Religious and Anti-Religious Fanatics

Before bashing on the fanatics, there are some facts I have to list.
First, the United States is not a Christian nation. The First Amendment simply states the separation of church and state. And some of the most prominent Founders were Deists. Putting these two pieces together, it's almost impossible, unless you bring Rush Limbaugh or some other lunatics, to draw the conclusion that the U.S. is a Christian nation. Yes, we have a strong, and worth to be proud of, Christian culture, but Christian nation is too far from the truth.
Islam is NOT a violent religion. In the past I believed otherwise but as now I've overcome the bias, I can see the truth. The history of Islam isn't any worse than Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, or even Daoism. Remember 1996 Atlanta bombing? Or is Denmark shooting easier to remember? Both Christian extremists. Oklahoma City bombing, the worst terrorist attack prior to 9/11, was committed by a group of anti-establishment extremists whom had very similar aganda as the Tea Party. And of course we have PETA and Greenpeace. The list can go on and on, and almost every religious/ideological group at one point or another embraced terroism.
Atheism isn't innocent of persecution. I'm not here to use overused examples like Hitler, leave that to his lover Glenn Beck, or Mao. Pythagoras, one of the earlist and most prominent atheists in ancient world, was responsible for killing Hippasus only because the latter discovered irrational number which challenged Pythagoras' theory. This happened hundreds of years before the first religious persecution, 16 hundred years before the Inquisition , 23 hundred years before any of the Witch-hunt movements.

Now move to the fanatics. I'm a man with low standards, so many will have the honor to be qualified as fanatics according to my standard.
Is atheism any better than theism, or vice versa? A yes will put you in the fanatic category. While I'm religious, I can't stand any claim of my faith, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is in the earthly-sense of "better" than other faiths or ideologies. To me, stating my religion is better is simply the denial of exaltation, and rejection of the grace of the Lord by taking everything in our hands. Gospel is for everybody, and everybody has more than one chance to accept it. If we believe in eternal life, which we do, we can't judge anybody based on the mortal life he/she has. Meanwhile, atheism is just another philosophical belief. The difference is theism believes the gods are almighty, but atheism believes science is almighty. Attacking theism and calling it backwards is just as pathetic as the everlast debate between Catholicism and Protestantism.
Are there faith-based groups of people, atheists and theists, persecuted in today's United States? A yes answer will also give you a fanatic label. Calling things like "being mocked", "they misunderstand my belief", "they don't hang out with me", or "they don't hire me" persecution is nothing more than showing your own stupidity. Hippasus was persecuted, Galileo and Copernicus were persecuted, Jesus Christ was persecuted, Joseph Smith was persecuted, religions in general in Soviet Union, China, and other communist countries are/were persecuted. Don't defile the word martyr by overusing the word persecution.
So with my loose requirement, anybody who is lack of commonsense but not willing to learn, who ignores stone cold facts, is a fanatic. Thus, the entire human race at least at some point of our lives are fanatics. The difference is some of us, like me, try to improve ourselves, but some, like Rush Limbaugh, are happily to be fanatics and tirelessly to attack sane people.

So why are we all, for the least, partially fanatics? Because we are humans, greedy humans. We want to always be right, be successful, be respected. But that's not enough. We want to monopolize knowledge, success, admiration, and many other things. It's just our nature. Though we constantly try to overcome this weaknes, believe me even Rachel Maddow tries, we fail all the time. So everytime we fail, we turn fanatics. There's nothing to be ashamed about, George Washington had slaves, Benjamin Franklin was a womanizer, Abraham Lincoln appointed his friends to lucrative positions, so in a sense we fanatics are far better than those folks.

Hey, there are fanatics who believe my faith but that doesn't hurt my faith. The Gospel of Jesus Christ itself is the truth, just we humans don't, and can't, understand the fullness of it. If you are interested, please go to Mormon.org to find out more. Again, you might meet some people who ain't that pleasant, but we humans make mistakes all the time. So if that happened or when it happens, please forgive them and not miss the good messages.