Actually, Xlrq, we don’t need to invent a “non-AD” calendar. Why not use the Hebrew Calendar year “5621″ as the year the “War Between The States” started? Had Jesus been alive in 1861, according to the “Gregorian Calendar” most people then living in North America were then using, Apri1 12, 1861 would have been “2 Iyyar 5621.” And as far as any other date system being “God damned” according to you, I don’t think Jesus would have referred to his own calendar in that way.

As far as “politically correct” goes, my late father, his brother, and many thousands of other American Jews fought in World War Two to preserve to your family, and now you, the right to spout your own brand of bigotry and intolerance for the views of others, as you now do. My father was in the Army Air Force in England; my uncle was a G.I. on the ground who helped take the beaches of Normandy. Granted, had the Nazis won and taken over this country you might have been allowed to say what you did say here (though by now they might have outlawed Christianity since their God was “the State”) but I’m going to be an optimist about you and assume there are at least some things you’d like to say that the Nazis would have jailed or shot you for. So cut the “no American would say CE or BCE” crap.

A good article on the calendar is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era. I learned a few things I didn’t know, such as: For hundreds of years, the abbreviation “CE” has also been used for “Christian Era” and “BCE” to mean “Before the Christian Era”, so Xlrq has no RATIONAL reason to get so upset about those abbreviations being used instead of “AD” or “BC”. The same article also says that some Christian denominations, and even the Smithsonian Institution and other academic groups, have gone over to CE/BCE. You can use CE and BCE to mean whatever specific words you want them to mean, and so can I, but we both know what date we’re talking about. There are some things I would deride as based on an excess of “political correctness”, but this isn’t one of them. Isn’t it great to be living in a free country!

The only reason anyone needs to add something like “CE” or “AD” to a year-date is in the rare case when you can’t tell from context whether the date is before (e.g., a reference to David and Goliath), or after (e.g., a reference to the atom bomb), the birth date of Jesus, which this society has agreed to adopt as a reference point in time. The reason for the alternatives “CE” and “BCE” is so that people who are not Christians (who by the way happen to be most of the people now living) are not forced to acknowledge that Jesus is their God by using “AD” (standing for “Anno Domini” which Latin means “in the year of Our Lord”), or “BC” (meaning “Before Christ”, where “Christ” means “the Messiah”). Granted, it’s not as bad as being forced to wear a yellow Star of David like the Nazis forced many of my European ancestors to wear before murdering them, or having concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms (and yes, I actually knew a Jewish concentration camp survivor with that kind of tattoo), but there is a principal here.

So have I ever used “BC” when writing a date in ancient history? I probably have, just because it would have been “easy”. The point is that I get to have a choice here, because this is the United States of America. If you don’t like that, Xlrq, why don’t you go back where you came from, you non-American hater!

Also missing from the list is the name for the war between the states if you are neither a Yankee nor a Southerner. For those of us with no dog in whatever the hell youse and y’all were fighting about back then, it’s best described as either the “war to kill 600,000 Americans to free four million a couple decades sooner than they would have been freed anyway” or the “war to preserve the U.S.’s forthcoming role as a/the superpower in the centuries to come.”

/pedant

tgirsch´s last blog post..Quote of the Day, 2009-02-23

Of course, my mother in law and sister in laws both say I’m the exception. That yankeeness is more a state of mind and manners than location and after 15 years they know I have the right attitude and the Yanks woud never take me back.

My father in law? Well, he was willing to accept me a bit more but then I turned down the offer to join the local SCV chapter and won’t let my sons join either.

That’s roughly the definition I was always told, though I always heard a slightly more condensed version.

A Yankee comes to visit. The Damn Yankee never leaves.