For someone whose declared goal (in so many - although slightly different - words) is to shift the Overton window, Dawkins has been unusually mellow and academic-sounding in all the cases I'm familiar with (which admittedly isn't all that many, though). Yet judging by the things people write about him here and elsewhere, you'd expect him to have enough fire and brimstone to set up a Hell of his own.
I'm not going to compare him to the rabid attack dogs of the Rightwing Noise Machine, but FFS, Al Franken and Steve Colbert regularly outdoes him on the venom and vitriol front. Yet those are rarely if ever attacked in Left Blogistan. And let's not even mention Michael Moore, who makes all three of them look like paragons of Aristotelian inquiry by comparison. (FWIW, I found Fahrenheit 9/11 obnoxious, but I rather liked Dude, Where's my Country.)
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Of course Al Franklin is not trying to engage in any sort of meaningful dialog with Republicans as far as I can tell. Is Dawkins trying for some sort of dialog? If so, then we had better use a different standard.
aspiring to genteel poverty
Precisely what Dawkins considers his mission to be, I do not know. I don't follow him that closely, because frankly there are authors that I consider more worth my time. He has stated, however, (or it's been attributed to him - I can't off-hand recall which) that he desires to strip away the unearned respect accorded religion simply because it is religion. Given this goal - which by the way I consider laudable - his tactics make a lot of sense. Given most of the other goals he has stated and/or been attributed... well, not so much. But then again, you can't do everything at once.
