I will bet you that most immigrants would encounter more discrimination in their own countries if they were not part of the locally dominant group

While I agree, the issue isn't about how the US compares with other countries in terms of treatment of minorities. It's about how we compare to where we should be in that treatment. It took many years and much work for us to reduce the level of discrimination in hiring, and glass ceilings for minorities and women are still in place in many companies. My point wasn't about discrimination specifically but about the attitudes that drive it.

Carstonio, to be honest I am not that pessimistic. Actually US is by and large a very open and inviting society. While there are neanderthals like Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, etc. I will bet you that most immigrants would encounter more discrimination in their own countries if they were not part of the locally dominant group, some times of the wrong ethnic or wrong language group etc, etc. For instance a Shia in Pakistan would never get a fair shake ever, but the moment he land in the US he is sure that he/she will get a fair shake in jobs, etc. I have been here most of adult life and all my career. I can say this very confidently that I have never felt that I have been discriminated due color of my skin or due to lack of faith. That is not to say that there is no such thing in the US at all. I do occasionally encounter outside the work place prejudice and I am able to dish it back without fear of any kind in most places. Again I am not worried that my privileged life is any jeopardy but I am also very vigilant and call it as I see it. But I will never be the onewho has complaint/grievance ready against the society at large. That's why I am worked up about the controversy in NYC. With 100 mosques there, if I were a muslim I could not bring myself to be too worked up that there isn't going to be a 101st mosque. With getting all worked up in lather makes me get worked up at their show of excessive indignation.

Secular, it may not matter much whether people like Beck and Palin actually hate people with darker skin or whether they're simply playing demagogue for people who do, or both. I think the word "hate" misses the essence of the issue. From my experience with their fans, most of them grew up believing that whites or males or Christians should have a privileged position in American society, and they feel threatened by the gradual loss of that privilege. They're having trouble adjusting to the fact that America has become much more diverse in the last 50 years in terms of ethnicity and religion.

Lets face it fellas, Beck, Palin, et al and the vast majority of the Tea Partiers are just plain old simple bigots. Their new found lust for the constitution is just a convenient way to camouflage their bigotry. Where was this love when "W" was p@%$ing and S&%**ing on it. They have come out in droves because of the color of Obama's skin nothing more than that.

With the white population stagnant, and non-whites growing from immigration and differential birth rates, they know their paradigm of America is grasping for a calendar.

I'm white as well and I'm tempted to tell those people, "It sucks to be you." That's because I've known grumps like that for 30 years. It's not necessarily the fear of being outnumbered by non-whites, it's the knowledge that they're losing the automatic status that came with being white.

Really, the birthrate worries are overblown. The same fears were voiced a century ago during the waves of Irish and Italian immigration, and their descendants assimilated and had lower birthrates than their ancestors. The same will happen with the current wave of Latin American immigration. My great-grandchildren will likely regard this generation as ignorant and backward for being fearful of people with darker skin.

Some applications of civil religion do violate the First Amendment and some do not. But concept itself goes against the principle of church/state separation, because treats patriotic spirit and a certain type of religious belief as being more or less the same. The whole point of the separation is that one's loyalty to the nation should not be called into question based on what religion one follows.

He's a liar, revisionist, and a demagogue, and a divider and corrupter of our society.

He's not even an honest journalist, never mind a 'priest.'

If that's the new state religion, the cult of Glenn beck and the Fox News private universe, you can keep it.

I believe many are making too much about Beck's rally. Those that understood his message may or may not act accordingly. Those that didn't understanding, are simply confused.

It's amazing how many people, particularly on the right, know what God wants even when their claim about what God wants is directly contradicted in the Sermon on the Mount.

"..the priestly protector of American values...":

- another pre-emptive war in Iran
- torture
- return to back alley abortion
- denying gay, Muslim and Mexican citizens their Constitutional rights
- endless war in the Middle East to cow tow to Israel and prop up defense contractors like Halliburton, Xe and Lockheed Martin in this depression
- suckling the teats of Saudi Arabia for America's oil addiction while obstructing alternative energy at every turn for fear of the consequences to BP's profits
- Elmer Gantry theocracy enforced by a bible opened to leviticus in one hand and a moose rifle in the other

Some "values"

What is "civil" about a hateful right-wing shock jock exploiting Christ for Republican/teabagger political wedge issues?

If you'd like to know what a non-religious conservative thought of the Beck rally, here's an excerpt from John Derbyshire, contributor to SecularRight.com:

Hence Beck’s ... failure to mention uncomfortable truths like, to take a random sample:

* the impossibility of continuing federal entitlements at anything like their present levels;
* the radical reduction in public services and public employment that would follow if tax rates were lowered to the degree Beck and his supporters claim to wish;
* the mad folly of giving settlement visas to a million foreigners a year when unemployment stands at ten percent;
* the doubleplus-mad folly of permitting illegal settlement of millions of Mexican and Central American peasants to form a permanent new underclass making huge new demands on government services;
* the gross and pointless squandering of public monies on crackpot schemes of education reform;
* the certainly and inevitably nation-destroying effect of permitting public employees to unionize;
* the impossibility of effective law enforcement without racial profiling;
* the absurdity of waging war not to crush and demoralize the enemy, but to transform his nation into 1955 Oklahoma.
* the infantile narcissism of believing that all life’s ills have a remedy in law;
* the contradiction inherent in wishing for a health-care system that (a) has no socialist component, or only a modest one, while (b) providing every known treatment or level of care to every condition for everyone;
* the doubleplus contradiction inherent in the previous bullet point when the genome can be cheaply and rapidly sequenced.

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/glenn_beck_beggar-in-chief/#When:04:00:27Z

The Back-Palin rally was a gasp by a bloc that knows it's demographically expiring. With the white population stagnant, and non-whites growing from immigration and differential birth rates, they know their paradigm of America is grasping for a calendar.

Religion is the populace's expression of their societal assumptions. The 80s Religious Right, centered in the South, talked in code about how the end of segregation had exploded their inherent view of how the world worked.

Beck and Palin represent the American West, which they see being taken over by Hispanics and Asians. Their greatest fear, is that lure of Obamacare along with loose borders will spawn a generation of Latino-Americans who allied with other disadvantaged minorities, are continually voting themselves benefits.

They may be right.

If you want to see the America that Beck is urging to take back the country by embracing christianity, you need only read his followers’ comments on this site http://wp.me/pNmlT-mI which is critical of Beck. They are completely blind to facts presented to them if they are contrary to their beliefs. It is scary to see the hold he has over them despite him offering so little substance or truth. Worse, many are Tea Partiers who are supposed to worship the Constitution, yet they have no problem with Beck preaching religion as a prerequisite for governing while the Founding Fathers tried to establish a permanent separation of church and state.