I Won't Attack Your Religion

I won't attack your religion, unless you attack me with your religion.

These words came to me after a discussion about someone who attacked a Salvation Army bell ringer at a Wal-Mart in Phoenix because she said "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."  I said there was nothing Christian about what the attacker did.  That brought an over-sensitive (in my opinion) response from an extended family member who acted as if I was attacking her Christianity.

This is an attitude that, unfortunately, is all too familiar to me.  Way too many professed Christians have the attitude that if you do not let their religion dominate all aspects of society, somehow you are persecuting them.  For the most part in my life, I have played "get along to go along" and remained silent.  I am changing that attitude, speaking up against the traditional domineering practiced by those who claim to profess Christ's love.

Another phrase comes to mind that I've found on social media: Instead of keeping Christ in Christmas, how about keeping Christ in Christian.

David Simon on the "Horror Show" of Two Americas

I have always believed in the inherent goodness of the free market, in the need to be skeptical of excessive governmental control of the economy (and all other aspects, by extension).  Real life has intruded into the black-and-white views I had during my years as a Reagan Republican.  The excesses of the tea party movement serve as a bold underline of what could happen without an adequate government presence in society.

The Wire's creator David Simon gave an address which is excerpted in the link below and appeared in the Guardian.  Simon is skeptical of Marxism, as I certainly am, but the following passage shows his view that Marx got it right on how unfettered capitalism can be destructive: "I'm not a Marxist in the sense that I don't think Marxism has a very specific clinical answer to what ails us economically. I think Marx was a much better diagnostician than he was a clinician. . . . [H]e was really sharp about what goes wrong when capital wins unequivocally, when it gets everything it asks for."

Simon argues that the blooming of our middle class came because neither those with capital nor those with labor won all their arguments.  He also argues that profit is the wrong metric by which to measure our economy's health.  I include this link to keep and study his reasoning.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire