my what a ridiculously premised thread.
1. The Conservative Christian portions of our nation objectively 'care more about the American ' than the general populace (and certainly their left-wing nontheist cultural opposition) in at least two definable metrics off the top of my head: they give a larger percentage of their income to others, and they put their very lives at risk to protect others via service in the military.
2. Conservative Christians tend to be in favor of small-but-balanced governmental approaches. the vast majority of them would prefer to dramatically
decrease the power we have invested in Washington. the Taliban - being an autocratic and totalitarian regime - by definition is of rather the opposite bent.
3. Where Christian Conservatives are accused of "taliban-esque" tendencies, it is often merely for the crime of existing as a movement that disagrees with the poster. they have moral beliefs and are willing to impose some of them on the populace!!! OMG!!! oh, wait. that's the entire basis of law; which is nothing more than publicly enforced morality. What posters are
really saying when they use emotionally-charged labels such as "the American Taliban" is that they disagree with the Christian Right, and therefore consider them
illegitimate fellow players in our representative politcal system.
Now, this difference is key; it is the difference between attacking someone's
means, and attacking their
motives. It is to say to ones' opposition that they are not a legitimate The Abortion example is instructive, first because it is the example for which everyone reaches in this discussion and secondly because the border is so stark: proponents of legalized abortion offer a variety of arguments, but they generally come down to protecting the rights and liberties of the women involved; well enough, all sides can agree that is a noble
motivation. opponents of legalized abortion offer a similar variety, but
they generally come down to protecting innocent life; similarly a motivation that all sides can agree is noble. the difference is generally less one of motivation, and more of analysis: if that is a human child in there, then obviously one's right to life outweighs anothers' right to not be inconveneinced (I cannot shoot my neighbor because he mows his lawn at 5a.m. on a Saturday morning); if it is not a human child in there, then obviously the woman's liberty takes precedence (we do not insist that people keep cancerous growths in their body so that they can continue to get larger).
It might be confirmation bias, but it seems to me that the 'pro-abortion' lobby generally does a much poorer job of keeping this basic fact in mind - as is demonstrated by this thread. Few pro-life movement people regularly accuse pro-choicers of wanting to kill babies, but the pro-choice crowd seems to have the accusation that pro-lifers want to restrict womens' liberty as a basic tenet of their argument. hence, we get hyperbolic comparisons to restrictive autocratic totalitarian regimes such as the Taliban. it is unfortunate, as such paranoia keeps the debate more acerbic than necessary.