The War Against Atheists

I was in the midst of posting about this NYTimes op-ed when another one just like it showed up, again in the NYT, this time from the keyboard of Nicholas Kristof.

What the bloody hell?

As I mentioned at Steve M's place, apparently, after years of a one-sided war against secularism and the separation of church and state waged by the media and conservative think tanks, the Sensible Centrists in the Center are NOW offended that the other side is fighting back.

And Steve points out, the attack is all the more confounding on account of what the Kristofs and the culture warriors such as David Brooks say in response--that Dawkins and Harris are wrong to argue against religion and against a conservative religious culture war because, of course, there is no culture war, or that if there was a benign, centrist, moderate, culture war from the Heartland, that such a war is now over. This is kind of like Bush saying he never said his policy was "stay the course" even while YouTube and the Internets are full of Bush statements saying exactly that. I guess it just goes to show that the occupant of the WH is not the only Washingtonian in a State of Denial. So, now that the bullied are striking back, our professional pundit class suddenly wants to declare (for the moment) that the game is over, saving them the burden of responding objectively to Dawkins' and Harris's arguments.