Name the single greatest threat to our American Way of life.

Next, the churches preaching politics.

I believe the gap between the rich and the poor is the most dangerous situation we face.

n/t

their growing control of and attempts to gain more control over governments across the world. Entire nations full of human beings suffer unfathomable pain as a result of their political and monetary greed.

Tens of thousands of children die every single day, from war, starvation, and privation, and millions of human beings die each year all over the world, because of the economic and political power we allow these thugs.

America is getting just a first, very mild taste of what many other nations have been viciously aware of for years.

Corps Have and will Sell this country down the tube!!

A well informed electorate is essential to a Democracy.

Time, Newsweek, and, a fat chunk of the newspapers in this country. And, Talk Radio.

It just keeps slowly and creepily expanding, little by little.

Yours is a subset of mine.

Military spending distorts our entire economy. Our taxes pay for missiles, drones, bombs, invasions of foreign countries, and interest on loans from China to fund those wars, instead of universal health care, low-cost higher education, public transit and intercity rail, scientific research for civilian purposes, affordable housing, student loan debt relief, etc.

I have seen so many rightwing comments on the election loss blaming public schools for indoctrinating the youth. This comment is brilliant.

I feel qualified saying that you don't know what the hell you're talking about

Homeschooling by unqualified parents who are doing it for reasons of avoding "indoctrination" rather than accelerating their children's development.

Is that fair?
GAC

I hate being lumped in with those who use home schooling as indoctrination camp for their kids.

I did it for the exact opposite reasons. At the time, we lived in Utah. The LDS church is so entwined in the school system, it's organic. There are churches across the street from the schools, and students are allowed out of real class to go to religious classes. The majority of teachers are LDS, and the system just assumes you are as well. When you home school in Utah, you fall into one of two groups - people who are too Mormon (sister wives and all that...) or people who are UN-Mormonized and want their kids to grow up that way. We were the later, and it was the best way to ensure our kids had a secular education.

nt

you either melded into the mainstream, or swam against it.

The church is so much a part of everything there, indoctrination is the norm, and home schooling is for those who want their kids to get a secular education, or for those Mormons who were too hard core for society. There is a small subculture in Utah that are almost Amish in their adherence to Mormonism.

if the Christians took over and put prayer and bible classes in our local public schools.

can change the way we view things that we once thought were settled questions.

I loved my years in public school. before I had children, I never thought I would home school. When I moved to Utah (for college and employment) I was unprepared for the experiences my kids would go through in class. I did what I did because it was the best choice for my family, and I have no regrets. I am not a home school advocate, nor a public education critic, nor the reverse of either.

Well now you sound like a classic homeschooling parent who knows more than the science, math, English , and art teachers, until about grade 7, your education level probably. Then they decide to put their kids back in public school, years behind cause they can't learn algebra at the breakfast table. Then the parents have the nerve to criticise a school's test scores after the school had to test their children who became lazy and ignorant and disobedient for the last 10 years. otherwise the poor children feel ashamed at being behind. Also, their parents then blame their own children for not being interested in homework or learning enough fast enough, so they punish their children, only making matters worse than ever. If your pagan in Utah I sort of don't blame you. But don't say you're an "expert" cause you don't get the whole big picture.

so I guess I better straighten up and fly right, eh?



Sorry, couldn't resist, you're so sanctimonious.

You're right - I didn't feel my undergrad degree qualified to educate my sons through the high school level. In fact, as soon as I thought they were old enough to be able to form and answer their own questions about religion, I put them back in public school. My eldest boy graduated with honors in Utah. He married early, and has a son of his own. He's a big guy, with a big laugh. Office job by day, plays guitar in a local band at night. He's happy, so I'm happy. My middle son and I moved to Florida, where he attends a magnate school for the Arts. He graduates this year. Some semesters he gets As, some semesters he gets Cs. I think his grade fluctuations have more to do with girls, and sometimes boys, than with his education. He came out as bi-sexual last year.

I find it funny that you think I don't get the big picture, when you can't even get the little details right. My kids aren't geniuses, nor are they falling behind. They are normal kids. Sometimes they do great, sometime they struggle.

You thought it would be cute to make a joke about home schooled children and their parents being the single greatest challenge to our way of life. I can take the joke, but I won't let the myth stand. People are individuals, and don't fit into your tidy little behavioral packages. As much as you preach about the evils of home schooling, your education does not seem to have provided you with that one simple truth. I may not be an expert (and never claimed to be, either), but it doesn't take an expert to see that those with myopia shouldn't give lessons to others on how to see "the whole big picture."

nt

See my post above. There are times when it is the most sane thing a person can do, and the absolute best for the kid as well. You have to work hard at it, but the results depend on the parents and what they are able to offer. Sane and rational parents that care about their children can provide a fine education and social experience if they have the right support from the right community. It's not for everyone. Hell...it's not even for many people. It serves a narrow purpose.

Stupid people who push their beliefs on to their children are not the only people who home school, they're just the ones that get all the damn attention.

I just worry about kids that are homeschooled and miss out on the social aspects of "real" school.

I'd move out of Utah in a heartbeat though.....

I hold that truth to be self evident.

Ourselves, unless we wise the fuck up and soon!

They need to have their ill gotten gains taxed down to the point that there is enough for us all. They need to have their billions taxed heavily enough that buying Congressmen is out of their reach. They need to be taxed away from writing sweetheart tax law that makes them richer while starving the government we all rely on for infrastructure.

Democracy can tolerate millionaires, even 100 million millionaires. It cannot continue to coexist with billionaires.

Like kudzu. It's going places!

&feature=fvwrel

Which is a result of our infinite growth complex

Another word for the middleman with his hand out skimming off taxpayer $$ for things like education, prisons, etc. There are some things that the government actually does do better and should not have a profit motive attached. Someday this country will realize this about health care as well.

Tea Party, Grover Norquist, The NRA, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News -- People who have no principles and no set of compromise.

There used to be Republicans who believed in compromise.
I think they have gone extinct.

I just caught a glimpse of Dianne Sawyer's, Thursday, interview with John Boehner.



http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/11/transcript-diane-sawyers-interview-with-speaker-of-the-house-john-boehner-11812/

As long as you have tens of millions of people in the States who believe they are inherently superior to those in other nations then all it takes is another hawkish Republican administration to lead them blindly into never-ending wars and conflict.

....

Fox is a product offered to people who have not taken the time to educate themselves and find it easier to own an opinion that they can claim is strong because it involves hate and they have been given bite-size, easily digested and regurgitated pieces of misinformation to defend it.

The political equivalent of a diet of Hot Pockets and Kraft Mac and Cheese. The package says "Chicken, Cheese, Lean, Microwavable" but the list of ingredient is a mile long and should come with biohazard warnings but will never be read, much less scrutinized, by someone whose priorities are Fast and Easy.

Pirate equity firms No misspelling heremp, I mean piRate. They have destroyed our manufacturing base and shipped good jobs out of the country for their own profit and , yes, greed.

The ideology of greed.

Reagan didn't slash taxes on the ultrarich to ulate job creation or economic growth, but to eliminate non-military spending. The current GOP wants the same thing.

When we taxed, and maintained a reasonable deficit by spending on needed projects, everyone benefitted. Government debt is historically the safest of all investments and any good investor has 10 percent of her or his portfolio in it.(Because savings bonds are a form of govt debt, even the most modest savings plan can contain govt debt.) I could go on but you get the picture: the only bad debt is debt you can't easily pay. With proper tax levels the U.S. can afford to grow and improve, raising all our living standards. When taxes are too low, we all suffer. Similarly, when they're too high people suffer, but at a 35 percent top rate we have a long way to go to get to that point,

In my very humble opinion Fox is only a tool the 1 Percenters use to screw with the 99er. The real threat is the 1%.

They have bought the government. Even Obama to a smaller extent. We'll see how small in the next 4 years.

it's usually used to refer to America's consumer-driven capitalist culture; suburbs, Wal-Marts, cheap gasoline and driving everywhere. See GHW Bush at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 (focused on action on climate change, sustainable development, etc): "The American way of life is not negotiable."

If that's the "American way of life"...it's doomed. In the short term by rising food and energy prices, in the long term by increasing petroleum scarcity and increasing competition for resources among developed and developing countries.

The seeds of violence have been sown. Democrats in some states are already scared to admit to supporting Obama. I, for one, live in a very red county in Texas and will not put out a sign, will not put a sticker on my car, and am trying not to look too happy when I'm out in public. I know people who have had their property vandalized by Obama haters. If you talk to the RWers, you hear the list of lies they learned from Fox or Limbaugh.

I wish Rachel would do a segment on Radio Rwanda (and the TV equivalent). I think it is a real threat. Just yesterday, DU had a story of a 12-year-old who was hit at school for supporting Obama. We recognize the division, we just don't recognize the true threat of the division. Democrats are becoming the "other".

For those of us who have been watching, we have seen Fox News get worse over time. They are bolder, dirtier. People must learn the history of Radio Rwanda before history repeats itself.

We cannot have a democracy when half of the electorate has a different set of "facts". It ends all meaningful discourse.

Welcome to DU!

It's an abomination.

It's so much easier to lie to the ignorant and uninformed.

Corporations are becoming challengers to countries. They are a greater threat to democracy than any other political, social, or economic body in history.

Is it Russia? I heard it was Russia.

Seriously, though, it's hard to pin it on one specific thing. A lot of the topics mentioned above fit the bill at certain times.

It's going to change everything....and nobody is ready for it.

to ignore. Think Sandy many times over before we really start to pay attention as a nation. As a close second, I am still worried about terrorism (using nuclear or bio weapons) and hope that we can address this problem not just through homeland security measures (which concern and affect everyone) but through a more even-handed foreign policy that respects and is willing to work with the Muslim/Islamic world (President Obama's and SOS Clinton's approach) versus a strong handed and arrogant policy that falsely equates all Muslims as radicals bent on destroying the U.S.

.

Cheap energy resulting in an ever increasing level of activity by one species being the greatest threat in general.

This is the ideology and mindset behind Fox News, behind every 'legitimate rape', behind treating the wealthy as saviors but not noticing that they spent millions of dollars so they don't have to pay a fraction more in taxes, and more.

EVERYTHING else flows from there.

But I think your question needs rephrasing first.

Who here wants "The American Way of Life"? From what I can tell, being a "good american" involves following approved authority's version of reality and getting in trouble if you don't. I like living in a bigger world than the one they want to box us into.

If we can assume you meant "The Greatest Threat to Sane People," I'm going to have to go with Gov't Secrecy. The fact that you can't go to "your Gov't" and get a straight answer is possibly the root cause of all the other symptoms.

There's no transparency, no oversight, and no repercussions for breaking the "law"...because according to them, it never happened, or if it did, there was a good reason for it that they can't tell us.

Daylight would kill this vampire...assuming anyone cared that they were getting their blood sucked out.

Who among us isn't one medical catastrophe away from bankruptcy? The right to live should never be profitable. I've already decided that when my time comes, I'll choose death over destroying the rest of my family's future.

From that, all other ills flow.

kept in place by a Conservative Congress.

1B is superstition and willful ignorance.

Dems need to remember who we are and stand up to monied interests. Then start rolling back legislation put into place, beginning with the "Reagan Revolution" which gave the Oligarchs more control over media, made elections more big-money driven, etc.

The Democratic Party needs to reach back to its New Deal roots that prevailed for 45 years. FDR's "I welcome their hatred" speech needs to be familiar not just to Obama, but to national and local legislators, all the way down to citizens. We need to have the backs of Dem leaders on this. And that leaderships needs to call out the opposition any time they distort the truth or gin up any campaign of verbal bullying that originated in the 1990's from Newt and Frank Luntz.

The Democratic Party should never again allow itself to ape the Republican Party in catering to the corporate mentality. This happened partly because Republican legislation made elections more dependent BIG MONEY donations and because the party allowed itself to be defined by GOP bullying. This time around in the presidential election, thank God the difference between the two parties was plenty clear to voters - but mainly because much of America saw the ugly greed and extremism of the GOP. We must also continue to be clear about the ideals and goals of our party being the best for America and its citizens - even best for business, etc.

We must also find a way, as it was happening after the 1960's and into the 1970's, to give Americans a vision of what's important in life. Conspicuous Consumption that was promoted in the 1980's helped pave the way for average citizens to practically worship the rich and to actually believe they are the "job creators." There ultimately needs to be "a true revolution of values" like the one that King spoke of:

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. ... A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, 'This is not just.' It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, 'This is not just.' The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.”

(By the way, the "true revolution of values" must also address what we do about Climate Change.)

Right now Democrats have emerged as the nation's leaders. We have the opportunity to lead this country into a different course than was set in the 1980's. Time to provide the nation with a vision for The Greater Good that rivals and succeeds anything "spiritual" that seemed to be offered by Right Wing Christianity or the Right Wing version of The American Dream ("I'm getting mine and to hell with anyone else").

The ingredient most needed is ignoring bogus ideas from Republicans and maintaining the RESOLVE to LEAD.

(Sorry this is too long, but I couldn't stop once I got going. Our Biggest Threat did not develop overnight.)

edited to add - not our current American way of life (as we currently are and have been governed by fascist generational plutocrats for a long time) but the American Dream as put forth by the founding fathers. Luckily, we still have a Constitution which allows us to strive for this America.

Lot of people still following the massive three-meal-a-day farmer's diet plan without doing any farming.

Lot of people out there who seem to view over consumption as an American birthright.

That is incredibly obvious.

It scared our Founders, too, and they were right to fear it.

Where everything is privately owned and controlled by corps and wealthy individuals and fed govt is essentially powerless.

On a more serious note, I would say an oil price shock resulting from war in the Middle East. Imagine gasoline at $15, $20, or $25 per gallon. That would certainly affect the American way of life more than Fox News.

Having completely bamboozled the voters, Akin and Mourdock are at the cusp of seizing absolute power. Well I guess that *might* be the case in some parallel universe somewhere.

Yours,

A European.

Her 100,000 post count is merely a springboard for bigger and more terrifying plans.

It brings the delusional crazies out who really want to take away our freedom.

how can we expect real news from outlets that are invested in profits from war, for just one huge example.

where was the outcry against the Iraq war from all these people that call themselves journalists (commentators? pundits? I don't know what the fuck to call them anymore)? the only one I recall that took issue with the illegal war was Phil Donahue and he got fired.

so to all those who believe Rachel and Ed and Tweety are just such liberty defending and truth seeking sweethearts - look who they work for and when they are put to the boards about whether they keep their jobs or speak freely - they will keep their jobs.

nt

People that can educate themselves, but won't because they believe that it's bad or wouldn't help them (mostly also because of ignorance).

We should have competing PBSs, internet for everyone like we have rural electrification.

Until we address our media problem, we will continue to have all the other problems: disparity, poverty, shortages, ...

no food no fun no shit

levels that make decent housing unfordable to vast portions of the American population.

2. A unsustainable speculation driven casino economy where the path to fortune is speculating on speculating rather than making or selling real stuff

3. Higher education becoming increasingly unfordable for vast portions of the American population - requiring that most of those who can obtain higher education to enter the work market in a condition boarder-lining on indentured servitude.

4. An unsustainable military empire and the war driving economy that comes along with it

5. Fox News

none of it mattered. I'm so proud about that.

However, I agree, they should be taken off the air, or at least forced to remove the word "News" from their name.

The kind in the tin that get re-gifted year after year...

Honestly, what is more destructive when so many embrace it?

Deport them all!

FOX, Rush Limbaugh, their church, etc. and believe every last word spoken as the truth without ever bothering to think for themselves.

Want what you have. Don't want what you don't have. Spend less than you earn.

which is NOT embraced in countries like Germany.

LMAOF.. it's not FAUX News. some of you apparently belong to the anti science crowd when it comes to media influence.

again, the "my brother's lberal friend became a right wing/Obama hater after watching FAUX News for thirty days" is hardly empirical evidence supporting the hysterical belief that the network is causing tens of thousands of progressives/moderates to "switch to the Dark Side". what nonsense.

you're ignoring the proof against this-- just provided by the outcome of the election.

I would agree that Fox isn't converting progressives at all. I would say that Fox is taking an inherently influential, conservative, substantial portion of our population and breeding extremism on a scale we have not seen.

How old are you? Do you recall American politics before Fox? I certainly do. Indeed, I would say that the birth of Fox coincides quite nicely with some of the more extreme, "grass roots" movements within the GOP. Yes, there were movements within the GOP before Fox, but not on this scale. Fox is the "times ten" amplifier. In my mind, the Tea Party is actually the "Fox News Party". Fox coopted its viewers and those viewers coopted the GOP. In other words, Fox dictates our political discussion.

The election outcome proves that a candidate can blatantly lie on an unprecedented scale (for modern Presidential Politics) and come within 2.5 percent of victory. A strong candidate that is only slightly more appealing could easily win.

a draft card-- so yes, I recall politics before the 24/7 news channels and the internets.

I also recall ignorance and racism existed in our nation wayyyy before 24/7 news and the internets. Ignorance and racism existed wayyyy before Rush Limpbaugh.

The notion FAUX News made millions of people racist that were already racist is nonsense; it's putting the cart before the horse. FAUX and other right wing tee vee/radio are preaching to a choir that was already in place and their advertisers target this demographic; it's not that complicated.

as far as your conclusion FAUX "dictates our political discussion", please speak for yourself. while you're wasting your time giving credence to the nonsense on FAUX (and I assume other right wing channels), the business of our nation goes on. Our nation's business is impacted/affected by numerous things day to day. there's just no proof one single thing is having an enormous impact, and is overriding all other things which matter.

YOU are giving power to FAUX by paying attention to them.

This includes the parental and community low valuing of children's education, adults' own "righteous" prejudices, church, news sources and the politics of spite.

I think that pretty much covers it.

If I had to choose now, I would say fundamentalist Christianity.

all it really culminates in is social breakdown and quasi-barbarism and postmodern nihilism