Although, it doesn't really hurt to understand that even people like these aren't a singularity in your Country. You can in fact find groups like these on every section. From overly extreme self-justified black people, to Extremism in Liberals without any regard for a notion of a middle ground, from asian communities, to spanish communities and of course, religious groups to some extent.
I guess one of these groups was bound to be the largest and most vocal of all... and you might know that while a very few consistently experience what you just did, a greater, larger slice of people get a "digested message", something carved and cut to prime chunks of Bullshit, that generate people like you were used to be. Because they haven't really seen the real extent of what they defend. Sadly, this is common worldwide.
I would like to share something that i saw that it was way better than i thought it would be
it's an 3 Part Interview with David barton, a guy highly praised by Glen Beck. He was on the Dailyshow, mostly to talk about quotes and citations that placed him as a Republican Conservative, trying o push a Christian agenda. But when i saw the interview, it came out as a VERY interesting conversation with a guy that seemed to me to be very open minded and that could place his viewpoints in factual context with a fair interpretation, no biased spin. It's worth a look.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
To me, it was a very good way to see that sometimes most people defend or fight for stuff they don't really understand, if not by a lack of information, then by an overload of bad information.