"Despite their putative claims to the faith, the leaders of the religious right are vicious toward anyone who refuses to kowtow to their version of orthodoxy, and their machinery of vilification strikes with ruthless, dispassionate efficiency. Longtime friends (and not a few family members) will shuffle uneasily around me and studiously avoid any sort of substantive conversation about the issues I raise -- and then quietly strike my name from their Christmas-card lists. Circle the wagons. Brook no dissent." -- Randall Ballmer, who gives them a lot to brook.