The ACLU vs. Christmas

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Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly. Thanks for watching us tonight.

Hey, I missed you guys. While on vacation last week, I was under water a lot of the time in the Caribbean, scaring the fish. And the barracuda were following me around. I couldn't quite figure it out.

I was also reading up about the upcoming confrontation with Saddam Hussein, which we'll talk about in a moment.

But first, Christmas is coming, and the ACLU is not pleased. That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points memo.

Using tactics the Taliban would admire, the ACLU has imposed the following on the American people. In Covington, Georgia, the word "Christmas" has been removed from the public school calendar because the ACLU threatened to sue. In Pittsburgh, the ACLU objected to special parking put aside by the city for citizens to observe a nativity scene loaned to Pittsburgh by the Vatican.

In Brow Bridge, Louisiana, the ACLU wants St. Martin Parish to take down all nativity scenes assembled in any church. In Billings, Montana, the ACLU has petitioned officials in Custer County to ban the nativity scene altogether.

So you get the picture. It may be Christmas time, but don't display images of Christ or his parents in public or the ACLU may sue.

This, of course, is fascism, not freedom.

In 1870, President Grant made Christmas a public secular holiday, and the federal government gave workers the day off. The reason was a holiday was to honor a man, Jesus, whose philosophy that all men are created equal and that one should love your neighbor helped the founding fathers of the United States craft the Constitution.

By almost all accounts, our system of laws and justice is based on Judeo-Christian philosophy, which puts human rights ahead of government wants. Our system here was not developed according to Islamic law or Buddhist thought. It was modeled after the tenets of Judaism and Christianity, and that's the truth.

However, philosophy is different from religion, and our founders made sure that no religion could be imposed by the government, and all religions were to be tolerated unless they violated civil law.

Thus the secular holiday of Christmas honoring the birth of that great philosopher, Jesus in Bethlehem.

But according to the ACLU and some other misguided Americans, because some people believe the philosopher Jesus to be God, then all the people should be denying seeing his image displayed in a public setting.

Does that make any sense at all?

If the government really wanted to force religion on Americans, it would make Easter a holiday, but it is not. Easter is a purely religious observance, as is Hannukah and Ramadan. Thus they are not federal holidays and never will be.

For more than 200 years, the United States celebrated Christmas without the intrusion of the ACLU and the courts. Was the country damaged during that time by the celebration? Did anything bad happen? Were anybody's rights violated?

Of course not. The no spin truth is that certain pressure groups like the ACLU are now using the Constitution to push an agenda that is harmful to many Americans. Christmas is a celebration of peace and brotherhood and generosity. The symbols of Christmas should be admired and displayed with pride.

The ACLU is wrong, and I hope Santa puts coal in their stocking.

Can I say Santa?

And that's The Memo.

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