The Real War on Christmas ... by Fox News

As a scholar myself, I must respectfully disagree with j4782.  I have struggled with the belief that Mary and Joseph were somehow dirt poor and that Jesus was born into poverty.  If Jesus came to "Preach good news to the poor..." and he himself was poor, why would any poor person listen?  The only reference I can find to the physical poverty of Jesus is the reference that j4782 mentions.  Most commentaries and study Bibles give this reference as an indication of the poverty of Jesus and his earthly family.  However, more recent biblical historical scholarship indicates that the normal sacrifice for purification by the time of Jesus' birth was two turtledoves and therefore not an indication of the holy families poverty but an indication that they made the normal sacrifice of their time period. The Bible is quite clear and precise in pointing out that Joseph had a job which is another indication that the holy family, while they may not have been filthy rich, were by no means dirt poor and probably what we would consider by the standards of Jesus' day using modern terminology, middle class.  There is no mention of Mary and Joseph being homeless, in fact I think just the opposite is the case.  The fact that Joseph had a job and it is mentioned is an indication that Joseph had an income.  The Greek word for carpenter is not one who works with wood, but one who works with stone.  So Jospeh probably didn't have a carpenters shop where he made tables and chairs.  No, Joseph didn't build tables and chairs, he built cities along the lines of what a contractor does today.  So Joseph was perfectly capable of providing a home for his family and I don't believe he, being a righteous man, would get married without being able to provide for his family.  Also, we forget the fact that the holy family was from royalty, there was a priest in the family and the gifts that the Magi brought were gifts of great financial significance. 

Boy, Rozlee, I suggest that most Christians would like not like living in Jesus time if it meant that the Church would put them to death for withholding tithes.  I note that Jesus didn't ally himself with Caesar to strong arm the people for contributions to the poor, unlike Wallis , who would, rather than trust the people to give voluntarily, invents something called "social justice" and invokes the power of the IRS and the courts to punish those who would not pay.  He does this by siding with the Democratic Party, a party which knows no limit to what it would tax the people to pay for their redistributionist policies.  Yes, Mr. Wallis, budgets have moral aspects, but only those that follow Jesus principle of volutary contributions to the poor.  I repeat, that nothing in Jesus teachings enlists the power of Ceasar to do so.  That's why the clergy should never ally themselves with the power of the State, as the State is often corrupt.  History is rife with instances of the Church corrupted by the State.   I find you people reprehensible. 

Ignorance is bliss when it comes to the progressives view of Obama.  Obama is a socialist, by increments.  Obama knows that this country isn't amenable to the radical change that it requires, but he and the other socialists will settle for slow change, beginning with promoting strong arm bully unions like the SEIU, the Teamsters and so called social justice organizations like ACORN, for which he advocated.  Obama would force these people on the boards of directors and insinuate them in the production process.  He would use the National Labor Relations Board and the law to make this happen.  He would then enact laws that would give the unions more power in determining the means of productions and benefits.  The unions in turn would work hand in hand with the government to enact such constrictions that management would have little in the way of discretion.  The relationship would be such that the government would ultimately have such control of the means of production that it would effectively be socialist.  That's already happening, with Boeing being forced to give concessions to the unions after being threatened by the government to prevent them from opening a production plant in a right to work state.  And General Motors would never have produced the Chevy Volt, if it were not for government influence.  Don't tell me that Obama and his minions aren't socialist.  Given enough time, the Democratic Party would eventually have the entire country socialist.

So what is the big deal of whether Jesus was born in a house or in an inn?  It doesn't change the essence of the story in any way.

Jim is obviously a fan of Big Government, but disagreeing with him doesn't necessarily mean joining the Religious Right.  We need more than two choices, or a revival of bipartisanship.

As long as the current right believes in demonizing anyone who dares to disagree, we will never have bipartisanship.  Besides, political action (which is what he's talking about) should not be confused with "big government."

The Civil Rights movement is a good example of how to engage those with which you disagree.  Unfortunately, the high-profile, modern-day examples of this type of action are few and far between.  The vast majority of those on the left and right don't follow this model.  Demonization is the preferred method.  Both sides are guilty.

BlueDeacon, I repsect your right to your own opinion, and based on your response to my points, I don't see that we'll ever agree on this topic or any other, so I'll leave you in peace.

Wise choice.

For what would King "call me out"?

For, given the context, your relative passivity.  (And he actually had said that.)  A lot of conservatives will pay homage to MLK Jr. but not actually read what he wrote in context -- and it condemns them.

Are we holding you responsble for specific failures of the Left?

You would if you could.  But the left isn't anywhere near as organized, and I no longer consider myself part of it.

Are ya kidding me? Do you not watch MSNBC? At least daily Keith Oberman was calling Bush names and attacking him personally. As well as Rachael Maddow, and Ed Shultz. Go to YouTube. Keith used to call Bush a Facist. Told him to wear a t-shirt that said that. They were very hard on him. I think him name calling was what eventually got him fired. Wasn't Ed who called Ann Coulter a Slut? The left calls people on the right names all the time, you are just so used to hearing it, it just doesn't register anymore.

What is there to "debunk" or "discredit"  about the separation of church and state? The final authority on the Constitution is the Supreme Court, and they have stated in multiple rulings from as early as 1878 that the separation exists.

You're free of course to argue that you disagree or want it to be different but the reality is that the separation exists because the Supreme Court says it does. The only factual argument to dispute this would be a ruling to the contrary and there isn't one.

You must not be my cousin from Kansas! Anyway, welcome. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you might be Canadian?

"Not at all, because Fox's machinations are quite well-known, especially to those of us actually in the news business; indeed, it doesn't even try to hide them.  If anything, he was being kind."

Really, well known?  Don't you mean that the nasty propaganda put out by the Left is well known, and widely believed?  It's a case of repeating the lie often enough and it becomes the new truth.  The truth is that Fox doesn't support your kind of wealth redistributionist kind of social justice, so it becomes an impediment that must be destroyed.

Wallis is a well known promoter of redistributionism by way of coerced taxation backed up by punishment exacted by the new Caesar's State.  He would have the State do his dirty work instead of depending upon the personal charity of the individual.  There's no love here, merely the power of the State masking as love.   That's exactly what Wallis' social justice requires.  There would be no demonization of the conservatives and Republicans if Wallis were actually a promoter of Christianity, because Christians give freely, without invoking the name of the IRS.

There was no real middle class in the Galilean world of 2,000 years ago. What little of it existed was in the merchant class and the traders. Carpenters of today deal in large homes made of durable wood from trees, brick, and other modern forms of building materials. Carpenters of Jesus' time built small homes made of mud, crude stones, and straw and often housed more than one family. Nazareth, his home town, consisted of a population at the time of no more than 200 people, mostly family tribes. They wore homespun wool clothes made from sheep owned communally. They considered themselves rich if they had enough seeds from their harvest for the next years planting. The class system at the time were a few staggeringly rich people and the poor peasants, the unbelievably poor peasants and the outcasts (i.e. lepers, certain sinners, unclaimed widows, those with certain birth defects, the castrated or those with genital abnormalities as proscribed in Deuteronomy, prostitutes, etc.). Mary and Joseph were very poor. As a carpenter, Joseph could have fashioned a wagon to pull a pregnant Mary into Bethlehem. Instead, she had to ride a donkey. You can't compare today's carpentry profession with the one that existed in the Iron Age. During that time, 99.4% of the people were illiterate. Galileans didn't own property. Even the donkey Mary rode on was technically the property of the Romans if they'd wanted to take it away from her. Starvation and disease were rampant. Skeletons dug up from that time in that area show marked scurvy, rickets and damage consistent with kwashiorkor. The average age of death for a male at that time was 32. Today's preachers teach a prosperity gospel where they encourage their congregants to become wealthy. Jesus said not to build treasure on earth where moth and rust would corrupt and time and time again stereotyped the rich as evil and told them to give their wealth away. Dirty, stinking, Socialist commie hippie.

Oh, Jeebus. Sounds like almost every preacher out there that thinks America is doomed because we allow abortion, use birth control pills, teach evolution and the Big Bang Theory; let women work outside the home, refuse to stone gays, don't kill a commie for Mommie,  chicken out on frying Mexicans on border fences, don't own our own Negroes, and believe the earth is round. I guess it's OK when white preachers say America is being punished for her sins. But, black preachers who diss America can kiss off and go back to Kenya.

What I oppose about FOX "news" is that it bears little resemblance to news. I consider all news stations to be owned by wealthy pro-corporate interests that are just looking out for their own financial benefit. If they weren't, they'd be reporting on the excess waste of tax payer money by defense contractors and other abuses by their wealthy subsidiaries. Such as CBS, which is owned by Westinghouse, which owns several defense contracts, as does NBC, who is run by Comcast a division of GE, another defense contractor. Then, you have CNN, which is run by Time Warner, which is owned by the Saudi family, oil interests. And, of course, FOX, which is owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch and whose biggest shareholder is Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud, another oil interest. But, FOX loves reporting silly, frivolous news. They'll spend several news cycles, indeed, they spend days or weeks, reporting that President Obama put a mustard on his hot dog that wasn't an American mustard. Or that he wore "unsuitable" pants to the beach during the oil spill. Or that he bent at the waist to a foreign dignitary (they say nothing about Reagan kneeling in front of the Thai royal family or Bush kissing the Saudi royal prince and holding hands). They'll snicker on the one hand that he needs a teleprompter, then wail that he's too good a debater and will drown out the message of the "plain spoken" Republican candidate's "sincere" message. They'll discuss to death that he placed his feet on the desk in the oval office when Bush used to do it habitually. They'll snarl that he disrespected the flag when he draped it a certain way, but say nothing about Palin defacing one by autographing it. They complain that he's too thin and about the way he pronounces "Pakistan" (the correct way). They said nothing about the way Bush pronounced "nuclear" (nook-eee-loor). They say he takes too many vacations, but at the same time during his presidency, Bush had taken a whole lot more, Obama 80 days to Bush 310 by this time. Bush spent 1,020 days of his presidency on vacation, more than any other president in history, including one a couple of weeks after 9/11. FOX reports the silliest things as news and slurs and distorts things. Like the ACORN story. They carried it continuously. But, when an investigation occured and found out that James O'Keefe had severely edited his video, not even wearing pimp garb but dressed in casual clothes and that ACORN personnel had reported him to authorities despite him having said otherwise, FOX only had a tiny blurb retracting his story and never mentioned it again, except once when O'Reilly reluctantly admitted it on his show. This nitpicking about mustard, pants and being too thin is beneath the dignity of a serious news organization. Not that I consider the others bastions of truth, but FOX borders on the infantile. No, actually, it IS infantile. Their motto should be, "We distort, you believe."