Robert, it was not because you stuck up for yourself, rather the way you went about it.
A good friend once told me, if you are feeling frustrated, compose your reply on note pad and save it.
Go take a break, wait a day, and then read your reply to yourself, maybe the next morning after you have calmed down. If it still makes sense, then go ahead and post it.
nearly every time, once the initial wave of emotion has passed, you will read that message and realize that you composed several paragraphs of psychotic babble
Another handy thing that will keep things smooth for everyone, look at the post count and rep scores of those you chose to lock horns with, go read that persons profile, chose your words wisely and realize that calling a person who had been around forever names is only going to escalate the situation to a full boil.
It was blatantly obvious that you were upset, That's why the intelligence level of your replies plummeted with every keystroke, I bet fault lines shifted from the way you were hammering on those keys, the neighbors were hiding under furniture from the fury of your typing.
I can tell right now that after a couple days of chilling out your outlook has improved (at least a little) so in summary all I can say is if your "smoking hot under the collar" log off, chill out, take a break and reply to all of it when your not so mad you could scream.