Christianity Under Siege!

Media Matters has a good article on attempts by Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity to falsely portray Christianity as being under attack in America. Especially stupid is this, from O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: Secular progressives realize that America as it is now will never
approve of gay marriage, partial birth abortion, euthanasia, legalized drugs,
income redistribution through taxation, and many other progressive visions
because of religious opposition.
But if the secularists can destroy religion
in the public arena, the brave new progressive world is a possibility. That's
what happened in Canada.

Okay, I can see how gay marriage, partial-birth abortion, and euthanasia are religious issues for many. But what the hell does legalizing drugs have to do with Christianity? I don't think Jesus ever spoke a word about doing drugs. Conservatives rarely, if ever, frame the war against drugs in religious terms. I think, in general, the conservative mindset causes one to tend to want to keep drugs illegal, but not because of religiosity or lack thereof.

But, unlike legalized drugs, we already have "income redistribution through taxation" in this country, and conservatives are not working to end it. On this issue, liberals and conservatives argue about how to redistribute income through taxation, not whether to do it.

For any uninformed conservatives out there, the whole point of taxation is redistribute income! Where do you think the salaries of soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen come from? Where do you think the salaries of government workers come from? And the salaries of the people who fix the roads? And, while O'Reilly wants you to think of welfare to the poor when he says "income redistribution through taxation," it is also where the money for corporate welfare, that is, welfare to the already wealthy, comes from.

Conservatives like O'Reilly want to take money from the middle-class and poor and give it to the rich, by taxing the middle-class and poor more heavily than the rich and then giving the money to the rich through tax breaks, incentives, and corporate welfare. Liberals want to take money from the rich and give it to the poor. If you don't want "income redistribution through taxation," FOX News is not the place to go, neither is the O'Reilly Factor or the Republican party. The Libertarians are the only ones trying to end income redistribution.

And, Bill, keeping religion out of the government, which Bill calls "the public arena" to make it sound like liberals want to keep Christians from putting nativity scenes in their own yards (they don't), isn't a "progressive" issue: It should be a conservative issue, since it dates back to the drafting of the freakin' Bill of Rights! In fact, the separation of Church and State was so important they put it first, in the First Amendment. Conservatives always like to talk about the Founding Fathers and the mythical "golden age" where everything was still right with the world. Well, the Founding Fathers invented separation of Church and State and the First Amendment existed back when this mythical "golden age" supposedly was happening.

Sheesh.