Religiously unaffiliated people most strongly believe that empathy is a foundational moral value. Note that doesn’t necessarily mean atheists; people who believe in God but don’t associate with any particular religion would be in that group. In fact, I can’t find any information about whether atheists are included in this survey, or if this was exclusively a survey of religious people.
Interesting (but not exactly surprising) results here. Makes me glad that “religiously unaffiliated” is the fastest growing religion in the U.S.
The issue is that propaganda has redefined “empathy” to mean “giving tons of free money to freeloading brown people”, which makes it an easy thing to turn ignorant racists against.
The other issue is that the US education system has failed rural citizens to the extent that many of them are ignorant racists.