Dennis Prager Is Here To Do Some Last Minute War On Christmasing

If you don't teach your kids to say Merry Christmas, they will drown strangers.

The War On Christmas has been relatively dry this year. Have we all been far too busy with other things to even notice whether or not some people are especially mad at Starbucks cups failing to be holy enough? Did those people just get sick of themselves? Did they just believe Trump when he declared that everyone would be wishing them a Merry Christmas, and haven't left the house enough to notice whether or not that was true? Who knows!

But all is not lost. Dennis Prager, who is actually Jewish, stopped by Fox & Friends to explain that it is actually the law to wish people a Merry Christmas, and that if you don't, your kids will let strangers drown.

 
'To Deny that There Is a War on Christmas Is to Lie'    grabien.com 

Transcript via Grabien:

KILMEADE: "Dennis, nobody knows more about religion, all types of religion, and theories and traditions than you. Why does merry Christmas matter?"

PRAGER: "It matters because it's a national holiday, first of all. People have to understand I'm a Jew, OK? Christmas is not my religious holiday, but Christmas is my national holiday, on de facto and legal grounds. On the legal grounds it's a national holiday. I honor my country. Number two, the vast majority of my fellow citizens celebrate this holiday. It's — the notion — and this is the most important point — the notion that if you don't celebrate Christmas or if you're not a Christian you are offended by it, is so preposterous that words fail me. Preposterous is an understatement. Why would I be offended as a Jew if you said to me, as a non-Christian if you said to me merry Christmas? The idea is so narcissistic and so absurd, this is the holiday of the season. And it's — to deny that there is a war on Christmas is to lie."

Man, I wish Republicans were this enthusiastic about Labor Day, which is also a federal holiday.

As an atheist, I'm not "offended" when someone says Merry Christmas to me, I'm not mad. It's just that Happy Holidays is less awkward. It makes me feel more included, and like I'm talking to a person who is conscientious about how they make other people feel and also aware that non-Christians even exist. It's just kinder . Also, hello, there are a bunch of holidays happening right now, so not only is it kinder, it is more accurate.

Prager then went completely off the deep end, suggesting that "secularism" will turn all of the children into heartless murderers.

Via RawStory :

"They don't like 'In God We Trust' on our coins, they don't like Christmas as a national holiday," Prager complained. "I fear a radically secularized America. I fear it. As a Jew, I fear it."

"I know what happens when people no longer have a God-based frame of reference for their ethics," he added. "Two-thirds of the high school kids I've asked in the last in the last 40 years, 'Would you save your dog or a stranger if both were drowning?' [They] won't save the stranger because 'I love my dog, don't love the stranger.' But if you have a Judeo-Christian value system, you know that people are created in God's image, dogs are not."

How do you know, Dennis? After all. Dog is God spelled backwards. Coincidence? What if you die and then find out that God is a dog? I bet you will feel super guilty about all those dogs you let drown!

This is basically a variation on the trolley problem that actually misses the entire point of the trolley problem. You're all probably familiar with this already because of either your college-level ethics classes or watching The Good Place -- but if you're not, the gist of it is that a trolley is coming up on some tracks where five people are tied down, Perils of Pauline -style. You, for some reason, are in charge of being able to pull the lever to move the train onto another track, but some Snidely Whiplash has tied someone to that track as well. If you do nothing, five people die, if you pull the lever, your actions will lead to the death of Nell Fenwick or whomever, and you will be a murderer.

Most people pick pulling the lever at first, because utilitarianism, but it gets complicated when the one person on the other side of the tracks is someone they know and the five people are all strangers, or if the one person is a saint and the other five people are all murderers. In the Prager situation, the dog is the person they know, and thus, it gets complicated. It also doesn't make for a particularly good ethical problem because the dilemma is supposed to be between doing nothing and letting five people die, and actively doing a morally bad thing in order to save those five people. Dennis Prager should probably be better at ethics before he starts lecturing people on them.

That being said. If his belief that humans are made in God's image is the only thing keeping Dennis Prager from going on a full-on drowning spree, he's a scary guy   and I do not want him coming anywhere near close enough to me to wish me aMerry Christmas or even a Happy Holidays .

But I would like to wish a Happy War On Christmas to all of you, and don't forget to spend all of the money you get from relatives who don't know what to buy you at the Wonkette bazaar! 

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