Welcome to Gaia! ::

It's not so much America in general. Take a look at China. The government is actually telling the people that they, the government, a body of HUMAN leaders, will decide what Buhdist followers can reincarnate in China.

Basically what it boils down to is ignorance, close-mindedness and/or extreamist views of individual people. There are many types of religious followers that I generally categorize.

First you have your evangelists. These are the people that are going around with the 'I'm right, your wrong and your evil for being wrong so convert and be saved.' The last I read the bible, I didn't see Jesus going around flinging his beliefs at other people and calling them evil for not following his way. I've never seen or heard of a taoist monk bash on wiccan beliefs.

Then you have your victims. Now this is a tricky word. I do not mean victims as in they are actually being assualted or anything, but they take on the victim mentality of 'People are exposing poor Jim Bob to these terrible things like Christmas and we're athiest. People shouldn't be allowed to publically celebrate religious holidays because my son might get ideas.' These are primarily the ones that go to the congressman and start whining and crying about these sorts of things that ultimately screw everything up for everyone else.

Next you have the 'enlightened unenlightened'. These are the people who soak in everything the pastor says and refuse to read up on the beliefs and cultures of other religions, instead going around saying that anyone who worships someone different from them is worshipping the devil. Yet they believe that thier beliefs are the one true ways. And when they're faith is challenged, they start spouting words from written texts to show how much they know about thier religion and try to convice the challenger that they are wrong because of what a book says.

Then you have the acceptance/tolerance people. These I feel are the best to hang around. They aren't judgemental (mostly), they don't shove thier religions down other people's throats, and they leave well enough alone unless something is seriouly wrong, like animal sacrifices or intentional biased discrimination.

Extreamists. These are the nutjob fruitcakes that are a bane to thier own religion and a danger to everyone else. Most people today associate extreamists with terrorists, but they do so looking outside of the country. We have plenty of bad extreamist groups in this country, most of them are white elitist groups like the KKK and Aryan Nation. You also have other nutjobs that think they are God or the Messaih and go out, gather a bunch of followers and get everyone (including themselves) to commit suicide. These are the most dangerous kinds of people.

Then there are the true believers. These people boarder between religious tolerance and evangelism. The people who actually put thier religious practices to use. Although they may or may not be tolerant or accepting that other people believe other things, they don't cause trouble and they do thier best to follow thier faith.

Finally you have your hypocrits. These people go to church every weekend or only during the major holidays, and at all other times never practice what they preach. They preach a good talk, but they never back it up with more than words.

Now as for the American government. The senetors, the governors, just about most politicians fall under the hypocrit category. They do things just to make people happy so they get good ratings and have better chances of being re-elected. As far as I'm concerned, the poloticians in this country care more about thier pocketbooks and what it is they want more than what it is the people want. Look at this whole stimulous bill nonsense. All of this money given to the banks, and the majority of the banks turn around and use the money to lobby the government for MORE MONEY! And now money's being thrown at the automobile companies. If I had to decide where the stimulous money was going, I would target the people who are looking to start thier own homegrown american business. The local folk. The people who are going to college in order to make thier dreams a reality. Throwing money at big-time corperations won't create new jobs. These big-wigs put thier factories mostly in other countries where it's cheaper labor. The best you can hope for with these big-time money suckers is they hire a few americans and give people a one-time product discount. And yes I'm getting off track.

Basically, we need to look at the people who are complaining about all of this nonsense and start complaining back at them and then try and get congress to actually listen to reason.