Why are Christians more likely to support torturing terror suspects than nonbelievers?

They’re also more likely to support law and order, and have a clearer—liberals would say overly simplistic—sense of good and evil. The bad guys are bad. They’re not like us, they want to kill us, and they don’t play by the same rules as they do. While a moral conservative may vote Democrat and may deplore torture, she might well agree with Dick Cheney that “we also have to work through, sort of, the dark side.”

Witness D.C. McAllister’s article, “Yes, Christians Can Support Torture,” published in The Federalist. I’ll leave out her most ridiculous moves—like quoting Deuteronomy on stoning people to death, but omitting Jesus Christ on the same point. Her primary claim is that “criminals forfeit their dignity.” Here, McAllister quotes Aquinas: “a bad man is worse than a beast” and concludes, without citation, that “The Bible does not recognize the autonomy and dignity of the evildoer.”

This is Haidt’s conservative moral judgment writ plain. Criminals (McAllister doesn’t really deal with the ‘suspected’ part) surrender their autonomy and dignity when they choose to commit crimes. Therefore, those moral values are outweighed by the state’s interest in preserving order and security. There it is: Loyalty, authority, sanctity outweighing fairness and minimizing harm. To make an omelet, you’ve got to break some heads. I mean, eggs.