I certainly feel that it is everyone's right to believe in what they wish to believe.
But the problems this country are facing are not due to the country as a whole moving away from Christianity.
The problems we face are because this countries governmental parties have become masters in the study and application of social manipulation.
What we have failed to do in our education system is to teach people how to think. Our education system remains embedded in the old world Prussian method of Memorize, Memorize, and then Memorize some more. Pass your exams and then forget 90% of what you have learned.
I respect Mathgeeks choice in teaching strong christian skills in his children, However i believe that it is his teaching of critical thinking skills that will help them more than anything else.
I think perhaps Ghandi had it right when he stated "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
In my opinion his statement reflects the fact that we choose as people to change the "word" of christ to suit our particular needs of the moment. More blood has been spilled on this planet in the name of religion than anything else. Religions have the annoying habit of making their devotees believe that they are the only ones who know whats best.
So in my opinion to solve this country's problems you must leave religion at the doorstep. You have to recognize a few things.
#1 Tolerance and understanding of your fellow man (If he chooses to live with different beliefs than you, whether you agree with them or not, he should receive an equal level of courtesy and respect as you)
#2 Education is of utmost importance (not just book learning, but learning how to critically think, learning how to do mundane everyday things) Those are of utmost importance. We have fallen from having an education system which produced some of this planet's smartest. To a nation where teachers are underpaid, overworked, and ridiculed. We are currently ranked as #17 in the list of developed nations for our education system. Here is a short blurb from the #1 and #2 ranked education systems on how to improve education.
There are no magic bullets: The small number of correlations found in the study shows the poverty of simplistic solutions. Throwing money at education by itself rarely produces results, and individual changes to education systems, however sensible, rarely do much on their own.
Education requires long-term, coherent and focused system-wide attention to achieve improvement.
Respect teachers: Good teachers are essential to high-quality education. Finding and retaining them is not necessarily a question of high pay. Instead, teachers need to be treated as the valuable professionals they are, not as technicians in a huge, educational machine.
Culture can be changed: The cultural assumptions and values surrounding an education system do more to support or undermine it than the system can do on its own. Using the positive elements of this culture and, where necessary, seeking to change the negative ones, are important to promoting successful outcomes.
Parents are neither impediments to nor saviours of education: Parents want their children to have a good education; pressure from them for change should not be seen as a sign of hostility but as an indication of something possibly amiss in provision. On the other hand, parental input and choice do not constitute a panacea. Education systems should strive to keep parents informed and work with them.
Educate for the future, not just the present: Many of today's job titles, and the skills needed to fill them, simply did not exist 20 years ago. Education systems need to consider what skills today's students will need in future and teach accordingly.
Bear in mind that in both of these countries Teachers who excel at their job are treated as almost celebrities with the pay and respect that those earn.
#3 Teaching our children Self Reliance, How to grow things, hunt / fish for food, good work skills to earn income.... etc.
#4 Stop allowing politics and special interests to divide us. It's not an accident that different racial groups of people tend to lean far in one political direction or another. It is intentional political manipulation. We are all here for the same things, to live, love & prosper.
#5 Our government is no longer a Constitutional Federal Republic. Its has instead changed itself into a Corporatocracy, that is hidden behind a relatively nice sounding stated agenda of becoming a Social Democracy. As such all decision have become one's of what is in the best interests of the Mega Corporations with the political lobbying war-chests. In every political action, simply follow the money and you see who is pulling the strings.
#4 I believe there are groups of people who would change this if they came into power. (I am a registered libertarian, and do believe if this party gained meaningful power they would be able to enact some real changes that would help us)
But, in a first to post election (which is what we have) It is basically a statistical certainty that anything other than a 2 party system is impossible. If any group ever begins to push a majority electoral system we all need to rally to that cause.
As such history and reality show us that, Things in america will probably not get better until they get much, much worse. Typically free thinking democratic societies change over time and end up as facist / communist / oppressive societies... Then revolutions occur and the cycle begins again.
Therefore anarchist's might just have it right..... The only way that change is ever going to happen is for things to get so bad that people are readily willing to die to change it.
Hopefully they are wrong and we can stop this freight train. We might just be able to do it, if we can come together as people, respect our fellow man (and woman, regardless of their beliefs as long as those beliefs don't actually harm us) and work to a common cause of all of our betterment, and not just the "betterment" of those with all the money.
True Constitutional Social Democracies are what we all need to work towards, There are many examples of them in the world that have shown us exactly how to do it.
It's going to be a long hard road to get there, or anywhere better than where we are headed right now.
Sorry bout the massive wall of text. I will now go post a fishing report or something.
