Fear can sell even the inconsequential

I got a fun e-mail from the good folks at the American Family Association. They want me to take a survey:

Should Congress pass a law making BC/AD the official method of dating time?

The Kentucky Board of Education has voted to take the first step in redefining how America dates time. The board voted to include a new secular system of dating the calendar, BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era), and added it to the BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, Latin for “in the year of our Lord”) method.

The new secular system of time dating will appear in the curriculum and other materials used by Kentucky educators. This new system is already being included in textbooks across the nation.

The new method will replace the birth of Christ as the dividing point in history. For example, the new system would change 2006 AD (Anno Domini) to 2006 CE (Common Era).

It also opens the door for the ACLU to find a liberal activist judge who will forcefully remove the use of BC and AD. The ACLU types will claim that the use of BC and AD are a violation of the First Amendment because it dates history based on the birth of Christ.

Since the emphasis in that excerpt is from the original, the absurdity of the AFA hysteria is that much more amazing (and amusing). We can worry about the big, bad ACLU and the liberal activist judges because they’re going to remove Christ from America if they can, but it’s okay to encourage an activist legislature to take action to prevent something that isn’t a threat. Before this article, I’d never heard of any movement to replace BC and AD. And I live on the east coast, away from the real Americans in Red America who the elites are trying to rule in their ivory-tower conspiracy!

On a side note, isn’t it amusing how wonderfully the conservatives have embraced “red” as their color, when fifty years ago, red was the antithesis of their goal? I know I’m not the first to think of that, but it just struck me. I’m slow, but it entertains me sometimes.

Really, though, who cares? I don’t sign my checks with 2006 AD now, and I’m not about to start signing them 2006 CE. CE is a Microsoft operating system, nothing more. And no amount of hysteria or liberal activist judges and their ACLU buddies will change that.

I did chuckle, though, so it was worth something.