Europe is just America twenty years from now. It's always been like that. In 1989, Europe, socially speaking, was about where we are today.

Re: Matt

Is this good or bad?

Re: BB. That depends on your perspective, I suppose. From mine, that's bad. I like America the way it is and have no wish to see it adopt any of Europe's cultural values. The people of that continent have spent decades looking down their noses at us, and now we want to be like them?

I think if the issue with becoming more like Europe is that Europeans look down on us, then we're already there. We regularly look down our noses at each other based on our differences, and Larry's Meeks's arrogant attitude toward people who aren't practicing some kind of religion was a prime example. A key point of religious freedom is everyone is allowed to decide for themselves whether or not they practice religion at all; not to force people to declare a religion among the available choices, like it's a college major. I found Larry's suggestion that elected officials should be expected to keep religion alive to be presumptuous, to say the least. Which religion would Larry like us all to practice?

I'd be content just to have a moratorium on these ceaseless attempts to purge all traces of "religion" from the public square. For example, the lawsuits by ACLU trying to take down some cross that's been in a cemetery for seventy years - that nonsense needs to stop if freedom of religion is to mean anything at all. The old "wall of separation" bit from the letter by Thomas Jefferson, was written over 200 years ago, yet it's only been in the last generation or two that anyone's found it necessary to take down crosses, object to nativity scenes, and yank out displays of the Ten Commandments.

Matt, on that front I think you and I are in agreement. I feel we can be inclusive of religions and holidays without feeling threatened by the acknowledgement of the ones that aren't our own, but it also shouldn't turn into a competition. The cross in the cemetery situation is one of those areas where I think we're going overboard. There's a really good editorial in the LA Times that points out while it's important to keep religion separate from government, we're veering closer to trying to separate it from culture, which may not be wise or even possible.