Comment by collingreen

I guess so but only if the weakness is in their ability to murder you.

This take should lead to less government POWER and involvement in individual lives though and doesn't match with policy that empowers an astronomically sized "defense" budget, lawmakers deciding how every woman everywhere should deal with pregnancy and health issues that affect pregnancy, or giving unbridled, unreviewed access to every citizens personal and financial data to unelected, unaccountable oligarchs.

I actually agree with your take - I have a lot of conservative views like you described about how government is inherently hard and flawed and risky so we should use it sparingly.

We've seen so much flying in the face of this recently that I make a point of not calling republicans conservative anymore, not to be pithy but just to try to bring some grounding to these culture war arguments.