Steve, turning the other cheek is a way of describing civil disobedience. The myth of Jesus advocates that. What is rubbish is thinking that political or social struggles can be solved by violence. This is one of the problems with the atheist movement as I see it. Many are quick to "support the troops" in the way the Hitchens and his followers did. The U.S. military doesn't belong as a hegemonic force in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Bahrain, or other bases in the world.

The mythology of Jesus is that he practiced non-violent revolution in his time against the Romans. A myth, as Joseph Campbell says, has a teaching role.
It's analogous to what is happening today in the U.S. and throughout the world.
Whether you believe Jesus existed or didn't has no bearing on the fact
that a non-violent world is more civilized then the militarization that is taking place and with it, the support of dictators. Atheists have to wake up to that realization if they want common sense to prevail.

Chris Hedges and I disagree on the role of religion, his being a divinity graduate from Harvard, but I agree with him that struggles for justice have to remain non-violent to succeed. Justice and violence don't go together.