Rick Perry’s “Merry Christmas”

East 14th St, NYC (Dec 2011) (AS)MSN reports:

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday signed a law protecting Christmas and other holiday celebrations in Texas public schools from legal challenges — but also stressed that freedom of religion is not the same thing as freedom from religion…Dubbed the “Merry Christmas” bill, the bipartisan measure sailed through the state House and Senate to reach Perry’s desk.

It removes legal risks of saying “Merry Christmas” in schools while also protecting traditional holiday symbols, such as a menorah or nativity scene, as long as more than one religion and a secular symbol are also reflected.

It is, of course, sad and stupid that there can be “legal risks” associated with exchanging Christmas greetings in schools. If the new law fixes that, it’ll be all to the good, but quite what makes a “secular symbol” eludes me. I’m with the atheist shoemakers in Berlin who said this:

There are already hundreds of symbols for atheism and none of them tickle us in quite the right place… either they’re too sciency, or too literal, or just plain ugly… Well, our solution is inspired by a Christian friend (thanks Matt) who accused us of having god-shaped-holes. And we think a gaping, BLACK HOLE is absolutely perfect… And what says “I believe in nothing” better than nothing?

Quite. But it’s difficult to imagine a black hole nestling between the manger and the menorah. There is, however, another candidate, jovial, genially syncretic and refreshingly appreciative of the joys of consumerism.

Yup, Santa would do very well indeed.

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2 Responses to Rick Perry’s “Merry Christmas”

  1. cynthia curran says:

    Perry has too many blacks and hispanics in his state for good results on stats. US Census Texas second largest gain of Hispanics behind California only because its a smaller state than California. Largest number increase of blacks at 87,000 while white gain was only 78,000 for a state that large means that even conservative whites know a high minority state will eventually has problems. And Texas has problems in the larger cities not the worst but not the best. As the left will state the Rio Grande has some of the worst poverty in the US, lots of Mexicans in a rurual area with low job opporuntiy. There is probably a million folks in the Rio Grande river valley. The whites will vote Republican but unlike the rest of the south Hispanics grow much faster than blacks and in 2030 or so enough Mexicans and Central Americans vote bye to Perry’s politics.

  2. cynthia curran says:

    Another thing on the hispaniczation of a state, Hispanic cities usually have higher unemployment than non-hispanic cities in the same state. Let’s take California since I don’t off hand have the figures for Texas. Mission Viejo only 18 percent Hispanic has an unemployment rate of 3.9 percent and Santa Ana a town known for a lot of illegal immirgants has one of 8.8 percent. Instead of illegals taking everyone’s job in jobs below 20 per hr, they seem to have higher than average unemployment. Many that are staying in the US are currently living off of other relatives if you go by unemployment figures for the cities they they live in in. For example, some jobs like manufactoring that still have some lower skilled jobs in adds are asking more for their workers to speak English and well as Spanish and do basic math. About 10 years ago before outsourcing as much or automation, these employers didn’t care as much. There are some many service jobs that illegal immirgants and low skilled legal immirgants can do or construcation jobs. Yet, the Senate things that illegals are getting lots of low skilled jobs with low unemployment. In fact the higher skilled and higher educated like Charles Murray stated are still doing better even if job growth in more skilled work is growing slower. Hertiage is right a lot of illegal hispanics would probably go on welfare because the truth is that many of them are unemployment at least in states like Calfiornia.

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