Monday, December 17, 2018



Does 'Merry Christmas' Matter?

Dennis Prager
    
Is “Merry Christmas” a thing of the past, a greeting from a bygone era, a remnant of a past with which we no longer want to be associated?

We might not be there yet, but if current trends continue, we’re not far off. If so, it’s a shame, a further coarsening of the culture — and worse. It is yet another example of the removal of religion, specifically Christianity, from a country that has long been the most religious major industrialized democracy in the world.

Proponents of “happy holidays” argue that this is no big deal. They say the advocates of saying “merry Christmas” are making a mountain out of a molehill. There is no “war on Christmas,” they say. But the “happy holidays” advocates want it both ways. They dismiss promoters of “merry Christmas” as hysterical while simultaneously replacing “merry Christmas” with “happy holidays”; “Christmas vacation” with “winter vacation”; and “Christmas party” with “holiday party.”

So, is all this elimination of the word “Christmas” important or not?

The answer should be obvious. It’s very important. That’s why so much effort is devoted to substituting other words for “Christmas.” And these efforts have been extraordinarily successful. In place of the universal “merry Christmas” of my youth, in recent decades I have been wished “happy holidays” by virtually every waiter and waitress in virtually every restaurant I have dined; by virtually everyone who welcomes me at any business; by flight attendants and pilots; and by just about everyone else.

When I respond, “Merry Christmas!” I often sense I have created tension. I suspect many of those to whom I wish “Merry Christmas!” are probably relieved to hear someone utter what has become the “C” word, but all the sensitivity training they’ve had to undergo creates cognitive dissonance.

The opponents of “merry Christmas” and other uses of the word “Christmas” know exactly what they’re doing. They’re disingenuous when they dismiss defenders of “merry Christmas” as “fabricating” some “war on Christmas.” Of course there’s a war on Christmas — or, more precisely, a war on the religious nature of America. The left in America, like the left in Europe, wants to create a thoroughly secular society, not only a secular government — which is a desirable goal and which, in any event, has been the case in America — but a secular society.

Most people do not realize that the left believes in secularism as fervently as religious Christians and Jews believe in the Bible. That’s why “merry Christmas” bothers secular activists. It’s a blatant reminder of how religious America is — and always has been. That’s why I predict activists on the left will sooner or later seek to remove Christmas as a national holiday.

Now, the left doesn’t announce that its agenda is to thoroughly secularize American and European societies. Instead, it camouflages what it is doing by offering the “inclusiveness” argument: “Merry Christmas” or “Christmas party” or “Christmas vacation” is not “inclusive.”

This inclusiveness argument plays on Americans’ highly developed sense of decency. But the argument is preposterous: Who, exactly, is being “excluded” when one wishes someone “merry Christmas”? Non-Christians?

I’m a non-Christian. I’m a Jew. Christmas is not a religious holy day for me. But I’m an American, and Christmas is an American national holiday. Therefore, as an American, it is my holiday — though not my holy day — as much as it is for my fellow Americans who are Christian. It was a Jewish-American, Irving Berlin, who wrote “White Christmas,” one of America’s most popular Christmas songs. In fact, according to a Jewish musician writing in The New York Times, “almost all the most popular Christmas songs were written by Jews.”

Apparently, all these American Jews felt quite included in Christmas!

And while on the subject of Jews, here’s a question for those Jews disturbed by “merry Christmas”: Should Israeli radio and TV stop saying “Shabbat Shalom” to be more inclusive of Israel’s non-Jewish minority?

It borders on the misanthropic, not to mention the mean-spirited, to want to deny nearly all of your fellow citizens the joy of having Christmas parties or being wished a merry Christmas.

By not wishing me a merry Christmas, you are not being inclusive. You are excluding me from one of my nation’s national holidays.

But even if Christmas were not a national holiday, I would want pilots to wish their passengers a merry Christmas, companies to have Christmas parties and schools to continue to have Christmas vacations. Just because I don’t personally celebrate Christmas, why would I demand my society drop the word “Christmas” when the holiday is celebrated by 90 percent of my fellow Americans?

The vast majority of Americans who celebrate Christmas — and who treat non-Christians so well — deserve better.

Please say “merry Christmas” and “Christmas party” and “Christmas vacation.” If you refuse to, you’re not “inclusive.” You’re hurtful to most of your fellow Americans.

SOURCE






Churches no longer welcome?

Churches throughout America embrace the call to love and serve their neighbors while sharing the Gospel of Christ.

That mission particularly inspires Redemption Community Church. The church has a heart for reaching out to the underprivileged and homeless in their community. In order to follow this calling, they sold their property outside of the city and bought a building in downtown Laurel, Maryland.

The church’s plan was to operate a non-profit coffee shop during the week in order to connect with the surrounding community. And then on Sundays, they would host a worship service. The church also planned to donate the proceeds from the coffee shop to other local non-profits that share its goal of serving the community.

Sounds like a win for the church and the community, doesn’t it?

But shortly after Redemption Community Church purchased a building downtown, the city changed its zoning laws to exclude non-profits.

Then, a few weeks later, the city changed its laws AGAIN.

It required churches that are on less than one-acre lots (nearly every church in the area) to apply for a “special exception” in order to hold church services. This expensive and time-consuming process didn’t even guarantee the church would be granted the exception at the end of it all.

This was no coincidence.  The city of Laurel was singling out churches—like Redemption Community Church—and discriminating against them because they are religious!

Thankfully, with your help, Redemption Community Church was able to file a lawsuit and get justice. In September, the city of Laurel changed its zoning code to remove the special exception requirement for churches.

But Redemption Community Church is not the only church to witness this type of government overreach.
 
Attempts to silence churches are increasing

For years, anti-religion activists have used “separation of church and state” as a misguided battle cry to remove God from public schools, erase historical religious landmarks, and even block faithful Christians from public service.

Meanwhile, REAL violations of separation of church and state are increasing.

Across the country, we’re seeing numerous incidents in which some government officials are trying to control what churches teach, where they worship, or how they exercise their religious freedom.
The city of Monroe, North Carolina abruptly changed its zoning code to specifically exclude churches—no exceptions.

The California Department of Managed Health Care is trying to force churches to pay for elective abortions in their health insurance plans.

Churches across the country are regularly harassed and fined by their local governments for noise ordinance issues (even though these churches are abiding by the laws).

Multiple churches are being sued—with six-figure penalties—for simply meeting in public schools. But it’s unconstitutional to try to ban churches from meeting in public spaces that are open to everyone else.

America was founded on religious freedom. It’s so deeply woven into the fabric of our nation that it’s become part of the American dream. You’re free to believe what you want to believe. Say what you want to say. And worship how you want to worship.

But the more the government reaches its hand into the affairs of the church, the more at risk your freedom to worship becomes.
 
When did some government officials start attacking the American dream?

You’ve probably never imagined waking up one day to find the government attacking your faith and freedom. Why would you? This is America. It’s supposed to be a place where anyone has a chance to work hard and succeed. To speak freely. To worship freely.

But we’ve reached a point in America where some government officials are blatantly targeting churches and trying to run them out of our cities.

Today, it is not a question of if churches will be threatened or sued for standing true to God’s Word – the question is when and where such cases will arise.

We must stand against these attempts to crush our freedom to live out our deeply held beliefs and protect our freedom to worship without government control.

Churches in America face legal challenges that were unimaginable even a few years ago. They need an ally who will stand with them as they fight back against these attacks—they need you.

Via email







    
Harvard Study: Gender Pay Gap Explained Entirely by Work Choices of Men and Women

"Gender pay gap is worse than thought: Study shows women actually earn half the income of men,” NBC announced recently in reference to a report titled “Still a Man’s Labor Market” by the Washington-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research, which found that women's income was 51 percent less than men’s earnings.

The "Gender Pay Gap" Isn't What You Think It Is

What do you think of when you hear the phrase “gender pay gap”? Perhaps you think of a man and woman who work exactly the same job at exactly the same place, but he gets paid more than she does. This sort of discrimination has been illegal in the United States since the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963.

But that is not what is generally meant by the phrase “gender wage gap.” Instead, the commonly reported figure—that a woman earns 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man—is derived by taking the total annual earnings of men in the American economy in a given year and dividing that by the number of male workers. This gives you the average annual earnings of an American man. Then you do the same thing but for women. The average annual women’s earnings come in at about 80 percent of the average annual man’s earnings. Presto, you have a gender wage gap.

That’s it, honestly. It isn’t much above back-of-a-cigarette-box stuff. This methodology takes no account whatsoever of a whole host of factors that might explain this discrepancy. It ignores the fact that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in 2017, men worked an average of 8.05 hours in an average day compared to 7.24 hours for women.

True, women are more likely to be raising children, taking care of elderly family members, or doing housework, leaving them with fewer hours in the day for paid employment. But this does not alter the essential fact: that people working fewer hours, on average, can be expected to earn lower incomes, on average.

Not Exactly Apples-To-Apples

And there are differences in the type of work men and women do, which bears on their earnings. BLS data shows that, in 2017, 94 percent of child day care services workers were female, the highest percentage of any category, and that the mean annual wage of childcare workers was $23,760. By contrast, just 2.9 percent of workers in logging were women, the lowest share of any category, and the mean annual wage here was $42,310.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research study fails to account for these differences. Indeed, its authors are airily dismissive of analysis that takes into account “occupational differences or so-called ‘women’s choices.’”

Its headline claim is that the 80 cents figure is wrong; in fact, women earn more like 49 cents for each dollar a man earns. The authors, Stephen J. Rose and Heidi I. Hartmann—listed in that order because that is how it is presented on the cover of their report, not because of sexism—arrive at this conclusion by taking a longitudinal dataset from 2001-2015 and measuring average annual earnings across the period for people who worked any amount during any of these years, and then comparing the overall averages for male and female workers, as well as for different subsets of men and women. Workers who were employed full-time for the entire 15-year period are lumped in with those who worked only part-time or occasionally.

Rather than starting with an observation (that 80-cent statistic) and examining possible causes, Hartmann and Rose have simply assumed a cause (rampant sexism) and carried out a slightly grander version of the back-of-a-cigarette-box calculation to support it. This isn’t how social science research should be done. It is exactly the wrong way round.

A New Study Out Of Harvard

Remember, if we truly want to measure the impact of sexism on male and female relative earnings, we want to look at men and women doing exactly the same job at exactly the same place. Fortunately, a new study by Valentin Bolotnyy and Natalia Emanuel of Harvard University—again, listed in that order because that is how they are presented in their paper—does just this.

They look at data from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA). This is a union shop with uniform hourly wages where men and women adhere to the same rules and receive the same benefits. Workers are promoted on the basis of seniority rather than performance, and male and female workers of the same seniority have the same choices for scheduling, routes, vacation, and overtime. There is almost no scope here for a sexist boss to favor men over women.

And yet, even here, Emanuel and Bolotnyy find that female train and bus operators earn less than their male counterparts. From this observation, they go looking for possible causes, examining time cards and scheduling from 2011 to 2017 and factoring in sex, age, date of hire, tenure, and whether an employee was married or had dependents.

They find that male train and bus drivers worked about 83 percent more overtime than their female colleagues and were twice as likely to accept an overtime shift—which pays time-and-a-half—on short notice and that around twice as many women as men never took overtime. The male workers took 48 percent fewer unpaid hours off under the Family Medical Leave Act each year. Female workers were more likely to take less desirable routes if it meant working fewer nights, weekends, and holidays. Parenthood turns out to be an important factor. Fathers were more likely than childless men to want the extra cash from overtime, and mothers were more likely to want time off than childless women.

In other words, the difference in male and female earnings at the MBTA was explained by those “so-called ‘women’s choices,’” which Hartmann and Rose so easily dismissed.

“The gap of $0.89 in our setting,” the authors concluded, “can be explained entirely by the fact that, while having the same choice sets in the workplace, women and men make different choices.”

The “gender wage gap” is as real as unicorns and has been killed more times than Michael Myers. Yet politicians feel the need to genuflect before this phantom figure. President Obama’s White House was obsessed with that ridiculous 80-cent number. Let us substitute the quest for phantoms with serious research into the causes of relative incomes.

SOURCE






Australian Government recognises West Jerusalem as Israel's capital but keeps embassy in Tel Aviv

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the foreign policy shift during a speech in Sydney, arguing it was a "balanced" and "measured" position.

"Australia now recognises West Jerusalem, being the seat of the Knesset [Israel's parliament] and many of the institutions of government, is the capital of Israel," Mr Morrison said.

"Furthermore, recognising our commitment to a two-state solution, the Australian Government has also resolved to acknowledge the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a future state with its capital in East Jerusalem."

Mr Morrison delayed moving Australia's embassy from Tel Aviv but said a trade and defence office would be established in West Jerusalem.

"We look forward moving to our embassy to West Jerusalem when practical, in support of and after, final status determination."

He said his decision to weigh into the issue had been mocked but that Australian had earned the right to have its say on the issue.

"When you look at our incredible influence, both in the creation of the state of Israel and our partnership with it over so many years, it's hard to say that Australia's influence has been small. It's been quite great," Mr Morrison said.

"So, while Australia's voice and the megaphone we have is not as great as the great powers — that's true. "But I've got to say, ever since I raised this issue several months ago, people have been pretty keen to know what we were going to say."

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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