Following Sri Lanka’s Easter tragedy, high-ranking Democrats engaged in a game of semantics gymnastics, dancing around the name of ‘Christians’. Republicans took it as proof of democratic enmity to Christianity.

In the aftermath of Sunday’s carnage, which left over 350 people dead and many more injured, a group of Democratic leaders, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, took to Twitter to offer their condolences to friends and families of the Sri Lanka victims. If we were living in less complicated times that would have been the end of the story. But of course these are not less complicated times. Thus, the memory of the Easter Sunday bombing victims was overshadowed by Obama and Clinton, as well as other Democratic politicians’ use of the term “Easter worshippers” as opposed to the seemingly more appropriate “Christians.” “The attacks on tourists and Easter worshippers in Sri Lanka are an attack on humanity,” commented the former US president. A few hours later, Hillary Clinton tweeted out her own sympathy message, also using the strained, awkward-sounding “Easter worshippers” nomenclature. “I’m praying for everyone affected by today’s horrific attacks on Easter worshippers and travelers in Sri Lanka,” she commented. Do the PC thought police have a valid objection this time? I think we can agree that, technically speaking, the overwhelming majority of people who get up early on Easter Sunday and go to a place called church to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus could best be described as ‘Christian’. And furthermore, just to keep things in perspective, none of this has anything to do with the Easter Bunny. In fact, the same arguments can be heard around Christmas time as liberals rail against use of the greeting, ‘Merry Christmas’, opting instead for the more generic and less applicable, ‘Happy Holidays’. Incidentally, some people defended the use of the term ‘Easter worshipper’ by pointing out that the attacks were not isolated to churches; four upscale hotels catering to tourists were also hit by explosions. However, although there may have been members of other religious denominations present during the attacks, it was three Christian churches that were targeted, not Buddhist temples, Jewish synagogues or Muslim mosques. Thus, the target of the terrorist attacks – Christians – was beyond doubt.

Moreover, to refer to Christians collectively as ‘Easter worshippers’ has a way of making their religion sound like some sort of pagan ritualistic cult. At the same time, it denigrates what is undoubtedly the holiest day of the Christian calendar. In any case, to substitute ‘Christians’ for ‘Easter worshippers’ simply violates the English language’s rule that emphasizes a preference for brevity.

Conservative-Christian commentators, still grappling with the horror of Notre Dame being consumed by flames just days earlier, turned out en masse to denounce Democrats for failing to call a spade a spade.

“What the heck is an Easter worshipper,” asked fiction writer Brittany Pettibone. “The term that these people are going to such painfully ludicrous lengths to avoid using is ‘Christian.’”

The condemnation went much further than simply a matter of semantics. Conservatives, Christians and nitpicking pedants were quick to point out that in the aftermath of last month’s Christchurch mosque shooting, which left 50 dead, Obama and Clinton both specifically mentioned ‘Muslim community’ in their tweets of consolation.

Aside from the question as to whether or not these two high-ranking Democrats consult each other before tweeting is the more pressing one: Why wasn’t the same name recognition extended to the ‘Christian community’ following the Sri Lanka tragedy, which resulted in over 300 deaths – or six times more fatalities than in Christchurch?

Meanwhile, there is a high hypocrisy factor that comes from watching Obama and Clinton publicly express remorse over the death of Muslims when it was the Obama administration, continuing with the trendy war dance put in motion by the George W. Bush administration, that was responsible for untold death and destruction across a large swath of the Middle East and North Africa.

In the final year of his two-term reign of terror, according to Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Center for Preventive Action, Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dropped at least 26,171 bombs on seven Muslim countries, including Syria, Iraq, Libya and Pakistan.

To put the carnage another way, that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.

Here’s another Obama fun fact: no other US leader has overseen more military action on his watch than the 44th president. And again, the overwhelming majority of that action has been in Muslim countries.

“While candidate Obama came to office pledging to end George W Bush’s wars, he leaves office having been at war longer than any president in US history,” wrote Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink. “He is also the only president to serve two complete terms with the nation at war.”

With those sorts of disturbing statistics in mind, it kind of makes sense in a warped sort of way why Obama and Clinton would be so enthusiastic about reaching out to the ‘Muslim community’ in their time of need. While Christian churches are being attacked at an unprecedented rate, it was the Democrats who happily took over from George W. Bush the task of bombing Muslim countries back to the Stone Age. In other words, is their outpouring of grief for the Muslim community more a symptom of guilt that these two Democrats may or may not feel over their egregious behavior in the past? Or are we simply dealing with a liberal knee-jerk aversion to any majority group, whether it be ‘privileged’ Whites, Christians or the Republican Party?

In closing, there is another reason why the Democratic Party, infected as it is with hyper-progressive liberals (much in the same way the Republicans are infected with the warmongering neoconservative strain) find it so difficult to utter the dreaded ‘C-word.’ That is because much of their political platform has diverged so wildly from the fundamental teachings of Christianity. From radical new ideas on abortion, transgender lifestyles, and the institution of marriage, for example, the Democrats have alienated many US Christians. Indeed, it may have seemed not only outrageous but politically disastrous for these top Democrats to have mentioned Christians by name, even at a moment of unspeakable tragedy.

This strained religious situation, which shows no sign of abating under Donald Trump, who has contributed his fair share to alienating the Muslim community, is leading to more than just the separation of church and state. It risks the destruction of both church and state in America.

@Robert_Bridge