from an email from Al Gray
Christmas was illegal?
It's a fack, Jack. The first settlers in the New World were Puritans who fled England to escape religious persecution. They were a minority sect in England and could not, would not, conform to the religious norms being imposed on the population. So they escaped religious persecution by zooming off to the New World. And when they established their own communities here, they did religious persecution their way! It's all in this short video.
http://www.youtuberocks.com/wp/canada/the-drunken-pagan-history-of-christmas-w-subs/
They were very strict, those Puritans. If it wasn't in the bible, then it was not allowed. Same attitude as another well known religion. Christmas was a pagan holiday, and in the Puritan colony you could be fined for observing it. That holiday is not in The Book, so it's a no-no. Maybe we should turn this into a Teachable Moment.
No, not that kind of Teachable Moment! :-)) Though, I gotta say, there's a lesson there! Fox News = Fake News.
The thing to be learned here is that intolerance is the norm in a theocratic state. Back when the Catholic Church was the Ultimate Authority, a person could be executed for heresy. Whole wars were fought, Christian against Christian, over opposing ideas of Christianity. They burned people at the stake! :-(( We can bad mouth the bible all we want to and question Christianity to our pleasure now because the Founding Fathers set up a secular state and not a theocratic state. We have freedom of speech. Back in the days of the Puritans, this was the situation in Europe.
The religious persecution that drove settlers from Europe to the British North American colonies sprang from the conviction, held by Protestants and Catholics alike, that uniformity of religion must exist in any given society. This conviction rested on the belief that there was one true religion and that it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of all citizens.
Note the operative phrase here; the duty of the civil authorities to impose it. A theocracy. The flood of European immigrants into the New World saved us from the fate of living in a theocratic state. It is the nature of a theocratic state to demand conformity. It's religious intolerance to the max! In fact, uniformity of religion (see above) is how Christianity got started. Emperor Constantine said it was too hard to govern a population with so many different religions. So he established Christianity as the state religion. If you're reading this, you're on line. Look up the history of the Council of Nicea. This is typical of what I found:
>>>
Apparently, he (Constantine) didn't particularly care what
they believed in as long as they agreed upon a belief. By compiling a
book of sacred writings, Constantine thought that the book would give
authority to the new church.
>>>
No doubt there was a certain amount of "persuasion" applied to those who would not accept the state sponsored religion. States can be very persuasive! Just look at the Chinese Communists under Mao. Communism wasn't labeled as a religion, but it had all the power and trappings of a theocratic state. Intolerance and conformity seem to be the norm for theocracies. Islam is the example seen on the world stage with all their beheadings and chopping off hands and stoning of adulterers. They dominate today's news. But it could be that they learned all this stuff from the Catholics who wrote the book on religious persecution and intolerance. The Mormons did their own version of religious intolerance. They left the country, some of them, voluntarily so as to have the freedom to practice their intolerance. Interesting history, for those of you who are history monsters.
"But hey! We're beyond all that now", you say? The last witch trial was 324 years ago. The Catholic Church doesn't burn people at the stake these days. The only Puritans people know of are the ones in history books. "It's only them pesky Muslims who are doing religious persecution now", you say?
Au contraire, mes amis. [You've gotta love the French way with words!] It's religious assertion we see on the national stage now. They'll do the persecution thing after they have the power to do it. Under the pretense of "religious freedom", we now have whole groups of people who are demanding the "right" to persecute and exclude those who do not conform to their religious beliefs.
Remember the clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue a marriage license to same sex couples because it was against her religion? There are wedding caterers and ministers who claim the right to discriminate because it conflicts with their religion. On the extreme end of it, look up Michael Aquino and the Temple of Set. It's in the military now. Freedom of religion.
One of the (many) reasons that Hillary lost the election is that she was doing identity politics. She divided the country up into all these special interest groups. Blacks, evangelicals, immigrants, muslims, latinos and so on. Then she revealed her true self by calling everyone who did not agree with her a "deplorable". Identity politics meant that the religionists had to be allowed to practice their religion in the public market place. So it's O.K. if you want to avoid doing something legal if it conflicts with your religion. Want to wear a hijab and pray five times a day? You got it. Just vote for Hillary.
Religions always, always, always seek to dominate politics to the exclusion of everyone who does not conform to their norms. That's why the Puritans came to the New World! And when they got here, they set up their own theocratic state. We in the West are being forced to deal with an unprecedented influx of people with a foreign religion. The religion is the state where they came from. Sort of like it was when the Catholic Church ruled the Western world. There are enough of them in Europe now to struggle for control of social and political life. Religions of every type are intolerant. There will be a conflict.
The Western world is at a disadvantage because we're for the most part secular. The social order and the state laws are secular. Religionists are fanatics. They are unified by their beliefs. Western secularists are not so unified. We're at a disadvantage. We are also disadvantaged by the fact that the enemy is within our society. That's a story for another time. There is hope. We'll get to that.
Where's Chesty Puller when we need him the most? We're surrounded now, for sure.
Hope is not just a town in Arkansas. It's a man named Donald Trump who's message is the unifying force that will counter the unifying force that drives the Islamic religious fanatics. Donald Trump sees the world as it is, and the world as it is is a threat to everything we've built and lived for all our lives. You know and I know that if you're working for a company that treats you badly, that exploits you, that thinks of you as just a replaceable machine, you're not going to be emotionally involved in that company. You'll find another job where you're a valued employee and treated with some respect.
Same way with a nation. If the citizens of a nation give more than they get, if their rights and freedoms are trampled on, if they can't find meaningful employment, they're spied on, their money and their property is at risk and the police are obviously there to enforce the status quo; that person or group of persons is not going to have any loyalty to this country.
Lacking any national loyalty, the special interest groups invest their loyalty to the group; latino, black, evangelical, all the rest. And then the special interest groups split into groups within a group. It's a mess out there on the public stage.
Donald Trump's message is that he's bringing jobs back to this country and we're going to treat the people like people again. Now that Obamaland is fading away, it has been revealed that this super good job growth we've been hearing about; well, 94% of the job growth was for part time employees. That's why Donald Trump's rallies drew overflow crowds. People are hurting, and you can't expect hurting people to be loyal to the nation and government that is treating them so badly.
So with Donald Trump, let's call him President Trump because he's already acting presidential, is telling everyone "America First", and "Make America Great Again". In other words, something to believe in that we haven't had for at least a half century. A unifying message to counter the message of the religious fanatics.
The religious fanatics don't have us surrounded yet. They're inside the castle walls, though. I've got a message for all you Snowflakes and Sanctuary City folks misled by the Establishment's controlled press.
We have to deport all illegal aliens and especially Muslim immigrants. It's a matter of national survival. I think Donald Trump knew what he was doing when he nominated two Marines for his cabinet posts.
Somewhere up there, Marine Corp General Chesty Puller is looking down with approval and smiling.
Dragon
