I'm not going to waste your time this morning rehashing all the arguments that I (and others) have made in the past about why it's so criminally stupid for Democrats to pick unnecessary and deeply divisive fights with the millions upon millions of decent, hardworking Americans who take their religion seriously.

Instead, I'll simply point you to this recent post by the normally spot-on Atrios, and ask you to consider the following two sentences contained therein:

(1) I'm not hostile to religion.

(2) My retinas still burn with the image of the members of Congress on the steps of the Capitol screeching out "UNDER GOD" while performing the pledge of allegiance.

Burning retinas? Screeching out? Nope, no hostility there....

POSTSCRIPT 1: Please don't misunderstand me; I actually agree with much of what Atrios has to say in his post. Which is precisely why I get so frustrated when we Democrats insist on cloaking perfectly reasonable points about matters religious in needlessly insulting and/or inflammatory rhetoric.

POSTSCRIPT 2: This post probably seems a little jarring (psychotic?) given the tone of its immediate predecessor. But there's a difference between picking unnecessary (and all too often unfocused) fights with religion generally and engaging in a spirited debate with the leadership of your own church, as Kevin Drum pointed out just the other day.

UPDATE: Allen Brill responds to Atrios' post here.

UPDATE 2: In the comments (and demonstrating the accuracy of my "normally spot-on" assessment, by the way), Atrios points out that the UNDER GOD incident to which he referred in his post was particularly egregious. And, indeed, it was. On the other hand, the vast majority of religious folk didn't see it, and wouldn't remember it if they had. (Those of us who care deeply about these issues too often assume that we're all swimming in the same media stream, and, unfortunately, that just couldn't be further from the truth.) All they would see in Atrios' post, I'm afraid, was the unmistakable anger, apparently directed at them. Which is essentially the point that I was trying (perhaps clumsily) to make above.

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