Democracy and Freedoms

I'm not housing religion, nor am I trying to make a simplistic left vs. right issue out of any of this " neither side has a monopoly on good or bad ideas. My problem is the willingness and eagerness of the majority of Americans to submit to easy common thought, to fail to question conventional wisdom, to gorge on a pop culture that fattens us up with the lowest common denominator, and to completely and totally bullshit ourselves so as to not consider more uncomfortable realities. We seem so satisfied in waving flags, having big speeches about democracy and freedoms, that we don't realize how few of those freedoms we are actually letting each other take full advantage of. What the hell are we afraid of?