One section at a time

To avoid confusion and in the interests of time, I'm going to deconstruct my own work one passage at a time. My deconstructive comments are in bold.

The religious nutballs on the extreme right Interesting that no one took umbrage at my use of the term 'religious nutballs'. have kept us rational lefties so busy that we've neglected an important although onerous duty -- cleaning the secular whackjobs out of our own attic, the extreme left. Whackjob...a play on words of the common pairing of that term with religious. The pun, obviously, was ill-received.(Of course, extremisms of the religious or atheistic nature are only a small part of the sum total of extremism. Each form of thought has its own whackjobs of varying stripes.) Why face off with the secular whackjobs? Because extremism is extremism is extremism. No rational movement dedicated to intellectual courage and honesty should maintain a relationship with those for whom intellectual laziness, dishonesty, and cowardice are a way of life. Doing what must be done to insure the integrity of the left will require identifying our extremists, countering their mythologies, and acknowledging the dangers they pose to a truly liberal society. As I mentioned earlier, extremism of thought builds the foundation for extremist actions. This is my intent behind the phrase "extremism is extremism is extremism." Although extremist action amongst even the most radical/militant of atheists is limited to general rudeness at this time, any future extremist action may build on the ideological framework provided by ideologues like Sam Harris, Steven Weinberg, and Richard Dawkins. There, I named names. Happy?
First, what is a secular whackjob? The term secular for the purposes of this article will refer to those who disbelieve all religious and spiritual claims, not to those who merely support a separation of church and state. Although all secular extremists are atheists, not all atheists are secular extremists. Definitely, a badly written paragraph with editing changes (mine) that muddied the waters. This and the following were once one paragraph. With the sentence beginning "The term secular..." in parentheses, which perhaps would have avoided some of the conclusion. As some have pointed out, the actual definition of secular whackjob is below.Also, as pointed out in my post on the dictionary, I did NOT make up this definition of secular.
The whackjob is a special sort of atheist, one so absolutely certain of the inerrancy of atheism Perhaps I should have used different words here to indicate only those who insist in the absolute that the supernatural does not/cannot exist and they know this for a fact. and so virulently opposed to religion that he will latch on to any and all outrageous claims in defense of the former and against the latter. He will meet any criticism of atheism or postive representation of religion as a horrible attack on his way of life or as support for religious extremism and oppression. Just as the religious extremist holds that his belief in a supreme being alone makes him morally and spiritually superior, the secular extremist holds that his belief that no such being exists and virulent opposition to the reverse make him intellectually and ethically superior. Finally, he will ignore any and all reason or evidence that refutes his claims.

So, what are the secular extremist's claims? They are legion, but I will stick to some of the major claims I've encountered in "respected" secularist media and in debate with atheist friends and readers. I chose to stick to those that I thought were the dividing line between reasonable atheist belief (Let's not get sematic on the belief thing. Belief/disbelief are all parts of the same mental processes.) and extremism. Perhaps I should have gone with the most bizarre and outrageous claims, but I thought that would be a little too "straw man". Forgive me as I am a bit too amused at the irony.