CHRIST ON A CRECHE. Peggy Noonan is telling us about bad people again, this time the folks who want to ban nativity scenes:

They think that if only people would stop being religious, we wouldn't have religion around roiling people's emotions and making them violent. (If you say to them, "Man is prone to violence, and one of the things that tends to make his heart gentle is faith in God," their eyes widen in shock: That couldn't possibly be true!)

Ms. Noonan meets such interesting people, and says such interesting things to them. I wonder if she also sees leprechauns, and asks them where they keep their pots o' gold.

Her solution to anti-crechism is "to fill the public square with the signs and symbols of faith. It is not to banish them from the schools, it is to teach them in the schools... display a menorah and explain what it is... to display a crucifix or a cross and explain what it means to Christians. And, yes, the answer is to show a Koran and explain what it is." The kids should also sing Christmas carols and "other religious songs that are not Christian."

I'm all for it! The children can lift their voices in tribute to Buddah, and Zoroaster, and Lord Mahavira, and Gaia. And in the spirit of true ecumenicanalism, we can tell them about the worship of Satan, and crank some Black Sabbath.

Later comes my favorite line from the whole exercise:

"So I took Mary into the house, and she lived for three years in a closet. "

So that's what happened to her. Ms. Noonan also talks about the wonderful panoply of religious artifacts visible in her neighborhood, just down the road apiece from me in Cobble Hill, unmolested by the atheists who apparently all live on Park Avenue in the dark borough of Manhattan. "May the world in 2004 be more like Brooklyn," she concludes, "and may its arguments over religion and the public square be solved the Brooklyn way."

Here I must agree. Just a short distance from the madonnas and menorahs are several very nice gay bars, which coexist harmoniously with Mary Star of the Sea and the other neighborhood places of worship. If Ms. Noonan is okay with those, I'm okay with the little religious theme park she wants to set up. Just so long as she doesn't use my tax dollars to pay for it. Compassionate and conservative -- what a solution! Why, I'm feeling more Brooklyn already!

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