If someone was to say that they don't care what God has commanded, I would respond that they are going to care, sooner or later. That God is going to judge the living and the dead, and has clearly set forth the standards for his judgement in the Bible. If they still just don't care about the prospect of being judged by a holy God, that's sort of the end of the conversation. It's the ultimate authority that I can appeal to.
See, this is about what I mean, I think this answer just sort of removes the question a step.
"Why should I care what God has commanded?"
"Because he will judge you."
"Why should I care if he judges me?"
"Because it will determine if you will have eternal life or damnation."
"Why should I prefer to have eternal life over damnation?"
"Because eternal life is good and damnation is bad."
"Why is eternal life good and damnation bad?"
I think you're mixing categories of discussion here a bit. FriedC isn't holding me at gunpoint demanding my wallet. If he was, I wouldn't be very interested in figuring out his morality and how he justifies doing it. I wouldn't try to convince him not to take my wallet, because I doubt a person stealing my wallet really cares about the morality of the act. I would just act in self defense.
FriedC is arguing for a political position, a set of policies he advocates, and his reason for why he supports them seems to boil down to "because it's good". That's not an answer. It just begs the question of what is "good" in the first place. I think I could have a good faith dialogue with someone who thinks it would be good if America ceases to be America, because I can challenge them on their standard of "good" in the first place. I don't think FriedC has shown the foundation to be able to do that himself.
See, I think you're separating as two categories things that aren't, really, they're a spectrum. Politics is inherently the use of force to achieve ends. That force can be cloaked or obfuscated in certain ways, but it's always there, just beneath the surface. With the mugger, this can be shown trivially- instead of a mugger, imagine someone working to pass a tax on you that would benefit him. As with most taxes, if he were to succeed in passing it and you failed to pay, you would be fined, if you failed to pay the fine you would be arrested, and if you resisted arrest you would be beaten or shot. The situation is only different in it's reliability.
On the subject of America- I'm sorry, since I think I was being unclear, but when I talk about America, just as with all nations, I am generally not talking about the particular structure of governance. I am talking about the nation in the original sense of the word- a people, the government they institute among themselves & the territory they hold. But the defining feature is the first. France, for instance, did not cease to be France, during the shift from the Fourth to Fifth Republic, or even during the French Revolution. Nor would a loss of territory be a nation "ceasing to be."
"America ceasing to be America" means my, my family, and my people's dispossession. I do not doubt that might be good for some people. If someone is in favor of it, then it is probably is
good for them. But it would be bad for me and mine. We have mutually exclusive interests, so there's no merit in debate, the only question is who is better able to advance their interests.
correlation =/= causation fallacy
Almost all so-called "fallacies" are just excuses for smart people to outthink themselves. "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does whisper 'hey, look over there' and wink."