mentions God, their children are forced, as it were, not to say it. And, as “Mr and Mrs Doe” put it in their complaint, having to opt out of participation in a voluntary act exposes their children to potential “peer pressure” from the other students.

Somehow, Steyn works the offensiveness battles going on here in with the very serious ones like the past week’s Teddy Bear controversy over British teacher Gillian Gibbons allowing her class to name the bear….the wrong name.

Mrs. Gibbons is regarded as lucky to get 15 days in jail, when the court could have imposed six months and 40 lashes. But even that wouldn’t have been good enough for the mob in Khartoum. The protesters shouted “No tolerance. Execution” and “Kill her. Kill her by firing squad” and “Shame, shame to the U.K.” — which persists in sending out imperialist schoolma’ams to impose idolatrous teddy bears on the youth of Sudan.

Are these incidents all that different? Steyn says no.

East is East and West is West and in both we take offense at nothing…And yet the difference is very telling: The now annual Santa suits in the “war on Christmas” and the determination to abolish even such anodyne expressions of faith as the Pledge of Allegiance are assaults on the very possibility of a common culture.

But in all this guerilla tolerance warfare (odd concept, isn’t it?), there is one remaining acceptable intolerance: anti-Christianity. Especially Catholicism. It’s emerging again right now in the big Christmas release of “The Golden Compass.”

I became familiar with this Philip Pullman book nine years ago, when my young son was expected to read it as part of the summer required reading list for the school he was soon to leave. Sorry to see it come to the big screen in full blown production. Yes, it’s anti-Catholic. The promotion is all hype and spin. It denies the attacks on the Church, and claims it has Church support. To which author Pete Vere says…

This certainly is not the case, which is why Sandra Miesel and I have documented several of our concerns in Pied Piper of Atheism (AtheismForChildren.com). Ignatius Press is set to release this short book before Christmas. The book chronicles a number of ways in which Pullman’s work, which is being marketed to children and young people, attacks the Church, undermines faith in God and promotes atheism. How else does one describe a book in which two twelve-year-olds set out to overthrow God before re-enacting the fall of Adam as a good thing?

Truly offensive.