Bill O'Reilly: Jerk

The caller has a legitimate point, that christmas is too much in schools now, but that isn't addressed.

Frankly, I think that the point that the caller is making is intellectually dishonest. The caller is "concerned about...Christmas going into schools," and later about "people [who] -- try to invite you to Bible study groups," and then (somehow) brings it back to "Christmas carols or gift exchanges being done in school, that...sets the kids up to being converted."

Certainly there are a whole host of reasons why we might not want Christmas to happen at school. However, none of the things this caller mentions are on that list of reasons.

First of all, it seems to me that Christmas is going out of schools more than going into them, a minor point but worth mentioning considering the caller seems to feel "assaulted."

The caller's other two arguments seem to have to do with a fear of being "converted." People who want to "save" you are, indeed, annoying, but it's not really the issue at hand. There's an awful lot of Christmas that happens outside of school too.

While I definitely agree that Bill O'Reilly is an ass, and the latter half, or so, of this conversation proves that (as well as his ignorance...how's about you have the seven days of Christmas this year, Bill?), I actually like the point he makes in response to these arguments:

They come -- the Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door and invite me places. I mean, I don't care -- I just say no, get outta here.

Proselytizing is annoying. However, we're not going to stop people from doing it, and we wouldn't want to. They're free to invite whoever they want to Bible Study. We're all free to say "Go fuck yourself, and get off of my porch." This is where people who support the separation of church and state go too far.

My personal preference is that we go in the opposite direction and teach lots of religion in school. However, I see a big difference between teaching and indoctrinating. In my public school education I took a number of classes that could have been subtitled "comparitive religion" and I am no doubt a better person for it. I think it's essential education that everyone should have if they plan on living in the world. Not just to give Christians a better understanding of Muslims and Jews (and others, yes) but to give Muslims and Jews (and others...) a better understanding of Christians, because there's an awful lot of misconceptions going back and forth there and everyone's guilty.

I had a teacher in high-school who taught us sections of the Christian Bible and while I was very turned off at first and refused the first assignment, I eventually came around to the point where I could, (as the teacher jokingly put it), read "The Good Book" as a good book.

Furthermore, it taught me one of the most important lessons of education. As Aristotle put it:

The mark of an educated mind is to entertain an idea without accepting it.

So in conclusion: Bill O'Reilly is a big honkin' doofus.

i didn't read the transcript but there is a real problem with the idea that it's ok to have religious states as long as there is a state for your religion.

and in a way i think this is the real danger of having israel be "the jewish state." israel is A jewish state (of course there are lots of issues here, but it is majority jewish with judaism as the state religion, etc) but for it to be tirelessly pushed by all these groups (ADL, ZOA, etc) as "THE jewish state" is, in my opinion, not a good thing. that's what leads to people saying "oh, you're jewish? go back to israel" (in fact, before the establishment of the state of israel there was often anti-semitic grafitti saying "jews go home to palestine" and such).

and then you have ariel sharon saying to french jews "come here to escape anti-semitism." that's not the solution. the solution is to work toward open societies here in the US and france and everywhere that are tolerant and accepting of other religious denominations.

oy vey.