BANNING CHRISTMAS MUSIC

Where will it end? In the ongoing crusade of bureaucrats (posing as educators) to eliminate even the mildest manifestations of Christmas from the public schools, a school district in New Jersey has banned the playing of instrumental carol music.

Henceforth, student bands of the South Orange/Mapplewood School District will be restricted to playing pap like “Winter Wonderland” and “Frosty the Snowman,” instead of the supposedly controversial music for “Silent Night” and “Hark The Herald Angels Sing.”

Superintendent Peter P. Horoschak said that when manifestations of Christmas were purged from the schools in the 1990s, instrumental music somehow was overlooked.

“Rather than try to respond to all the various religions and try to balance them, it’s best to stay away from that and simply have a nonreligious tone to them and have more of a seasonal tone,” Horoschak told The Newark Star-Ledger.

When they can’t use the mythical Wall of Separation (Christmas trees are “unconstitutional”) as an excuse, bureaucrats fall back on tolerance and multiculturalism. We can’t observe everything -- Hanukah, Ramadan, Kwanza, etc. “If we only celebrate Christmas, non-Christians will feel excluded,” they plead.

But 96% of the American people do not celebrate Hanukah or Ramadan. America wasn’t settled by Muslims. The Founding Fathers weren’t Hindus or Druids. Our currency doesn’t have the motto, “In Allah (or Shiva) we trust.”

Predominantly, the public- school system is paid for with the taxes of Christians. It exists in a country based on Judeo-Christian values.

Christians must fiercely resist this spiritual sanitation. We must let public-school bureaucrats know that we are deeply offended – and we have the political clout to do something about it.

HUMORIST WANTS TO DISENFRANCHISE CHRISTIANS

Comedian Garrison Keillor, host of a popular program on National Public Radio, told the audience at the opening of the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital, that he wants to disenfranchise Christians.

“I am now the chairman of a national campaign to pass a constitutional amendment to take the right to vote away from born-again Christians,” Keillor said in a Nov. 3rd. speech. “My feeling is that born-again people are citizens of heaven, that is where their citizenship is. It’s in heaven; it’s not here among us in America.”

Of course, this was a feeble attempt at humor. Still, it illustrates the left’s rage at Christians over the last election.

If Keillor (who describes himself as a life-long Democrat) had said blacks shouldn’t be allowed to vote (“They’re citizens of Africa”), or Jews (“They’re citizens of Israel”), no one would have found that funny. The media would be howling for his blood. Christians are the last group that can be mocked and insulted with impunity.

Is Keillor saying that only evangelical Christians are motivated by faith? Don’t committed Catholics and Orthodox Jews also have a higher allegiance?

Keillor may have missed it, but the gentlemen who wrote our Constitution and established our system of government, all were orthodox Christians, just like the born-again Christians he hates. The president takes his oath of office on the Christian Bible, not on the NPR charter.

By his reasoning, Keillor should be doing stand-up comedy in Cuba, China or North Korea. Philosophically, he’s a citizen of those God-hating countries, far more than of America.

VETERANS GROUP SLAMS PENTAGON OVER BOY SCOUTS DECISION

In the last Patriot Pastor Alert, I reported to you on the decision of the Department of Defense to end sponsorship of Boy Scout troops by military bases. Apparently, I’m not the only one outraged by this.

The head of America’s largest veterans’ group sent a scalding letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, demanding that the policy be reversed.

“The idea that sponsorship of Scouting by American military units is ‘unconstitutional’ goes beyond the absurd, even well past the point of stupidity,” wrote Thomas P. Cadmus, National Commander of the 2.7-million member American Legion.

“How is it that government can fund chapels on military bases, and chaplains in the military, but not accommodate Scouting? Why is it that the rank of Eagle Scout is an attribute highly sought in candidates for military academies, but will soon become unwelcome on military bases?” Cadmus rhetorically asked. Presumably, for the same reason that Congress can start its sessions with a prayer, but public school children can’t.

The DOD’s cowardly retreat on the Boy Scouts was part of a settlement of an ACLU suit. (The group claimed that since God is in the Scouts’ oath, military sponsorship violates the First Amendment.)

It’s sad that gentlemen with medals on their chests can’t stand up to the bullies of the American Civil Liberties Union.

RU-486 DANGEROUS TO THE HEALTH OF MOTHERS TOO

The FDA is now requiring a strongly worded warning on the abortion drug, RU-486, noting that there’s a risk of “rare but serious complications that may occur with any abortion.”

This decision comes more than a year after an 18-year-old died as a consequence of taking RU-486 to kill her unborn child, then in the 7th week of gestation.

At the behest of then-President Bill Clinton (a subsidiary of the abortion lobby), RU-486 was approved in 2000, despite its known dangers. Since then, approximately 360,000 women have used the drug to take a human life.

I don’t have a medical degree. But it makes perfect sense to me that any drug that can terminate a pregnancy would also put the mother at risk.

We knew RU-486 was lethal for unborn children. Now there’s confirmation that it’s dangerous for women as well.