The "War on Chrismas" is not entirely delusional

The American "War on Christmas" movement seems thoroughly silly ....

Reminder: Tis the Season Not to Be an Ass – Whatever

...it’s about as silly as it ever was, considering that Christmas has conquered December, occupied November and metastasized into late October. To suggest that the holiday is under serious threat from politically correct non-Christians is like suggesting an earthworm is a serious threat to a Humvee. This is obvious enough to anyone with sense that I use The War on Christmas as an emergency diagnostic, which is to say, if you genuinely believe there’s a War on Christmas, you may want to see a doctor, since you might have a tumor pressing on your frontal lobes.

Seems silly, is silly.

And yet, I agree with TNC that Rick Perry is not completely delusional ...

Rick Perry and the Politics of Resentment - Ta-Nehisi Coates - Politics - The Atlantic

... What strikes me is the sense of being under siege, a constant theme in conservative politics. It is as if time itself is against them. And they know it. The line "I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian" stands out. Who is ashamed of this? This is a predominantly Christian country, and one of the most religious in the West. People don't "admit" their Christianity here. They proclaim it -- as the president has done repeatedly.

But what if there's something else? What if the conservatives are more perceptive and honest than the moderate liberals? I love Grant and Lincoln, but they were dead wrong in claiming that emancipation did not promote "social equality." Meanwhile the bigots who asserted that emancipation meant that Sambo would be "marryin yer daughters" were right. I wouldn't be shocked if Grant and Lincoln knew this, but also knew that to admit as much would be suicidal...

Yes, to most of the world the US seems to border on theocracy. But I was born into a true western theocracy, and it fell apart in less than 10 years ...

Quiet Revolution - Quebec History

The Quiet Revolution is the name given to a period of Quebec history extending from 1960 to 1966...

... The first major change that took place during the Quiet Revolution was the large-scale rejection of past values. Chief among these are those that Michel Brunet called “les trois dominantes de la pensée canadienne-française: l’agriculturisme, le messianisme et l’anti-étatisme” [the three main components of French Canadian thought: agriculturalism, anti-statism and messianism]. In this respect, Quebec entered resolutely into a phase of modernisation: its outlook became more secular (as opposed to religious), much of the traditionalism that characterised the past was replaced by increasingly liberal attitudes; long standing demographic tendencies, associated with a traditional rural way of life (high marriage, birth and fertility rates), were rapidly reversed ...

Quebec seemed stuck in the past -- until it lurched into the future. Societies can change very quickly.

Consider the case of the 2012 Presidential campaign. The GOP's presidential candidate will be theologically non-Christian (though culturally mainstream Protestant). The Dems candidate will be mainstream Protestant but raised partly in Islamic Indonesia.

That seems different, even if the current candidates aren't as theologically extreme as Jefferson, Adams or Madison. I would not be surprised if the religious attitudes of 2020 America were similar to those of 2000 Britain.

The religious right is right to be afraid, but wrong to think there's a conspiracy they can fight. Their foe is history, and it's hard to fight history. Just ask al Qaeda.