Intolerant? Of course not. Willing to insult an entire state based on one woman's comments? Sure:

"I don't know where I'm going with this—except maybe Canada—so I'll stop. But in conclusion let me say that I have seen evidence that Rep. Debra Maggart's doesn't pay her traffic tickets, picks her nose in her office, watches child porn, and drinks the urine of virgins in order to maintain her youthful appearance, and that's why I don't believe she's fit to represent the good people of Kentucky.

Of course I'm not serious. In fact, I made that last part up—Maggart is perfect for Kentucky."

"The secular left, once again, isn't intolerant and isn't the problem."

Whoa. That's some quality journalism there, Savage. Let me translate:

"I'm not the problem. Everyone else is the problem."

Sharp analysis.

You just don't get it, do you?

I'm as left as anyone, and generally speaking, the left gets it right and the right gets it wrong. But your insistence on lobbing out grenades like that one (and the one in the first comment) completely destroys your credibility.

I am still waiting for the examples of secular lefties burning a church down, beating the crap out of church goers etc. for being religous.

Can anyone link to some examples?

In Julian Gore Vidal is all over this.

This sort of thing happens all the time at the Holy Sepulcher, and has been happening there for about the past 1000 years. The former Turkish rulers of Jerusalem had to entrust the keys to church's front door to a muslim family because the various christian groups that occupy the church couldn't be trusted with them.

Speaking as a stone athiest - the Holy Sepulcher is a fascinating place and well worth a visit. It certainly won't make a believer out of you, and it ain't the most beautiful church in the world, but it will boggle your mind. Way better than the western wall, imho.

But to Dan's point - if you want to see some examples of the "secular left" kicking the crap of religious folks, look up those ultimate, archetypal secular lefties - the Stalinists. Now those guys knew how to lay down the smack down!

I love Julian, elenchos, and it's sitting on my desk right now. Just pulled it off the shelf to reread.

"When a church is attacked, or a mosque burned down, or someone somewhere is discriminated against on the basis of his or her religious beliefs," does that mean another priest has popped someone else's cherry?

@2: except, y'know, it's a blog (therefore explicitly opinion-based) and not journalism (theoretically neutral, although of course not). But I shouldn't feed you.

On important topics: Julian is an awesome book, one that I try and remember to re-read at least once a year.

Dan, you could have stated your point better. I mean, a good example of the religious intollerant of the religious ... Some of which were the smears on ethnic cultures I had when I was in catholic school as a child. That societies were completely immoral until Christianity arived, an example would happen to be the vikings. Which is a half truth at best.

The whole internal fighting with respect to muslims. The two main sects, plus everything else ... which have been warring since the middle ages.

Oh yeah, no Christian groups (or left group for that matter) in this country are particularly happy with the mormons ... many books have been written about this.

OT, but...

and used palm fronds to pummel police

Dan, you're a (born) Catholic, tell me this doesn't make them sound like the pussiest police in the world.

I went to Catholic school for 13 years, went to Palm Sunday and Ash Wednesday mass as a matter of course, and it never occurred to us kids to beat each other with palm fronds. Because that would have been lame as hell. (And no, it's not because we were particularly do-goody and peaceful.)

@3 Um, there's kind of the entire history of the Soviet Union, the current Chinese regime, the Reign of Terror in France, when Notre Dame was rededicated to the Cult of Reason (oh, the irony!), the Spanish Red Terror, the Mexican Constitution of 1917 which led to the deaths of 40 priests and many forced marriages.

Remember, for every ideology, no matter how positive, there are always assholes among its adherents.

When a population has been terrorized by priests for a couple hundred years or more, and then one day reacts violently, does that count as an indictment of secularism?

@5 and 11
While Stalin and Mao certainly headed up Leftist regimes, they were most defintitely not secular. "Secular" and "atheist" have different meanings. Stalinism and Maoism are among the finest examples of personality cults and state religions.

Those Armenian and Orthodox priests have a major dust up several times a year. They're all extremely jealous of the space they consider their's within the sepulcher.