Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
I would say rather than terroism being the problem, it's the fear of it. And erosion of liberty is tied into religious fundamentalism and the fear of terrorism.
Edit:
#1: Lack of personal responsibility.
#2: Eroding liberties due to various casues
#3: Lack of the importance of family
#4: Lack of the importance of education in key areas
#5: Lack of assuming risk for one's actions.
I agree mostly with this list, although I would make a few changes.
1. The rise of materialism and the dependence the US has on borrowing rather than saving.
Look at average credit card debt in this country, people buying things they can't afford and charging it. Our government using money they don't have to pay for things we won't be able to pay back for decades. China and East Asia, because of their glut in savings, are floating our economy and we won't be able to compete on an equal level with them until we have a balanced economy.
2. Major man-made pandemics and a healthcare system that is completely unable to fix them effectively.
Obesity is an entirely man-made epidemic that is killing millions of Americans. AIDS is something else that even though we don't hear about as much in the USA, it is becoming quite a problem in low-income areas and places where sex education isn't valued as highly. In both of these instances, major pharmaceutical companies don't have the incentive to create cures, rather, they have an incentive to make things "under control." The reason for this is that if one doesn't have insurance, you will pay through the nose for your care. If you have a major heart attack and don't have insurance, it can cost over $50,000! How is one to pay for that? Even with insurance charging people like crazy, the only way to create a better system for both low and high income families is to institute a nationalized healthcare system with an option for the wealthier to buy supplemental health insurance (to basically cut the line if they want- but they pay more) which gives everyone a basic foundation of care.
3. Primary and Secondary schools need reform.
The fact remains that schools don't prepare you for life as much as they need to be doing. Due to the rise in compulsive standardized testing, kids are learning very little but whats on the test. What needs to be taught is not necessarily physics and world history- but rather that a love of learning is essential. It comes before anything else. If a kid loves to read and to learn, the world is completely open- he/she can learn anything. Our schooling is creating rote learning automatons, and this lack of creativity- something the US has been known for for centuries- is becoming useless.
4. Lack of responsibility and lack of the importance of family.
I am going to blatantly steal Demon-Xanth's points here because they are, quite frankly, brilliant. But, I think they're connected in a thematic way. One of the reasons why the US has a problem with responsibility is that our current generation has had everything handed to us. That's a family issue that needs to be resolved first and foremost. The family structure has become less and less important, and as a result, kids aren't learning the values they need to be nowadays. Even if a family is together, that's no guarantee that things will turn out OK. Kids (and even young adults) crave support from someone in this world, and the baby boomer is there to give it to them. Therefore, responsibilities become mitigated- and growing up comes along at a much slower pace.
5. The rising prevalence of ethnocentrism and jingoist love for the US.
Now before everyone jumps down my throat for not loving my country, I do love it. However, I don't believe that everything it does or every custom it has is necessarily the best. Too often we aren't open to other people's and culture's ways of thinking, degrading is rather than thinking of it as different. This solves for religious fundamentalism, because they are inherently ethnocentric. The main thing here as well is that we need to just expand our minds to accept other cultures. When we degrade the French, the only thing we're doing is showing our stupidity. Every culture has its ups and downs, and being aware of those creates a more well-rounded individual.