It would be interesting to take a poll at FR and see what people think the country will look like in 10, 20, 50, 100 years. For me, I think that the inherent contradictions and cleavages discussed here and other ones (e.g. Mexican immigrants vs. anglos) will ultimately end up splitting the country in some way. I pray it doesn't happen, because I love this country, but I just don't see how fundamentally different world views, values, and allegences can peacefully co-exist, especially if we experience true economic or social disruption.
OK, how about this, the dreaded N word, nationalism. Combined with some means of restoring the truly republican nature of our political institutions. Our problem is we are too open to foreign influence and anti sovereign forces, and, our political power structure as become too diffuse. It might seem paradoxical, but further democratization may not be the best way forward. For a potential model, look at how Charlemagne managed to pull Europe out of chaos and internal divisions and stave off the barbarian invasions. Not to say we need the same structure as the Holy Roman Empire, but that was a definitive example in history where a highly fragmented society was brought back from the brink. Some would counter this with "but the Dark Ages returned." I would counter this with my own belief that the so called Dark Ages were not as bad as we, modernist, secularized, post-Enlightenment types are fond of thinking, and, that the true Dark Ages were really only from a few years AD up until Charlemagne. Naturally, sitting here after both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, we value judge all times between the end of the Pagan era of Rome and the Rennaissance as being inferior. Gee, could there perhaps be a bit of natural bias in such a point of view? ;)