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Originally Posted by Marvelous Marv
I'm starting to smell the echoes of Howard Dean here: "The Republicans are basically a white, Christian party."(Meaning, of course, that they all think alike, look alike, and plot evil things.)
It's the most fun when you hear this sentiment from people who emphatically proclaim that not all Muslims are alike.
Without a clue toward the irony.
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I think the irony is how you've constructed a completely inappropriate analogy.
1) The statement "not all muslims are alike", whenever I've heard it employed, has been a response to the ignorant assumption that muslims as a group hate americans.
2) these same people, along with others, usually can't seem to understand the difference between a fanatic religious segment of muslims, a non-fanatic religious segment of muslims, and the hinge of all this--that muslim is an ethnicity, not necessarily tied to the religion Islam.
3) political parties are chosen, presumably, by their adherents because they share the views of other members of the party and want to implement similar policies. So they band together and elect representatives in the hopes those people will effect their will.
4) religious groups, while many people might be born into them, are by and large chosen by the adults because they share the perspective of the other members in their congregation.
So it seems perfectly reasonable and accurate to me that when you have a group of people sharing a religious perspective AND a political party that you will find those people tend to think along similar lines and desire to plot courses of action in conjunction with one another.
It seems really odd to me that you would equate such a statement with "all caucasians are the same" or "all italians are the same." You might have had a stronger case if you had used "all Islamics are the same."
These comments are all based on my premise that political parties are self-selected groups of people who think about particular problems in similar ways and want a coordinated effort to address those problems.
I don't see religion the same way, many people seem to follow the course of their parents, family, and/or friends, but there are more religious flavors than political parties, so whatever, it seems problematic to assume adherents of a main "branch" of religion would necessarily think in similar ways--although they do at the abstract level (if we are to consider that they might consider a deity exists, in so far as that governs their day to day activities; they might consider an objective morality to be in operation; they might consider the importance of attending relgious services with one another in ways dissimilar to non-religious peoples, & etc).
I definately don't see the same patterns of behavior and choice when it comes to ethnicity or racial categorization. Although, one might make a case for broad characterizations of a particular ethnic groups as it pertains to cultural notions. But those same people would have to be very careful when they decide to shift from the aggregate to the personal...