TOLERANCE IS CULTURAL SUICIDE WHEN IT’S A ONE-WAY STREET

Dancing with the devil of destruction

TOLERANCE - Motherhood, apple pie, the American tradition of assimilation of immigrants. Who, other than unrepentant racists, could suggest that tolerance is not a good thing?

But, as this concept has evolved and morphed over the last twenty years, it is time to re-examine whether “tolerance” has become a Trojan Horse; something allowed into our culture without objection, but something that will eventually be used to destroy us. Harsh, you say?

To examine “tolerance” and the danger that this concept now poses to our way of life, one must first look back, then one must look to where we are today, and finally, one must look ahead to see where the trends of tolerance are taking us in the not-too-distant future.

THE WAY WE WERE

It was less than a generation ago when time off from school classes for public school students during the latter part of December, was called “ Christmas Vacation.” Somewhere along the line it became “Winter Break,” so as to be tolerant of those that did not celebrate Christmas. Now, even Christian Schools denote the two weeks off in late December and early January as “Winter Break.”

There was a time when Christmas carols were routinely sung in our public schools in December. After all, it was the Christmas season. Now public schools no longer allow the children to sing Christmas songs that have overtly religious tones and in many schools today, Christmas songs are banned altogether, even “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” “Silent Night” has truly become silent. Culturally, the only reason the December vacation existed was to coincide with the celebration of the birth of Christ. Today, “tolerance” can’t or won’t acknowledge the cultural roots of the holiday. Very recently, some schools in the Northeast have been labeling the two weeks of vacation in December the “Winter Solstice, ” reverting to the pagan holiday that existed around December 21st, two thousand years ago.

Remember when your City Hall was actually allowed to have “Christmas” decorations? But demands were made to remove from the public square any displays that might disclose the religious origin of the holiday season in December.

It was a generation ago, or less, when the ten days of vacation for students in March or April of every year was denoted “Easter Vacation.” With the help of Hollywood, Annette Funicello and Fort Lauderdale Beach, the tolerant crowd won a permanent victory in renaming Easter Vacation, “ Spring Break.”

Anyone (reading this book) who is over 50 years old can remember reciting the “Our Father” in school every day. Many of you remember the Ten Commandments that adorned your school hallway. The prayer is silenced and the Ten Commandments are erased. And now at graduation time, in our zeal to be tolerant of all citizens, no prayer can be uttered in thanks for the accomplishments of the graduating students. So now a student in an Arizona high school has composed his own:

The New School Prayer

Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule
For this great nation under God
Finds mention of Him very odd.
If Scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.
And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.
Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
That’s no offense; it’s a freedom scene.
The law is specific, the law is precise:
Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.
For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all.
In silence alone we must meditate,
God’s name is prohibited by the state.
We’re allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.
They’ve outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.
We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the ‘unwed daddy,’ our Senior King.
It’s “inappropriate” to teach right from wrong,
We’re taught that such “judgments” do not belong.
We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.
But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God much reach this crowd.
It’s scary here, I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school’s a mess.
So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!
Amen!

Our Founding Fathers’ documents establishing the birth of this country are replete with thanks to a higher power for His blessings and replete with requests to His power for guidance and deliverance for a nation they conceived in liberty. Last year, 2006, a federal judge in Kentucky actually entered an injunction forbidding high school students from praying at their graduation! The fact that the graduating seniors blatantly disobeyed the court mandate and recited the Lord’s Prayer in unison at the graduation ceremony should be great comfort to those who believe that we, as a nation, are not yet in the end stages of cultural suicide. Perhaps the rise of this next generation, dubbed the “new millennials” will restore common sense to our body politic.

THE WAY WE ARE

How many people have now succumbed to wishing everyone “Happy Holidays,” so as to be tolerant of those that do not celebrate Christmas? When Americans forego “Merry Christmas” as though that term were offensive, tolerance becomes cultural suicide in light of the fact that 85% of Americans still identify themselves as Christians. Indeed, cultural suicide is well on its way in America when “Merry Christmas” becomes politically incorrect.

Unfortunately, this quest for a utopian society based on the false notion of tolerance has percolated up and out of the schools and into our mainstream culture. Even worse, it has mutated into an intolerance of traditional sacredness. So-called art, funded with your tax dollars, pays for a picture of a crucifix in a jar of urine, entitled “Piss Christ,” and is displayed to the public in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. More recently, a parody of the President was painted on a mural showing him being sodomized by Osama bin Laden over a barrel of oil. You do not have to be a supporter of the President to be viscerally offended by your tax money supporting that kind of art in a time of war.

But reverse intolerance is manifested in much less offensive ways when, for example, Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State of the United States is invited to be the commencement speaker at Boston College and is vehemently opposed by its faculty and students; but Ward Churchill, a radical American hater, and a professor from the University of Colorado is welcomed at the same university. Tolerance is cultural suicide when it’s a one-way street.

--TOLERANCE CHANGES THE WAY NEWS IS REPORTED –

“Tolerance” so as not to offend Muslims affects the way Islamic violence is reported. It is absurd and dangerous because the average American is lulled into a false sense of security. Hence, the reason for writing this book. Remember the terrorists who seized a theater in Moscow in 2002 resulting in the tragic deaths of many Russian innocents? They were Islamic terrorists. However, the New York Times referred to them as “separatists” and “guerillas.”

Remember the kid from California, John Walker Lindh, who fought for the Taliban and was caught by U.S. troops? Well it turns out that he had actually changed his name in high school to Suleyman Al-Lindh. When he was captured by American forces he was known by the name of Abdul Hameed. Although it had been years since he was John Walker, that was the only name the “tolerant” press used for him.
Remember the shoe bomber on the plane? The press called him “Richard Reed.” However, the name he responded to when he tried to bomb the plane was Abdul Rahim. The French police identified him as Tariq Raga, yet the tolerant press only referred to him as Richard Reed.

Remember the Washington D.C. snipers? The elder sniper had converted to Islam 17 years prior, had changed his name to John Mohammad, and belonged to Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. CNN, however, initially reported his name as John Allan Williams and a “Gulf War Veteran.”

More recently, when the 17 terrorists were arrested in Canada, the New York Times described them as “Southern Asians” rather than that they all belonged to the Nation of Islam, the real truth.

As recently as October 22, 2006, in a report on anger and resentment still festering in French areas scarred by the riots of 2005, both the New York Times and the Baltimore Sun reported on an ambush of police in a Paris suburb. The New York Times reported the perpetrators as “unemployed, undereducated youths, mostly the offspring of Arab and African immigrants.” The Baltimore Sun reported the truth: the rioting was by “Muslim immigrants from North Africa…” The New York Times refuses to identify the perpetrators or speak the truth.

The tolerant crowd should heed well this advice: When in doubt about the proper orientation of your moral compass, point it away from the people who want to behead you. Tolerance, it seems, has an evil twin – an inability to discern what cannot be tolerated. (Alas, the sheep refuse or don’t want to recognize the presence of wolves.)

So if this trend continues, where are we headed?