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Hugh Hewitt simultaneously praises my Dionne comments from earlier today and calls on me to take on a bigger target:

KerrySpot's Jim Geraghty executes a complete take-down of E.J. Dionne's hapless column on the Christmas wars. OK, Jim, now pick on someone your own size — give the Jarvis analysis a look. Taking on Dionne reminds me of the stories of "hunters" shooting buffaloes from trains — there simply isn't much sport involved, nor much skill required.

Ow! Dang, that criticism stings! All right, Hugh, here’s my thoughts on Jeff Jarvis’ “And God Rolled His Eyes, Part Two”. Jeff's words are indented, my responses aren't.

Yesterday, Hugh Hewitt, PowerlineBlog(oftheYear) and others responded to my post below about whether religion is under attack or attacking in America (I said neither statement is true). I first want to thank these good bloggers for the respectful tone of their disagreement; it's good to debate about a war without going to war (especially about religion).

I second Hugh’s comment that when real wars are going on, we ought to less casual in the way we throw around the word, “war.” There is not a “war” about this topic going on; there is a debate.

Start here: No one is this country is being stopped from worshipping as they please. No churches or synagogues or mosques are being shut by mob or government edict. That would indeed constitute a war against Christianity and religion; that would be illegal, unconstitutional, unAmerican, and wrong. But I don't see that happening. And if I did, I would be fighting that with my full First Amendment fervor.

A straw man, and a shockingly weak one from a guy as smart as Jarvis. Has any of the “Hey, let’s call Christmas ‘Christmas’” crowd accused the other side of attempting to shut down houses of worship?

Ah, but you might say that you're prevented from putting a creche in front of city hall or singing Christmas carols in school. But be careful, for if you're using that as an argument of religious persecution, you end up arguing that you want city hall and the school to become a place of worship and that does raise issues.

Is singing “Silent Night” an act of worship? I think that’s iffy. (Singing the Dreidel song doesn’t make me Jewish.) Now, is the act of banning “Silent Night” an act of religious persecution? I notice nobody’s trying to ban “Frosty the Snowman.” It’s not Rudolph that the “Happy Generic End of The Year Celebration” crowd is targeting, it’s the child in the manger, be it His name in song, in holiday title, or in manger-ic depiction. Sounds like a specific effort to remove any reference to this Person/Historical Event/Deity.

Also note that the efforts to remove the crèche are not based on it being a fire hazard or ban “Silent Night” because they don’t like the tune. The objection is specifically because of the religious content. Somehow, the town hall front lawn or the school concert have been decreed areas where it not merely enough to not endorse or proselytize for a religion, but to not mention it at all, as if the words “Round yon Virgin Mother and Child, Holy Infant so tender and mild” will somehow either cause mass conversions or cause non-Christian heads to explode.

You can't have it both ways: You can't argue that the crèche and the carol are harmless displays of culture and then argue that preventing them is religious persecution that prevents worship. That doesn't wash.

See above.

I'll repeat that I think it is silly and argumentative to demand the right to put a crèche at city hall when there are so many other places where you can put it and when there are legitimate Constitutional questions about this.

Yeah, but city hall gets Halloween jack-o-lanterns, turkeys, cupids, shamrocks, Uncle Sam, yellow ribbons, etc. And, in some cases, city halls feature Menorahs, the Kwanzaa candles, and other symbols of other faiths. In my experience, the Christmas folks rarely object to expressions of other faiths - they just want their holidays to be in the mix, too. It’s the strict separatists who insist upon no religious symbols at all, and apparently prefer decoration-free city halls.

But I also think it's silly and argumentative for the other side to fight to stop it, for if we talk about celebrating the culture and diversity of this country then I say let's start celebrating. And I am tired of this annual charade.

Hey, it’s the pro-crèche folks who are cool with diversity. Put up that menorah and start cooking the potato pancakes, just don’t restrict my faith.

Next, if your argument is that there is a war against religion in this country because there are more signs of secular life and more people who reject religion — well, folks, that is their right in this country.

Floof! That’s the sound of Jarvis knocking down another straw man. Which pro-crecher said “more signs of secular life and more people who reject religion” is a sign of a war against religion? (And are there more signs of secular life and more people who reject religion? Doesn’t it seem that this nation has become more religious, not less, in recent years?)

And so, that is a problem of marketing, not Constitutionality. If you lose converts it could well be because they don't like your message or how you deliver it. If Coke loses customers to Pepsi, Coke isn't being persecuted; it's facing competition. We believe in competition in America — even for minds, yes, even for souls. That is the essence of the First Amendment: No one side gets an edge up thanks to government. And enforcing that is precisely what protects the free choice of worship — for you don't want to find government endorsing George's church today but Hillary's tomorrow, do you?

Take that, straw man! And that!

And I find arguments that there is a war on Christianity to be disingenuous in a nation that is overwhelmingly Christian. Here, too, you can't have it both ways: You can't argue on the one hand that the moral values army is sweeping the land and that's why George won — and then argue on the other hand that you are a persecuted, downtrodden sect. You can't play the power card and the persecution (aka paranoia) card at the same time. Doesn't wash.

Bush won 51 percent of the popular vote, and while religious conservatives were a key element of his victory, it is wrong to conclude that 51 percent of Americans are religious conservatives. More importantly, a small percentage of Americans - most of whom were in the 48 percent for Kerry - do hate Christians, and behave accordingly. It manifests itself in a hundred different ways - the lawyers who sue to keep the crèches in a closet, the school board busybodies who wish to edit the song list at school concerts, the advertising executives who de-Christmas-ize their commercials, the fools who put “Holiday Ornament” label on a decoration depicting a manger, whoever decided to call the U.S. Capitol‘s large arboreal decoration a “Holiday Tree”…

Is it too harsh to say they “hate Christians”? Well, draw your own conclusions.

Christianity is flourishing in many places in this country, but that doesn’t mean that in some circles there isn’t anti-Christian bias.

I'll make the same argument to the other side in this alleged war: those who say that American is under attack by the religion of a moral values army. That is the point of my reporting on the FCC and the PTC: The country hasn't suddenly been taken over by a religious invasion and it's only the dumb FCC and media that fall for that. To this side, I'll say that you can't argue on the one hand that you've been overrun by the right and on the other hand that the election was close. Doesn't wash.

: Hugh says: "I suggest that the issue of indifference or hostility to faith might be far more real than Jeff realizes because he's never been in a community on the receiving end of bureaucratic venom." Perhaps. But that is a matter of interpretation. In my town, there is a huge fight over a church wanting to build a big building but I am confident this is a battle over property value, not God.

Hugh disagrees with my take on the PTC's complaints about religious humor on TV: "Is a joke about race a cause for concern? Or a joke about ethnicity or faith? Does the fairly consistent attempt by cultural elites to belittle and marginalize faith raise any concern for Jarvis?" Certain jokes can be a concern. But I do not think that Christianity in America and God in Heaven are so fragile they can't take a little ribbing. I do it, too. In church. In the pulpit, even. So this is a matter of degree: I think the PTC's complaint was ludicrous; they were paranoid. Worse, it was PC! One more time, you can't have it both ways: You can't on the one hand say that any joke about religion is off limits and then on the other hand argue (properly) with those who try to say that "Merry Christmas" is off limits. It's only the flipside of the same PC language tyranny.

Apples and oranges, and I think Hugh and Jeff are talking past each other. Jeff finds the PTC to be a perpetual outrage factory that touts its own version of political correctness, and maybe he’s right. But pointing out the PTC’s flaws doesn’t really change the argument that Hollywood and the entertainment community have one rule for mocking Christianity (anything goes) and another standard for mocking other religions (rare and apologize quickly when practitioners are offended). Look, if nothing is sacred and everyone is mockable, fine; let’s see some jokes about Islam. What, no takers?

Then Hugh argues:

Every time an elitist condemns a person of faith as a "theocrat," or a scientist rejects an argument against embryonic stem cell research as a "fundamentalists' position," the effort to expel faith from the public square advances, and not via debate, but via the sneer.... Jarvis' jeremiad against focus on conflicts between the sectarian and the secular is itself an attempt to demote issues of faith in the culture to second-class conflicts, beneath the attention of "serious" thinkers — a back lot drama played out by hayseeds and snake handlers. How convenient, and how wrong.

Oh, heck, one more time: I see you trying to play both sides again. On the one hand, you don't want people to argue with you: You can sneer at their secularism but they can't sneer at your faith?

Hugh sneered?

Well, it might be better if they each debated rather than sneered. But I'd say that "elitist" is itself a sneering word. The point is that people disagree. But disagreement and debate are not war and persecution.

I don’t know - I think editing and writing for publications like Newsweek or the New York Times, or running a television network or having some other perch to influence public debate is pretty rare, powerful… and dare one say, elitist? In those positions, aren’t you, pretty much defined as one of the elite?

: Meanwhile, over at Powerline, Paul Mirengoff says:

I think Jarvis is missing the political dimension to the fight. This year's election made clear what political leaders have known for some time — religious belief and degree of religious commitment are closely associated with how people vote. Thus, the extent to which people hold, and are serious about, religious beliefs has a direct bearing on who will hold political power and what our policies will be across the spectrum of key foreign policy and domestic issues. Put another way, the fact that so many Americans believe in God and take religious teachings so seriously is a major reason why our politics and policies are not like those of Europe, where religion has been marginalized. Thus, the temptation of one side to marginalize religion here is sensible and probably irresistible. So too with the urge of those on the other side to fight back.

Be careful or you're going to marginalize me: I go to church. I vote. I just don't vote your way. You're arguing that the right is religious and the religious are of the right and I think that would be a big mistake.

Yes, there are Democrats who go to church. Yes, there are Democrats who are more religious than Republicans.

But there’s a reason Terry McAuliffe didn’t take Peggy Noonan’s advice. The secularist-and-proud folks have clumped together under the Democrat banner, and the religious-and-proud folks have clumped together under the Republican banner. It would be nice if each side could attract more of the other, but any serious look at this topic requires us to recognize that the political divide is influencing this debate about religion as much as the religious divide is influencing our debates about politics.

In the end, the real problem is all about lumping: lumping people together in a nation that believes we are individuals. Each of us has the right to worship as we please and so we must allow all our fellow citizens to worship as they please. We speak and vote as we please and allow our fellow citizens to speak and vote as they please.

You know, that’s what I thought, but then I hear, “The school choir can’t sing that song, it offends me… the town square can’t have that manger, it offends me… the tree can’t be called a Christmas tree, it offends me… you can’t wish someone “Merry Christmas,” it might offend them.” I think a lot of folks are feeling, “You know, I want you to have a Merry Christmas, but I’m reaching the point where I don’t really care whether you’re offended or not. I’m not going to change my December greeting of goodwill because you have a hair-trigger ‘disrespect’ detector.”

That is what the First Amendment — and America — are all about.

So why are you ripping Hugh and the “Merry Christmas” folks? Go rip the “You can’t say Merry Christmas, you have to say Happy Holidays” folks!

[Posted 12/21 02:19 PM]