By Arnold Ahlert

Nothing brings out the unrelenting and self-righteous pettiness of the American left quite like Christmas.

A courthouse in Dallas, North Carolina, is the latest reminder. A nativity scene that has graced the Old Gaston Courthouse for the last 40 years has been removed, following complaints by a group of professional agitators known as the The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). The group prides itself as defenders of the constitutional separation of church and state, and as “an effective state/church watchdog and voice for freethought (atheism, agnosticism, skepticism).”

The self-appointed watchdog part is certainly accurate, but the notion that this is a bunch of free thinkers is as phony as Hillary Clinton. Genuine free thinkers would be far more acquainted with a concept that stood this nation in good stead for more than two centuries: live and let live. For decades upon decades, those who believed in Christmas enjoyed such holiday displays, while those who didn’t countenanced them with the kind of grace and tolerance that live and let live evinced.

No longer. Today’s America is afflicted with a perpetual whine, courtesy of those for whom grace and tolerance are an affront to their “superior” sensibilities. Sensibilities whose hallmarks are hypersensitivity and the satisfaction one derives from a holier-than-thou effort to deny their fellow Americans the simple pleasures of traditional holiday expressions for one overriding reason:

Because they can.

Hence, FFRF is bursting with pride that they are able to spread their “enlightened” misery around. On their website they boast about their success in turning Tallahasee, Florida, into a free-for-all competition of holiday displays, “including a Flying Spaghetti Monster and a Festivus pole constructed from Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans.” They are equally proud of the fact that following “a denial last year, capitol officials agreed this year to let the Satanic Temple put up a display of an angel falling into hell, when the group threatened a lawsuit.”

“We vastly prefer to keep religion – and irreligion – out of the seat of state government,” declares FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The Capitol ought to be above the fray of religious divisiveness. But if public officials unwisely decide to permit religious public forums, then there must be ‘room at the inn’ for nonbelievers.”

Those who worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster would undoubtedly agree.

Note the principal that drives this nonsense. It is the notion that every idea has equal merit. Thus for the true believers of such intellectual bankruptcy, there is no essential difference between Christmas, a two-thousand-year-old religious holiday celebrated by billions of people around the world, and Festivus, a “holiday” popularized by a 1997 episode of “Seinfeld.”

It is intellectual bankruptcy that arises courtesy of the American left’s infatuation with “nonjudgmentalism,” a pernicious concept that posits anything amounting to critical thinking as bigotry, racism, misogyny, nativism, homophobia and the host of other disparagements. Disparagements designed to produce both the self-censorship and outside suppression constituting political correctness.

Mix PC with the notion that every idea has merit and you get something else as well: a tyranny of the minority, courtesy of the perpetually offended. We now live in an age where 99.9 percent of a town’s residents who enjoy or tolerate a nativity scene can be denied that nativity scene by a single individual, or as FFRF reveals, a roving group of self-aggrandizers that threaten small towns with unaffordable litigation if their demands are not met. The town of Jay, Florida, was also forced to move a nativity scene when a single offended resident contacted FFRF, and Mayor Kurvin Qualls explained “a court battle could cost up to $100,000.”

FFRF is hardly alone when it comes to attacking American customs and traditions. Andrew Peabody School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, an elementary school in a state that is one of the nation’s foremost PC strongholds, took absurdity one step further: they banned a visit from Santa Claus that had been part of a traditional celebration at the school’s winter concert. And once again, the ban was initiated following a single complaint.

Unsurprisingly, Jeffrey Young, superintendent of the city’s schools who had been unaware of the cancellation, defended it nonetheless. “Our mission is around education,” Young said. “Santa’s not on the top of my list.”

Neither is a backbone or a commitment to genuine tolerance. As for education, who’s kidding whom? What kids are really learning is an intolerance for anything that offends anyone, along with the necessity of suppressing it for the “greater good.” That would be the greater good as defined by the American left, who is making it increasingly clearer that the sum total of their happiness ultimately rests on making their fellow Americans as miserable as possible.

The assault on Christmas is part of the effort to fundamentally transform a nation for which leftists express skepticism at best, and outright contempt at worst. And perhaps nothing animates that contempt more than the reality that the greatness of this nation is derived from “dead, white, slave-owning Europeans,” animated by a Judeo-Christain culture. It is that culture that must now be deconstructed by any means necessary, because it rests on two foundations utterly anathema to the American left: individual liberty and free-market capitalism.

Instead, the left prefers equality, or more precisely a radical egalitarianism where ambition, talent and desire must be held in check to accommodate laziness, stupidity and sloth. It is the ultimate zero-sum game that, at this particular time of year, assumes those who enjoy Christmas must accommodate those who are offended by it, lest our commitment to “social justice” is found wanting. Thus “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Hanukkah” must be cast aside for “Happy Holiday,” and the Christmas season must become “Winter Solstice.”

That is not tolerance. It’s totalitarianism with the ultimate goal of making everyone equal, even if it’s equally miserable. Few things undermine that ambition more than the so-called Christmas spirit that is the essence of happiness, generosity – and live and let live.

And this is one American who believes it will emerge stronger than ever in the not too distant future, when younger generations of Americans grow tired of walking on eggshells, and remaining mired in a politically correct universe devoid of joy, imagination and self-expression. Time is short for the Grinches, the spoilsports, and the brats. The need for mankind to embrace the something far greater and more wondrous than stultifying puerilism of the terminally offended cannot be held in check forever. We are creatures with souls as well as brains, and matters of the heart will still transcend matters of the head. In short, no matter how much time the left invests in denigrating faith, they are doomed to fail.

Merry Christmas!