Andrew Sullivan just posted a lengthy quotation from Burke. Sully obviously intended it to support his case for Obama’s candidacy, but to me it seemed an excellent argument for the coming together of “the new atheists” at this moment of history. (My emphasis.)
Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles, nor experienced in each other’s talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy… When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
In a world in which the politics of intolerance and violence is increasingly fuelled by fundamentalist religion, the non-religious among us (atheists, humanists, “brights”, freethinkers, agnostics, et cetera) need to stand together for reason and tolerance and against superstition and bigotry. And we are not, in general, as organized and obedient as church- and mosque-goers, and so it takes a lot of energy and passion to rouse us out of our comfortable seats. Those who disagree with us may call this intemperate, strident, or angry; ignore them, because this is about organizing ourselves, not selling our ideas.