Let’s play fill-in-the-blanks. In general, Americans and Europeans are Christians. Arabs are Moslems. Indians are Hindus. Chinese are _________?

If you have trouble filling in the last blank, it’s because the answer is blank. From time immemorial, the Chinese have been the least religious of any of history’s major civilizations. Daoism, Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism are rationalistic quasi-religions lacking any personal relationship with a transcendent deity or deities. The ancestor- and spirit-worship of Chinese folk religion is individualized to families only.

If I ask you to think of India, the image that most likely appears in your minds eye would be the Taj Mahal. Arguably the most famous building in the world and considered by many to be the most beautiful structure mankind has ever created, it was completed in 1648 by the ruler of India, Shah Jehan, to immortally entomb his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

There is a painful problem with this image, however, for the great majority of folks in India: the Taj Mahal isnt an Indian building. Its Moslem, and thus for Indians a symbol of Islamic imperialism.

The founder of the Palestinian terrorist movement was Amin al-Husseini. As Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, he organized Arab rampages killing Jewish settlers in Palestine throughout the 1920s, formed an alliance with the Nazi Party of Germany in the 1930s, met with Adolph Hitler in Berlin in November 1941 to encourage him to slaughter Jews in Europe so they couldn’t escape to settle in Palestine, ordered Arab families to flee Israel upon independence so Arab armies could invade in 1948, founded the Palestine Liberation Organization, mentored his nephew Rahman Abdul Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, and turned the leadership of the PLO over to him. His nephew assumed the alias of Yasser Arafat.

Bill Safire is normally the only thing worth reading in the New York Times, and he proved it with his latest column (datelined 12/8/03), which is devoted to completely messing up the mind of every Bush-hating Democrat in America.

Merry Christmas! Wait — that was yesterday, wasn’t it? Nevertheless, today, December 26, is the First Day of Christmas. Ancient Christians celebrated “The Holidays,” as our militant secularists insist on referring to them now, starting with the day after the birth of Jesus and ending on January 6th, the visit of the Magi in Matthew 2:11 known as the Epiphany. Start with 12/26 and end with 1/6 and you get: the Twelve Days of Christmas.

You may be really tired of hearing Christmas songs by now, including this one, yet you may still be wondering what the heck partridges in

The Greeks called it the Euxine Sea. Jason and the Argonauts sailed across it to steal the Golden Fleece from the King of Colchis. The great city of Byzantium was built at its entrance, which became Constantinople, which became Istanbul.

The 20th Century didn’t hear much about the Black Sea because, except for its southern Turkish shore, it was a Soviet lake. Early in the 21st Century, however, to the chagrin of the Russians and the joy of non-Russians who populate its shores, George Bush is transforming the Black Sea into an American Lake.

Well, if Bush’s immigration reform proposal isn’t about either, then what is it about? Special interest politics, of course. Please pardon the redundancy — for all politics in the US today is about special interests.

If you were to describe in one word the Democrats fantasizing they can beat Bush in November, you would say Dean is a hothead, Clark an egomaniac, Sharpton a hustler, Edwards an ambulance-chaser, Kucinch a kook, Lieberman a moderate, and Kerry…?

The word that Democrats want to apply to Kerry is “electable.”  What does this mean?  Exactly nothing, for that’s all he is -- that somehow he possesses some magical capacity to defeat GW.