Let’s conclude our look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in Sarah Palin’s book about the War on Christmas, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas (read part 1 here).
In a book by a Tea Party figurehead, you’ve got to expect a nod to conservative values, and Palin nods like a bobblehead. We hear about Nancy Pelosi’s outrageous budget and the “Lamestream media,” how guns are great, how abortion and the ACLU are terrible, that “under God” must stay in the Pledge, how the secular Left has little but a failed welfare state as its legacy, that Obamacare sucks, and isn’t it great that Chick-fil-A said what had to be said about same-sex marriage?
The heartbreak of “Happy Holidays”
Palin is primarily outraged at two things, that non-Christians protest government promotion of Christian holidays (discussed in part 2 here) and stores saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”
After a long discussion of the anguish this causes Christians, she declares victory by quoting a Wal-Mart spokesperson:

[In 2006,] we’re not afraid to say, “Merry Christmas.” (79)

Whew! That takes care of one the items on my Top Ten list (and I’m delighted to see that this problem has been resolved for years). If we could get World Peace figured out, that would be the icing on the cake.
The naughty list
I’ll conclude this over-long review with a partial list of errors in Palin’s book. There are too many to discuss in detail, but they are too important to let pass without a quick response. These mindless talking points can rally the troops but only if those troops have no interest in thinking through the issues.

• Declaration of Independence. “Our Declaration of Independence states that we are endowed by our ‘Creator’ with our rights.” In the first place, the Declaration makes clear that “Governments [derive] their just powers from the consent of the governed,” not God, and in the second, the Declaration doesn’t govern the country, the very secular Constitution does. More here.
• 9/11 Cross. American Atheists protested putting this piece of cross-shaped rubble (that wasn’t actually found in the Twin Towers site) in a publicly supported museum and notes that God “couldn’t be bothered to stop the terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name.” Palin is offended, just like those thin-skinned atheists. (I discuss this issue more here.)
• Here’s why no one likes you. “There’s a reason why voters don’t necessarily like voting for an atheist. Voters don’t want to give power to someone who doesn’t believe he or she will someday have to answer to the Ultimate Authority.” And should that apply in a country governed by a secular constitution that rejects any religious test for public office (see Article 6)?
• Hey, gang! Find the error in this sentence! “Our Judeo-Christian heritage is the source of the very freedoms [the atheists] so angrily use to denounce Christ and to rid His very mention from the public square.” Wrong again. The freedoms we see as fundamental—democracy, trial by jury, no slavery, freedom of religion, and so on—are the last things the Bible would have encouraged. More here.
• Objective moral truth? “Without God as an objective standard, who’s to say what’s wrong and what’s right?” Nope. God doesn’t ground laws made in this country. Laws are made through secular means—think back to high school Civics class. More here.
• Charity. “Studies show Christians are America’s most generous givers.” Not really. Remove giving to churches (which are no more charities than country clubs) and you see a different story. More here.
• Gee, how does evolution work again? “I bet Charles Darwin never understood this. If the world could be described as truly ‘survival of the fittest,’ why would people collectively be stricken with a spirit of generosity in December? … It doesn’t make sense.” Do you even understand what “survival of the fittest” means? Read a little more broadly, and you’ll discover that nice qualities like cooperation and trust can make a population fitter. More here.
• What would baby Jesus think? In any book on the War on Christmas, abortion is always relevant. “A culture that reveres our Creator and respects the sanctity of innocent life does not condone killing its own children.” Since “our Creator” ends half of all pregnancies, I don’t see why baby Jesus should cry about abortion. More here.
• Morality. “No matter how much the liberals protest, there’s a relationship between Christianity and a healthy civilization.” Yeah—a negative relationship. Researcher Gregory Paul compares European countries and the U.S. and concludes, “Of the 25 socioeconomic and environmental indicators, the most theistic and procreationist western nation, the U.S., scores the worst in 14 and by a very large margin in 8, very poorly in 2, average in 4, well or very in 4, and the best in 1.” More here.
• Morality is deteriorating. Social change can be stressful, but we must ignore the headlines of the moment to look at the big picture. In fact, U.S. violent crime has plunged more than 70% in the last twenty years. Red states have higher crime rates than blue states. In the year since the school shootings at Sandy Hook, Republican legislatures have helped make the majority of new gun laws loosen gun restrictions. This isn’t quite the picture of morality Palin’s book suggests. She seems to imagine the America of her childhood as a 60s sitcom world, where the problems were small and everyone got along. But when she was born, the Civil Rights Act that outlawed much discrimination by race, gender, religion, and national origin hadn’t been signed. Laws prohibited mixed-race marriage in 17 states. Laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation were decades away. Social change isn’t easy, but some has been good. Think more deeply before concluding that things are going downhill. More here.
• How’s that atheism workin’ out for you, Comrade? “Soviet Communism is organically linked to atheism.” That’s true, but that’s because Communism saw the church as competition, not because atheism created Communism. “Atheism’s track record makes the Spanish Inquisition seem like Disneyland by comparison.” Oh? Show me just one person killed in the name atheism. Let’s be clear on cause and effect: Stalin was an atheist because he was a dictator, not vice versa. More here.
• Christianity’s fight against slavery. Palin quotes Thomas Sowell, who says that business, religion, and Western imperialism “together destroyed slavery around the world.” It’d be nice if that were true. Slavery was made illegal but it wasn’t eliminated, and there are an estimated 27 million slaves today. That’s almost forty times the number of Alaska residents. In absolute numbers, slavery is bigger today than it’s ever been. Yes, Christians were important in the war against slavery, but they were on the other side as well. That’s because pretty much everyone in the West was a Christian, and the Bible gives powerful support for slavery. More here.

Palin’s book is much ado about nothing. She’s determined to feel offended and see injuries to Christianity everywhere she looks. Unfortunately, she misses an opportunity to use her credibility within the conservative community to point out that Christian-only displays on state-supported property are both unfair and illegal.
Palin has embraced what I’m still having a hard time with: “Can’t we all just get along?” doesn’t sell.

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded.
And, the atoms in your left hand probably came
from a different star than your right hand.
It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics:
You are all stardust.
So, forget Jesus.
The stars died so that you could be here today.
— Lawrence M. Krauss

Photo credit: Photo Dean

We’re critiquing Sarah Palin’s book about the War on Christmas, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas. I’m pulling out the good, the bad, and the ugly in the book. With this post, it’s the Bad.
Palin is determined to play one of the many besieged but brave Christians living out their simple and honest faith, as is their God-given right. She imagines angry atheists lurking behind every lamp pole muttering Scrooge’s words like a mantra, “If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!”
Let’s see if those fears of persecution hold up.
Separation of church and state
Palin enumerates many recent cases where she feels that Christians’ rights in America have been stepped on. Santa Monica is one such case. For decades, the city allowed an elaborate nativity scene on public land, but protests forced the city to assign slots to groups from any religion by lottery. In 2011, atheist organizations won 18 of 21 which, of course, brought the Christians out to protest. Forced to change the rules yet again, the city didn’t allow any displays in 2012.
The city went from one religion showcased, to all religions, to none. This is typical of the evolution in other cases. (If allowing all comers bothers Christians, I don’t know why that is hard to anticipate up front. And why seeing example after example of this progression doesn’t make Christians realize that religious displays on public land just don’t make sense.)
Though atheists are imagined as the Grinch, this isn’t to say that Christians in Santa Monica were muzzled or that churches or front yards couldn’t display Christmas messages, as always. It’s just that citizens’ tax money and the prestige of the government weren’t given to promote Christianity.
We’re seeing more examples in 2013. There’s a “Keep the Saturn in Saturnalia” billboard responding to a “Keep Christ in Christmas” sign in a town in New Jersey, and a Satanist monument is planned to go up next to a Ten Commandments display on public land in Oklahoma City. Here’s an idea: just cut to the chase and avoid all religious displays on public land.
Palin wonders why everyone is mean to Christians with a quote from the president of Fox News:

What the hell is so offensive about putting up a plastic Jewish family on my lawn at Chistmastime? (32)

It’s not. That’s not what we’re talking about. No one cares about Christian or Satanist or Pastafarian displays on private land; it’s religion promoted on public land that’s the issue.
What Would the Constitution Do?
Much is made about “angry atheists” and their darn lawyers. Palin says,

Thanks to a highly technical quirk in constitutional law very few people know about and even fewer understand, [atheists] are very, very influential. An angry atheist with a lawyer is one of the most powerful persons in America. (22)

This odd “quirk” is simply that you needn’t be personally injured to bring a lawsuit against a government—being forced to pray, for example. A violation of First Amendment rights is enough.
She lampoons this with,

This means people can silence their fellow citizens for no other reason than the fact that they were offended. (25)

No, the Constitution was offended. Since the Constitution gives us our rights in this country, that sounds like a big deal. I’m surprised that Palin doesn’t agree.
Her view on this battle is:

the [atheist] Scrooges flex their illegitimately gained legal muscles (39)

with no explanation for what is illegitimate. Her complaint is not that atheists are breaking any law but that they have lawsuits as options to get church/state errors redressed.
Sarah Palin v. Constitution
Sarah Palin was the ninth governor of Alaska and took this oath of office:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Alaska, and that I will faithfully discharge my duties as governor to the best of my ability.

One must then assume that she has read and is thoroughly familiar with the U.S. Constitution, though that assumption is tested throughout this book.
The First Amendment says in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Citizens can exercise religion freely, and government can’t make laws that interfere with that. Government doesn’t have a right to proselytize religion but citizens do. So how is it legal for a government to celebrate a Christian holiday (and only that holiday) on public land?
As mayor, Palin defended a nativity scene on city property:

I was determined [the town of] Wasilla would not contribute to our [moral] decline but would instead acknowledge the Source of all good things in our life and our nation. (51)

This partisan stance sounds odd coming from a defender of the Constitution.
The Constitution calls the shots
When Christian soldiers feel put upon by the travails of living in a country governed by a secular constitution, Palin encourages them to remember,

Through it all, the God who created the heavens and the earth is sovereign. (57)

But, of course, she can believe that and write it and proclaim it to passersby in the public square because of and only because of the Constitution. The Constitution calls the shots in the United States, not the Bible.
What’s good for the goose …
About a Harvard plan to provide women-only gym time for Muslim women, Palin says,

We all appreciate religious liberty, but it should be liberty for all, not favoritism for some. (182)

She complains at length about thin-skinned atheists, but things apparently change when the shoe’s on the other foot. Is this an outrageously obvious double standard (special favors for Christians are okay, but not for Muslims) or am I missing something? That this doublethink would work with her audience says a lot about what she thinks of them.
Palin quotes a mayor fighting for the right to publicly support only Christmas:

I believe the Constitution deals with freedom of religion, and not freedom against religion or freedom to repress religion. (52)

Is this just a meaningless slogan or does Palin actually mean this? Prove it, Governor. Publicly state that the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion demands that public land be used for displays from all religions or none.
I propose an experiment. Every local U.S. city government that provided a public forum only for a Christian holiday in 2013 must avoid any such displays next year and must instead celebrate the Muslim Eid feast at the end of Ramadan on city property. Give it a try to see how that feels.
You think atheists overreact to a cross on public property? Great—show us your open mindedness by replacing it with a Muslim crescent moon and star. Then we’ll see who’s thin-skinned.
Hell in a handbasket: this is just the beginning, people!
In case Palin’s concerns seem to be overblown, with church/state separation the common-sense solution to allow everyone to get along, she fans the fires of paranoia:

Boiled down to its essence, the “war on Christmas” is the tip of the spear in a larger battle to secularize our culture and make true religious freedom a thing of America’s past. (10)

What is “true religious freedom”? If it’s your “right” to impose Christianity on the rest of us, you betcha I want that gone. But if it’s the ability for you and other Christians to believe and worship as you want and to speak your mind in the state-supported public square, unfettered by government, I want that as much as you do.

[The few malcontents with lawyers eager to wreak havoc] are a part of a larger, orchestrated attempt to strip our heritage from America. (52)

(Dang! Who leaked the Atheist Overthrow Manifesto?)
Uh, no. The “larger, orchestrated attempt” is to return respect to the Constitution. Show me an atheist who wants to deny Christians the right to worship in a way that hurts no one, and I’ll publicly state that I’m on your side. If the Jesus story is a good tiding that brings you great joy, that’s fine. Just don’t celebrate your story (and only your story) in front of my city hall.
The Anti-Defamation League’s guidelines help resolve the “December Dilemma”:

Ask yourself: does the display, in its setting, give the appearance of a government endorsement of a religious message? If yes, the display is impermissible.

Pretty simple advice. But there’s no book if you say that conspiracy fears are unfounded and that there’s an easy way for us all to get along. Conflict sells, not peace.
Conclusion: the Ugly.

Another happy soldier in the War on Christmas.
— Tom Flynn’s bumper sticker

No, I’m not part of the target audience for Sarah Palin’s new book, but I was given a copy to review. Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas is a fairly predictable mix of the joys of the traditional American Christmas, an attack on those angry atheists who are apparently determined to make Christianity illegal (starting with Christmas), and a review of the standard conservative touch points.
Let’s take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in this book. First, the good. Despite Palin’s eagerness to play the beleaguered Christian, I was not surprised to find important areas where we agree. It’s a War-on-Christmas miracle!
Christmas in Alaska
Most chapters begin with long reflections of Palin’s childhood and adult family life. She includes personal photos and emphasizes the importance of family Christmas traditions by talking about her own. She shares stories of personal difficulties and Christmas memories—a health scare with her father, her daughter Brisol’s revelation that she was pregnant, helping to feed homeless people, difficulties during and after her Vice Presidential bid, and so on. Some favorite Christmas recipes are added in an appendix.
Stories about growing up in Alaska were nice—there’s a lot different from my own upbringing in Virginia—but I did experience a bit of whiplash. She goes on at length about the traditional Norman Rockwell Christmas traditions—sipping hot chocolate by the fire, the unwritten rules about opening presents, and so on. That sounds like what I value about Christmas as well. But then she discards all this like used wrapping paper to emphasize the real reason for the season.

Our annual family activities I’ve described are mere traditions …. But they’d be nothing if separated from the historical event that animates the Christmas season. (8)
Gifts can’t really bring ultimate joy (91)
If I’m for Christmas, it’s only because I’m for Christ. (9)
It’s about Christ and our ability to worship him freely. It’s about America, and what liberty truly means in our day-to-day lives. (10)

I also value America, liberty, and religious freedom. You can’t worship who you want? Then I’m as outraged as you are. Here we see a bit of the War on Christmas theme, but more on that later.
Living with a secular constitution
After listing many recent examples of church/state friction—protests against nativity scenes in front of city hall, for example—she gives a brief list of rules for how we can all get along. She recommends avoiding a Christian-only display.

The courts tend not to like Nativity scenes isolated from other holiday imagery. (53)

The “other holiday imagery” seems to be Santa Claus and snowmen rather than a clear public pronouncement that all faiths are welcome, as courts have demanded. Still, it’s a start.
But what if I’m offended?
She makes a point with which I strongly agree:

Traditionally, … Americans don’t have a right to not be offended (23)

That sentiment is common among American atheists. In fact, I bet that it’s predominant. Citizens have many important rights, but not being offended isn’t one of them.
Are atheists allergic to Christmas?
Want to see a photo of Richard Dawkins with his Christmas tree? Check out the Atheists for Christmas web site. Dawkins is at least one prominent atheist who finds secular value in a holiday that is currently the most popular in a long line of winter holidays.
The site claims, “There are just as many Christians that don’t celebrate Christmas (i.e. Jehovah’s Witnesses, certain Protestant sects) as there are non-Christians that don’t.” Celebrating Christmas is a recent tradition. It was outlawed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1659.
Western culture is built on sometimes-forgotten references to gods. Christmas 2013 will be on a Wednesday, but the name Wednesday also honors a god. “Wednesday” means “Woden’s Day,” and Woden is the English form of Odin, the Norse supreme god. In Romance languages, that day is typically “Mercury’s Day” (mercredi in French and miércoles in Spanish, for example).
The same supernatural connection applies to the year 2013, which counts as its year one an approximation of the birth year of Jesus.
Sure, Christmas was deliberately placed on the calendar to usurp other winter holidays such as Yule, Saturnalia, Brumalia, and any other solstice celebration. And Americans celebrate other December holidays such as Kwanzaa, Pancha Ganapati, and Hanukkah. But if atheists have no problem with Wednesday (which acknowledges Odin) and 2013 (which acknowledges Jesus), why not Christmas?
Palin’s “Good Tidings and Great Joy” isn’t all good. Continue with the Bad.

Do not learn the ways of the nations. …
For the customs of the peoples are worthless;
they cut a tree out of the forest,
and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel.
They adorn it with silver and gold. …
Like a scarecrow in a melon patch, their idols cannot speak. …
Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good.
— Jeremiah 10:2–5