Sometimes, what appears in a US prison first becomes acceptable or even popular in the general US population later. Surveylance cameras used to be something you would find mainly in prisons. Now they are ubiquitous, and unquestioned. In prison if a person is particularly dangerous (to themselves or others) they have their belt taken away. This makes their pants hang low. And this is the source of the fashion among young men on the outside wanting to look tough by having their pants hang low.
So if you want to see where the US will be in a few years, you can sometimes get advance notice by keeping track of what goes on in the prisons. Right now the trend is toward manditory Christianity. Read Beyond the God Pod by Silja Ja Talvi (original from the Santa Fe Reporter circa March 9-15 2005, mirror from Alternet). Federal funds spent on manditory Christianity for an incarcerated class of people. Women required to take classes on "basic life principles" such as "Moral Purity," "Yielding Rights" and "Proper Submission." Submission to one's owner / husband, of course, but also to government. Even a corrupt government: "'Must we continue to respect an evil ruler as a minister of God?' reads one question in a section of an [Institute in Basic Life Principles] workbook. 'YES' comes the answer from [founder] Gothard's reading of I Samuel 24:10. 'When David had an opportunity to destroy Saul, who was trying to kill him, he said: I will not put forth mine hand against the Lord: for he is the Lord's anointed.'" If you want a totalitarian state, you need total obedience and submission. Start with the women who raise the children and in a generation or two you'll be laughing all the way to the bank. Blur the line between morals and religion and the state and you've got a chance at building an empire that will last for centuries.
Note that in this article there is some talk of the problem of forced conversion of someone from another religion to Christianity, and the problem of forced conversion of someone from one type of Christianity to another, but not a word on the forced conversion of the secular or irreligious or atheistic to Christianity. This was, at one time, a secular nation. Now it is not. This is a theocracy in which unelected leaders wage war against the unelected leaders of other theocracies. The triumphs of the Enlightenment are being rolled back. And while the theocracy is being initiated in its most brazen form in US prisons, it appears likely to be on the way for the rest of us soon enough.
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