Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

Friday, December 17, 2004

Coddling the insecure

A great Charles Krauthammer article. Definitely follow the link to read more than just these two telling paragraphs:

Some Americans get angry at parents who want to ban carols because they tremble that their kids might feel 'different' and 'uncomfortable' should they, God forbid, hear Christian music sung at their school. I feel pity. What kind of fragile religious identity have they bequeathed their children that it should be threatened by exposure to carols? I'm struck by the fact that you almost never find Orthodox Jews complaining about a Christmas creche in the public square. That is because their children, steeped in the richness of their own religious tradition, know who they are and are not threatened by Christians celebrating their religion in public. They are enlarged by it. It is the more deracinated members of religious minorities, brought up largely ignorant of their own traditions, whose religious identity is so tenuous that they feel the need to be constantly on guard against displays of other religions — and who think the solution to their predicament is to prevent the other guy from displaying his religion, rather than learning a bit about their own.