Merry Christmas from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

From the Prime Minister of Israel:

America Remains Predominantly Christian Nation

As measured by public opinion survey data, at Gallup, "Christianity Remains Dominant Religion in the United States":

PRINCETON, NJ -- This Christmas season, 78% of American adults identify with some form of Christian religion. Less than 2% are Jewish, less than 1% are Muslim, and 15% do not have a religious identity. This means that 95% of all Americans who have a religious identity are Christians.

Well, yeah.

But you wouldn't know it by the way the radical progressives and their atheist allies have demonized those who openly profess their faith.

See previously: "The War on Christmas."

God's Quarterback: Tim Tebow Phenomenon Gathers Acolytes

At Astute Bloggers, "VIDEO: TEBOW DOES IT AGAIN!"

At San Jose Mercury News, "NFL: There is no denying Denver Broncos, Tim Tebow in overtime win over Chicago Bears."

And see USA Today, "Networks look to cash in on Tebow-mania." And also Bleacher Report, "Tim Tebow and His Religious Rhetoric Should Be Applauded, Not Ridiculed." And New York Times, "Tim Tebow’s Gospel of Optimism."

PREVIOUSLY: "Tim Tebow Powers Broncos to 16-13 OT Win Over Chargers: Hardest Hit — TBogg, Racist Anti-Christian Bigot at Firedoglake."

Fetal Heartbeat Bill Splits Pro-Life Forces

Actually, the Times makes sure to identify pro-life activists as "anti-abortion," which aligns with radical left death cult abortion lobby usage, "anti-choice." And I like the fetal-heartbeat bill more than the Mississippi initiative that failed last month. Something about the heartbeat that's irresistibly compelling.

See, "Ohio Bill Splits Anti-Abortion Forces on Legal Tactics":

A widening and emotional rift over legal tactics has split the anti-abortion movement, with its longtime leaders facing a Tea Party-like insurrection from many grass-roots activists who are impatient with the pace of change.

For decades, established anti-abortion leaders like National Right to Life and Catholic bishops have pushed for gradually chipping away at the edges of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, with state laws to impose limits on late-term abortions, to require women to view sonograms or to prohibit insurance coverage for the procedure.

But now many activists and evangelical Christian groups are pressing for an all-out legal assault on Roe. v. Wade in the hope — others call it a reckless dream — that the Supreme Court is ready to consider a radical change in the ruling.

The rift widened last month over a so-called personhood amendment in Mississippi that would have barred virtually all abortions by giving legal rights to embryos. It was voted down but is still being pursued in several states.

Now, in Ohio, a bill before the state legislature that would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detectable, usually six to eight weeks into pregnancy, is the latest effort by activists to force a legal showdown. The so-called heartbeat bill is tearing apart the state’s powerful anti-abortion forces.

Continue reading.

RELATED: Jill Stanek likes Mitt over Newt, "Gingrich: Life does not begin at conception."

'An America Fast Vanishing, Often Overlooked and Sometimes Openly Despised'

See Fay Voshell, at American Thinker, "A Kentucky Funeral":

Glenn Roland Voshell was buried on a hill on his Kentucky farm last week.

"We can still do that here in Kentucky," his wife Gayle said.
And so my brother was laid to rest on the land he loved.

His Amish neighbors volunteered horses and wagons to carry him to his final destination. The horses chuffed and snorted as they plodded up the hill with their cargo of grandchildren, who momentarily had forgotten the reason for their ride up the hill. As all little ones do, they seized the moment, laughing with pure joy over an unexpected hayride.

We adults trudged in silence behind the wagon loaded with Glenn's body as a kindly sun warmed our shoulders, a soft breeze blew across our faces, and the vaulted blue sky looked down. The jingling of harness hardware and the soft thud of the horses' hooves were the only sounds. A hawk wheeled overhead.

Continuing, and then...

I reflected on how miraculous this gathering was. Here was community -- family, neighbors, and church folk all bonded by love and Christian faith.

Here, gathered at my brother's funeral, was an America fast vanishing, often overlooked and sometimes openly despised. Here were works of the hands, works of the plow, and works of faith. Simple things. Profound things. Things of the heart. Things my brother loved.

Here, too, I thought, was the heart of our country. If it were to stop beating forever, the land would perish.

God, I prayed, don't let the heart stop beating.

Read it all, at the link.

Who Killed Horatio Alger?

From Luigi Zingales, at City Journal:

The title character of Horatio Alger’s 1867 novel Ragged Dick is an illiterate New York bootblack who, bolstered by his optimism, honesty, industriousness, and desire to “grow up ’spectable,” raises himself into the middle class. Alger’s novels are frequently misunderstood as mere rags-to-riches tales. In fact, they recount their protagonists’ journeys from rags to respectability, celebrating American capitalism and suggesting that the American dream is within everyone’s reach. The novels were idealized, of course; even in America, virtue alone never guaranteed success, and American capitalism during Alger’s time was far from perfect. Nevertheless, the stories were close enough to the truth that they became bestsellers, while America became known as a land of opportunity—a place whose capitalist system benefited the hardworking and the virtuous. In a word, it was a meritocracy.

To this day, Americans are unusually supportive of meritocracy, and their support goes a long way toward explaining their embrace of American-style capitalism. According to one recent study, just 40 percent of Americans attribute higher incomes primarily to luck rather than hard work—compared with 54 percent of Germans, 66 percent of Danes, and 75 percent of Brazilians. But perception cannot survive for long when it is distant from reality, and recent trends seem to indicate that America is drifting away from its meritocratic ideals. If the drifting continues, the result could be a breakdown of popular support for free markets and the demise of America’s unique version of capitalism.

Continue reading.

RELATED: I dealt with some similar issues here: "Decline of American Exceptionalism?"

Decline of American Exceptionalism?

Charles Blow, at the New York Times, draws the wrong conclusion from the recent report at Pew Research indicating that less than a majority of Americans (49 percent) agreed with the statement that "our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others." See, "Decline of American Exceptionalism":

Even if you put aside the somewhat loaded terminology of cultural superiority, Americans simply don’t seem to feel very positive about America at the moment....

We are settling into a dangerous national pessimism. We must answer the big questions. Was our nation’s greatness about having God or having grit? Is exceptionalism an anointing or an ethos? If the answers are grit and ethos, then we must work to recapture them. We must work our way out of these doldrums. We must learn our way out. We must innovate our way out.

We have to stop snuggling up to nostalgia, acknowledge that we have allowed a mighty country to be brought low and set a course to restitution. And that course is through hard work and tough choices. You choose greatness; it doesn’t choose you.

And that means that we must invest in our future. We must invest in our crumbling infrastructure. We must invest in the industries of the future. We must invest in a generation of foundering and forgotten children. We must invest in education. Cut-and-grow is ruinous mythology.

We must look out at the world with clear eyes and sober minds and do the difficult work as we’ve done time and time again. That’s how a city shines upon a hill.

Blow's understanding of exceptionalism is not based in history, values, nor institutions. His view is in the things we do (like work hard to expand government and "invest" in the future) not what we stand for. He's a classic progressive that sees higher taxes and spending (for "infrastructure") as the means to buffing up that "City on the Hill" image. But Blow's meaning misconstrue's John Winthrop's famous sermon, where he evoked the Christian metaphor that the United States was a light unto the world. But not only that. Looking back over at that Pew study we see this data at the table embedded below. Part of our exceptionalism is the belief in individualism, that the individual is basis of the good society and that the political order is established to preserve individual liberties. Progressives continually downplay individualism in American exceptionalism because it conflicts with their big-government nanny-statism. Charles Blow wants to continue building the big nanny state. When he says we must "invest" in all those things he's really saying that we must spend more on the traditional progressive programs that are bankrupting the nation. But the way to invest again is the restore economic liberty and unleash individual potential and entrepreneurialism. To do otherwise will do nothing but turn us into a dependency society like all of the truly crumbling European states highlighted by the Pew data:

Via Astute Bloggers, "PEW POLL REVEALS CORE PROBLEM AFFLICTING THE WEST: MOST EUROPEANS NOW FAVOR A NANNY STATE."