Andrew Sullivan:
The difference is in equating them directly with the Taliban and al Qaeda. That equation is as repulsive to me now as it was when Dinesh D'Souza did the same thing to the left. The neocons and the Christianists are deeply dangerous to Western society and global peace, but they are not, emphatically not, the kind of people who stone people to death, murder innocents as a religious duty, and wage war on us every day. To equate American citizens with the enemy is to engage in McCarthyite excess that is as wrong on the left as it is on the right. It's a step too far - and it is empirically false.
Jon Jarden:
Is this actually true? I would feel safe saying that the majority of the nation (including many religious conservatives) would be repulsed by such an agenda. To say that it's completely outside of the American dialogue, however, is just pure fantasy. I'm sure a poll of Germans in 1925 wouldn't have predicted the political and ethnic persecution of the Holocaust. Pat Robertson has called for the stoning of people who believe in UFOs. Is it really a reach to think he'd support stoning groups he's far more vocal about his hatred of?
Listen to the rhetoric the religious right and their political allies toward Muslims. Does Sullivan honestly think Robertson et al. wouldn't support a war to rid the world of Islam? We've been told by various prominent figures on the right that Islam is "evil and wicked" (and that wasn't overheated post-9/11 venting, Graham reaffirmed the belief in 2006), all Muslims are part of Al Queda, and the United States should be more like Saudi Arabia when it comes to religious freedom.
Remember, the GOP's nominee in the high-profile race against the Democratic Senate Majority Leader in Nevada has called for "Second Amendment remedies" to dealing with Congress. The notion that the American Taliban isn't prone to violence is patently absurd. From their rhetoric, to their fetishization of weapons, to sporadic incidences of violence (several detailed in my book), it's clear the crazy Right isn't far from resorting to wider violence. Sullivan should be quite aware of what would happen to gay folks like him if some of these crazies took power.
America is blessed with a well-established system of norms and laws that hold most of the Right's violent tendencies in check. But that's a matter of government, not a matter of their innate desire to wage violence on people and ideas they deplore.
But if you gave the American Taliban the same amount of power and authority their Islamic cousins enjoy, this debate would be quickly settled.