Radical Republicans? Scarier Than Jihadists?

The atheists at the Daily Kos blog just keeping lobbing bombs. On Friday, the blogger with the handle "Something the Dog Said" protested the protests against the Cordoba Center mosque at Ground Zero. After predictably assigning the anti-abortion shooters to the Christian conservative camp, the Kosmonaut actually said the Muslims are "a pale reflection" of radicalism compared to Republicans:

In the end it is just the SOP of the Republican Party. Find and issue and whip up hysteria, without consideration of the long term affects or what might be lost by the tactic.  It is just another of the legion of reasons why the modern Republican Party can not be trusted with the government of the United States or any single state for that matter. The radicalization they claim will come from mosques is just a pale reflection of the radicalization that has occurred in the ranks of their Party. If there is a group to fear, it is Radical Republicans, which is basically to say the most of the Republican Party at this point.

Isn't there a fraction of a difference between anti-abortion killers of a handful of doctors, and the murderers of 9/11? There was also this passage that somehow would place Billy Graham in the same analogy as Anwar al-Awlaki:

None of these folks seem to understand that you mobilize to prevent one religion from building in a place you think will be profaned by their presence, and then all of them become fair game.

What if Evangelicals decided that Charlotte, North Carolina, the birth place of Evangelical icon Billy Graham was sacred ground and no new churches outside that religion should be built there? It is exactly the same argument as they are making against the New York City mosque. Because of an arbitrary event the site of the towers is somehow "sacred" and that alone is enough to deny a group the right to build not on it but near it.

As an Atheist this all seems more than a little silly to me, but all religion that you don’t participate in can seem silly or sinister from the outside. The thing is I am also a strong supporter of the Constitution. The Framers knew from personal experience what a damage a state sponsored religion could be to a people and especially a democracy. They choose to put in the very first amendment the idea that State should not make any laws respecting the establishment of religion. That is a very clever way of saying that it will not referee between competing religions and will never endorse one over any others.

[Hat tip: Taj Gourmet]