I completely agree that many cries from Christians about "attack on Christmas" and other whining are BS. OTOH, a person, even a person in the majority, can be a victim. Example:
Reginald Denny
I would never condone or encourage violence as a solution except in direct self-defence, and I would shun any 'advocate' of atheism who did.
So we're on the same side there I think.
The problem, IMO, is anyone who advocates doing one thing, such as bullying, mocking, whatever, when it works for them, but disputing it when it works against them. That's hypocrisy pure and simple. Yes, certain Christian groups are guilty of it. Does them mean it's okay to use the same tactics against them? Fight fire with fire? I think not...unless one doesn't mind burning down the entire house. We should work smarter, not harder.
The problem is that if rational argumentation was the norm then this would all be fine and dandy and we could debate this out properly.
But that is not the case though, is it.
In many debates, both ones I've participated in and witnessed, logic and reason fly out the window very quickly and one grows tired of seeing the same old tactics used such as moving the goal-posts, changing the subject, ad homin attacks, blatant straw-men arguments and so on and so forth.
And with an uneducated audience, some of these tactics, dishonest as they might be, sadly do work.
Dawkins is rightly frustrated by this as he, being a former Oxford professor, is used to spending an hour or two substantiating his point, a method that works excellently in a lecture hall but less so in a debate in front of an audience that may not be familiar with neither logic nor science.
In this respect Hitchens' approach actually do work somewhat better with his bullet-point arguments and demolition tactics.
As a middle ground, Matt Dillahunty from The Atheist Experience is one of the best I've seen when it comes to dismantling these tactics and getting the theists to stick to a point until it is debated through, although it should be noted, with due respect, that he mostly debates random callers and not people used to carrying an argument coherently.
As mentioned previously, it is important to look at our goals and act accordingly. Our goal is secular government, not dividing the USA into "us and them".
Although I would prefer a world that contained us and us, at least when it came to the issue of religion, I'll settle for a secular government.
