When you think about it, what makes us, in 2009, a united country? The UNITED States of America - "one nation, under God, indivisible" - is it really true anymore?

How many Americans - particularly YOUNG Americans - know the first thing about our history? How many can name at least forty of our states? How many can recite any U.S. presidents besides Obama, George W. Bush, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington? How many understand the tenets of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and don't confuse the two? How many have a working familiarity with our past wars? (How many, I wonder, could put the Spanish-American War, World War I, the Civil War, the Vietnam War, the Revolutionary War, the Korean War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and World War II in the right order? Answer below)

The polarized reactions to Barack Obama and his administration only highlight the division.

That we, increasingly, don't even speak the same language and that hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of illegals flow unchecked into our nation every year profoundly deepen the wedge.

When I look at the values expressed in our movies, our TV shows, our music, I feel like an outsider looking in. Those values are no longer my values.

With the emergence and growth of cable and satellite TV, we don't even watch the same shows anymore. Popular music no longer exists; it is now splintered into scores of sub-genres, each with its partisans. The shared experience of American culture is disintegrating.

(It seems that only sports - the new "opiate of the people"? - connects us as a people. The Super Bowl, in particular, has become America's most significant cultural event and the single largest source of shared experience in our nation.)

Politically, we are at least two or three nations. When have we previously been so divided by core issues of faith, morality, and shared views of government than we are today?

When have we at an earlier time seen such a significant minority of our citizens openly disavowing the existence of God, routinely speaking in the vilest of language, mocking traditional standards of right and wrong while smirking at the rest of us? Alongside it remains that other, much larger, traditional group still attending church regularly and worshiping the Judeo-Christian God of our forefathers. And now added to the mix is the growing group of Muslim-Americans with its own disparate culture and worshiping its own god, Allah.

One segment of the nation passionately watches Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, hanging on every word, while another slice watches Keith Olbermann or CNN - devoting blind allegiance to their version (perversion?) of the truth. Meanwhile, a third group twitters confidently and blithely ahead, consumed by "American Idol" and the Entertainment Network and unconcerned with anything that really matters.

We now have American leaders in Congress and the White House openly embracing a political philosophy that is alien to our history, traditions, and values and one that just a few years ago we were united by determination and conviction to stop and eradicate.

Our schism isn't driven by one or two issues as it was during the Civil War but by basic tenets and core beliefs that have heretofore bound us together.

The question I ponder is, can we regain the unity of creed we once enjoyed, or are we doomed to become another Yugoslavia or another Soviet Union - not one divided by ethnicity but by fundamental beliefs?

Is diversity really our strength - as we have so often been told - or rather the seeds to our destruction?

(Answer to war question: Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War)