Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [4]
Though the secularists were few in number, O’Reilly attributed their success to well-placed connections. “Now most people, of course, love Christmas and want to keep its traditions,” he reported. “But the secular movement has influence in the media, among some judges and politicians.”
As evidence of this plot, O’Reilly cited the example of the degenerate nation of Canada. According to his statistics, only 61 percent of Canadians believed that religion was important for their nation, and a frightening 16 percent did not claim affiliation with any religion. Though Canada was once a “traditional religious country,” O’Reilly observed that in modern Canada, gay marriage was legal, drugs had been decriminalized, “any kind” of abortion was available, welfare benefits were double those of the United States, the military was nonexistent, and the age of consent was fourteen.5 “Can you imagine American adults being allowed to fool around with children that age?” O’Reilly asked, aghast.b
Thus, if Federated Department Stores and the mayor of New York were permitted to continue to use generic holiday terminology, Americans would soon be able to buy drugs, marry gay people, go on welfare, and have sex with fourteen-year-olds. The only thing that they would not be able to do would be to enlist in the military because there wouldn’t be a military anymore, except perhaps for a few metrosexual cavalrymen with splashy red coats and fancy hats.c
“A Very Secret Plan”
Who are these mysterious secular progressives who would so callously expose the nation to depravity? In 2004, O’Reilly described “committed secularists in the media, courts and education system” and “the people at The New York Times, The L.A. Times—the far left wing of the Democratic Party.”6 In 2005, he implicated the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and billionaires George Soros and Peter Lewis:
George Soros and Peter Lewis are the far-left, secular progressive billionaires who have funded—they pour money into the ACLU, they pour money into the smear websites, you know, they buy up a lot of the media time. And they basically want to change the country from a Christian-based philosophical country to a secular progressive country like they have in Western Europe. OK? Now, the ACLU is their legal arm, and the smear websites are their media arm. And they pour a lot of money into both. And the ACLU runs around the country suing everybody and intimidating people . . . And in tandem, you use your leftwing smear websites to go after anybody who stands up for Christmas. If you stand up for Christmas, they come after you. So the tandem intimidates. The tandem intimidates. Suing on one hand; smearing on the other hand. And the store CEOs, they got it. We don’t want to get involved in that. We don’t want to be sued. We don’t want to be smeared, so we’re going to say “Happy Holidays.” Intimidation and lawsuits; the combo has worked . . . I mean, the ACLU and George Soros and these websites don’t operate day to day without a plan. There is a plan . . . a very secret plan.”7
Thus, the “secret plan” was revealed. According to O’Reilly, billionaires Soros and Lewis provided cash, the ACLU provided the lawsuits, and the unnamed smear sites provided the smearing. As a result, if you owned a department store and posted a sign wishing your customers a merry Christmas, you would be sued and smeared by the dark overlords of suing and smearing until you begged for mercy, which is useless because everyone knows that the godless don’t do mercy, especially at Christmastime. Granted, no store has ever actually been sued or smeared for posting “Merry