No, I think you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. He could have easily started a class debating the merits of intelligent design without inciting hatred against him. He's stupid for making that mistake, and it wasn't all that hard to predict a beating was coming to him.
And yet, the preachers of these cults spew hate about various members of society, from homosexuals to atheists, and they never get beaten up.
Not necessarily true -- I've personally thrown a rock at Fred Phelps, though I had discretion enough to do it from a crowd so I couldn't be picked out (he was a regular protester at my university). His "preachers" have gotten roughed up a time or two.
Anyway, the point is to exercise discretion when advocating change or challenging the majority. Case in point: you --
Thaksin is no joke - rapidly destroying freedoms in one of the few free countries that has ever existed. Over the last month one of his Thai Rak Thai minions - the mayor of Pattaya - has directed the police to drive the freelancers from the beach promenade.
I was here for this act of injustice.. probably the most horrific thing I have ever seen. Sure, I grew up in an unfree land, but I never had to witness liberty being crushed (it was crushed before I was born).
A friend asked me, when I related the tragic tale, 'what did you do?' I told her - 'I bore witness'.
You vehemently disagree with Thaksin and the forces of social control, but when this event happened, what did you do? You didn't fight for the freelancers or shout at those who chased them away. You just watched.
Which is smart. Jumping into the middle of the fray would have gotten you an ass-kicking, at the very least -- likely something worse. Rather, you exercise discretion in the way that you combat views you don't agree with by relating the story and hoping that news of the oppression spreads. See what I'm getting at? This professor started his assault not as a quiet revolution, but by getting right in the fundamentalists' faces -- and he paid the likely price for it.
