What to do about the Bonk Jobs?

Kind of a silly by-line ("Everybody always talks about religious conservatives, but nobody ever does anything about them") because it tends to lead the reader to believe the author is about to present the magic bullet -- the method by which religious conservatives, a.k.a. Fundie Bonk Jobs, can be converted back to reality. (I say "back to reality" because we're all born atheists. The belief that a fairy tale construct, e.g. Christianity, is real has to be taught.)

Progressives in this country have always maintained a kind of fuzzy belief that fundamentalists will eventually just disappear, as if by magic, that the phenomenon of grown men and women believing in devils and witches and angels will inevitably be outgrown, the way children outgrow Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Marx. When some pastor in rural Alabama takes the pulpit to denounce SpongeBob Squarepants as the agent of the Evil One, we figure no response is really necessary—folks will figure out the joke on their own, somewhere down the line.

This is a mistake, and it is the same mistake people have made for centuries: underestimating the American zeal for superstition, for boobism, for living the intellectual lives of farm animals. A large statistical majority of Americans would rather live their whole lives in perpetual fear of the devil than listen to ten minutes of common sense. When you consider where these people live intellectually, the idea that the Democratic Party can somehow succeed in Middle America by making small tactical changes, by waving a few more flags, seems absurd. You either believe in the devil or you don't; and if you don't, you're never going to fool these people. The Republicans, for all their seeming "confusion," understand this now better than ever.

...this current crew of Republican strategists has always understood American thinking better than the Tom Junods of the world. They know that most political trends are fleeting. Liberalism vanished at the first sign of trouble; pacifism disappeared one generation after Vietnam; even fiscal conservatism is easily forgotten. The one thing that never disappears in this country is stupidity, and if you court it, you'll always have votes down the line. Especially when it lives on unopposed.

So the article makes very good points, but the crux of the matter is summed up best by Thomas Paine: "Arguing with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like giving medicine to the dead". We're not going to convince the god-believers that there is/are no god(s) demanding that they force their provincial rules on everyone under threat of eternal punishment. Why lament the fact that no one does anything about Fundie Bonk Jobs without proposing something? And is there really anything that can be done? Or rather, should we do anything? Forcing them to give up their fantasies is akin to them forcing their fantasies on us. Where is the line between allowing them to have their fantasy world and stopping them from legislating it?