Canaries in the coalmine

Michelle Malkin has a chilling column about the violence committed against Christians worldwide, and how our Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays battle is still, mercifully, small potatoes:

Yes, it's maddening when politically correct bureaucrats ban nativity scenes and Christmas carols in the name of 'diversity' and 'tolerance.' We are under attack by Secularist Grinches Gone Wild. But the war on Christmas in America is a mere skirmish.

She ends her article by saying

If America's mainstream media would give the global War on Christianity just a fraction of the attention it pays to the War on Christmas, lives might be saved. And light would be shed on the true heroes of the original religion of peace. Doing so, however, would require the nation's secularized pundits and pontificators to take religious persecution seriously. In that, alas, I have no faith.

I think it's not just a matter of the MSM taking religious persecution seriously. I suspect that many MSM members, when hearing about American missionaries abroad, feel that the missionaries took a known risk, and it's nobody else's business. As for the Christians killed at the hands of their own countrymen, for the non-religious, the obvious answer is for these Christians to convert, or to keep their religion a secret. In a secular universe, there is no virtue in standing up for faith. And since members of the MSM view the problem purely through a religious prism (or, I should say, a non-religious prism), I don't think they appreciate the broader problem: There are huge swathes in this world (places that we routinely defer to out of mistaken multiculturalism) that are brutally totalitarian. As a Jew, when I hear about silence in the face of persecution, I am always reminded of Pastor Martin Niemöller's statement regarding the Nazis: "First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me." The Jews are almost always the canary in the coalmine in an unhealthy country. And in this day and age, when there are no Jews (and sometimes simultaneously with the Jews), Christians come next. Someone had better start speaking out for the Christians soon, or there will be no one left.