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All I am asking is for conservatives to put the same level of value on the lives of foreigners as their domestic opponents do on fertilized human embryros. That is the level of commitment that they will need to win. If they can endure that level of opprobrium then the battle is already won. Do you believe that pro-choicers support abortions to 'own the cons'..? On some level, maybe. But they have a genuine belief in the liberty of women, unshackling them from the tyranny of biology. We must similarly have cruel principles that put our own well being over the needs of others.
Is that really all you're asking for?
The conservative position on fertilized human embryos is "Don't kill them." I would assume this position also applies re: the lives of foreigners. The conservative position on fertilized human embryos is NOT "The government must provide all the food/medicine/trans operas/LGBTQIA++ comic books required to get that embryo through life."
This sounds like the old canard that by not providing a womb-to-tomb welfare state, you are in effect murdering the weak.
What am I missing?
I was speaking circuitously: what I meant is that 'conservatives should act as if the value foreign lives at zero'.
This serves a tactical purpose, as to defang reflexive knee-jerk appeals to sympathy.
But also strategically, in shining a spotlight on the revealed preference of their enemies as to the value of foreign life. If foreign lives are valued at one to one, and conservatives are through inaction killing them, then liberals are put in a moral dilemna to overthrow the government or reduce their valuation in contrast to their rhetoric. More likely, however, there will be a downward correction: and then the true work of negotiation begins.
But I don't think basically anyone is claiming they value foreign lives at a 1-to-1 ratio to domestic lives.
Given that the programs were 0.2% of the federal budget, I'd be okay with saying that I value America lives the ~450 times more than foreign lives that that implies, at least as far as US federal foreign policy goes.
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