Peter Brimelow likes to wait until 12th Night– the Feast of the Epiphany –before closing out the War against Christmas Competition. This allows for late entries to trickle in (please send!), and for some reflection.

But one thing is quite clear from watching this year’s news flow: the other side is badly rattled. They showed it with their ludicrous parroting of the propaganda line (“lie” in plain English) that there has been no effort to suppress Christmas, an assertion propagated so rapidly, extensively and uniformly as to be comic …if it hadn’t been such a formidable demonstration of MSM power.

And particularly significantly, it showed in the attempts by various NeoConservatives to make peace, seen in Amity Shlaes’ Bloomberg column two weeks ago, and in a new column by David Frum. (”The Lord of Misrule” Is Coming to Town” AEI.org December 26 2006)

Buried beneath the usual assortment of disparaging and belittling historical factoids about the Christmas tradition (they’ve really had to hit the books on this!) are some major concessions by Frum:

the most fiercely contested of all Christmas symbols are precisely those about which Christians have historically been most dubious: the trees, boughs and Father Christmas.

These ironic facts point the way to a historic compromise.

We should recognize: There is nothing inherently Christian about the visual ornaments of the Christmas season. Quite the contrary: They are explicitly non-Christian objects that have been imbued with Christian symbolism hundreds and thousands of years afterward. A Christian can look at the Christmas evergreen and see a symbol of the eternal life promised by Jesus to his followers. But a non-Christian remains free to look at that same tree and see . . . just a tree.

Well, maybe not “just” a tree. These are trees that emerge from the ancient culture of northern Europe and the British Isles–a culture inherited by every English-speaking person, regardless of his or her particular creed or ethnicity. It is from that culture that we have derived our free society, our separation of church and state, and our rights to protest and complain. (VDARE.com emphasis)

So maybe those trees deserve a little veneration from everyone, Christian or not. And maybe, for just a few weeks of the year, those rights to protest and complain should go unexercised.

These mirror the remarks by Shlaes

In the U.S., the Christmas tree has earned a right to be a symbol of general tolerance…At Sea-Tac, the removal of the Christmas tree created a spiritual tragedy…Though the Christmas tree might be removed in the name of tolerance, the space that results makes the country less tolerant than before.

For the Christophobic left, the task is very simple. They want to eradicate American traditions. (Hat tip, View from the Right, for a particularly fine example). The NeoConservatives, however, are engaged on a far more ambitious program. While picking up concessions about symbols if easily obtainable, their main interest is getting a war fought for them. For this, they are willing to express moving, generous (and not inaccurate) thoughts.

Very attractive, if you don’t have a draft-age son.

Carl Horowitz has an article on Jane Elliott in Frontpage Magazine.

Why does racial diversity training, whose deleterious effects have been chronicled in these pages more than once, seem like a children’s group exercise, a sadist’s version of “patty cake, patty cake, baker’s man?” There’s a good reason: It is a children’s exercise. At least that’s how it began and operated for many years until the pillars of our society became convinced of its necessity. We have a retired school teacher named Jane Elliott to thank for the leftward infantilizing of the American mind.FrontPage magazine.com :: Jane Elliott and her Blue-Eyed Devil Children by Carl F. Horowitz

I noticed, or rather, Google noticed it, because he refers to one my articles on her in the footnotes. Read the whole thing, and if you want more, here are two articles VDARE.com did on Jane Elliott.

Jane Elliott: 35 Years of Rage

- Abolishing America (Cont’d): Jane Elliott (Cont’d)

Bryan Bender writes at the Boston Globe

The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks — including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer — according to Pentagon officials.

Foreign citizens serving in the US military is a highly charged issue, which could expose the Pentagon to criticism that it is essentially using mercenaries to defend the country. Other analysts voice concern that a large contingent of noncitizens under arms could jeopardize national security or reflect badly on Americans’ willingness to serve in uniform.

Now, the US military has done this sort of thing for a while. (See Abolishing America (contd.): Foreign Legions?)

Now, my own take on this: if the US can’t recruit US citizens into the military, maybe, just maybe there is a reason. Maybe these citizens don’t really feel their government is protecting the interests of their families and communities.

I’m personally disgusted at the tendency of the US government to spend hundreds billions of dollars in the Middle East–while failing to properly develop energy resources in the US-or even provide serious incentives in that area. Playing shell games by handing out immigration rights to mecenaries adds to that disgust–and I won’t be encouraging my son or relatives to volunteer for this particular crusade.

This story was also covered by Tom Reagan at the Christian Science Monitor.

Gerald Ford died yesterday–see the announcement here, and memorial details here.

One of the earliest items I wrote for VDARE.com was Gerald Ford’s Role in ’65 Immigration Disaster… And After.

As GOP minority leader, he was the one supposed to fight against the 1965 Immigration Act–he didn’t. In fact, he voted “Yes” on the bill.

I also mentioned his role in the betrayal of Vietnam, and his latter-day support for affirmative action, on the grounds that, as he put it “It is estimated that by 2030, 40 percent of all Americans will belong to various racial minorities” and that was why he was defending the right of his alma mater, the University of Michigan to discriminate against whites in the Grutter and Gratz cases.

But I’m afraid that if,. by 2030, 40 percent of American are members of various minority groups, it’s because of what Gerald Ford either did, or failed to do.