this thread is absolutely wrong, the entire premise is based on falacy. there has never been an Atheistic government that hasn't been bloody and filling mass graves. the French revolution was the most humane (actually least inhumane) where you measure death in the tens of thousands rather than millions. I learned all about it as lad, descended from Polish grandparents, watching my distant cousins demonstrating outside the Polish embassy. Ronald Reagan, the Pope, Lech Walensa and the Solidarity demonstrators were the Christians fighting for freedom against the tyrannical Atheistic governments of the Soviet Bloc.

America was founded on Biblical principles. Our Declaration of Independence derives from the philosophies of John Locke, very nearly word-for-word. And the sole source of authority for Locke's arguments? Scripture aka the Bible. If the Bible is not true, then every premise of American Liberty is not true either. That is what conservatism is fighting- the notion that man, that Big Brother, has the right to dictate to any other man, as opposed to there being a higher law, which makes us all free.

Who says Christians are anti-science? The Byzantine Empire of the Medieval period was fanatically Christian, and they, during the Dark Ages knew the world was round and deployed flame-throwers to defend their capital at Constantinople in 667-675 AD and 717-718 when besieged by a numerically superior Arab enemy. The Dutch reform Calvinists, who the Puritans considered co-religionists, were also the most advanced people in the 17th century.

So-called "Christian extremists" were the people who fought for what was right in a sick world, and they were the founders of America also. Puritans and Dutch Reform Calvinists were the builders of the Modern Republic. thank God for those "religious Right" abolitionists in England and America. More secular minded people used to roll their eyes at Christians who fought first the slave trade then slavery itself.

It is quite disconcerting to see Conservatives fall into the traps laid by intellectually dishonest Liberal historical revisionists.