Regarding #1, that is true of classical paganism, but does not seem to manifest in modern-day American paganism:
The modern-day pagan is much more universalist: they feel comfortable telling someone they can be pagan and another religion at the same time, and how eagerly they accept people of all faiths or backgrounds. This is an important distinction. The other person practicing pagan witchcraft I mentioned earlier would very much be of the same stripe, although based on some of her writings she feels a bit at war with fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. But that is the only "those who are like us" I think she would feel at all.1. First, the question of difference. What to do with those who are not like us? Easy enough, argued the pagans: Observe any group of humans, no matter how small, and you’ll see it striving to differentiate itself from the group next door. The nomadic Bedouins expressed this idea neatly in an idiom: me and my brothers against our cousins, us and our cousins against our neighbors. Tell children at summer camp that a color war’s afoot, and pretty soon Team Red is likely to develop healthy disdain for Team Blue. Rather than seek to transcend this basic instinct, the pagans sanctified it: It wasn’t for nothing that the Slavs, for example, named their top god Perun, an Indo-European word meaning to strike and splinter, and portrayed him as swinging a mighty axe and engaging in ongoing battles with his fellow divines.
This may not be true of the "right wing" sort of pagan, which does seem to exist and is growing, and who is eager to find identity in ancestry, culture, and ethnicity - and to thus define "those who are not like us". There is a certain grasping at straws here. I knew someone who was eager to learn more about Norse paganism, but eventually faced that some religious practices required having only Norse ancestors and being born or living in certain places. He wasn't able to fully meet those requirements since he was born in America.
Regarding #2, certainly so. It means little statues and carvings in the house, but this practice is difficult for the pagan in modern America because they are so far removed from nature. (Some practices become difficult if you live in an apartment.) But with that said, practices such as growing a "witch's garden" and trying to create special potions from various herbs is certainly on the rise, and the modern-day pagans I would know even practice it to ward off illness, "bad vibes" from relatives of fundamentalist Christian faith, and other "bad" things like a stillbirth or a child dying.2. Next, then, the pagans turn their lonely eyes toward nature, asking themselves how to understand the creations in their midst. Here, too, a relatively straight forward answer presents itself immediately: If the boundaries between the human world, the natural world, and the divine world aren’t clearly defined—if Zeus, say, can transform himself into a beautiful white bull so that he may rape Princess Europa—then nature should be revered as the repository of divine revelation and rebirth. The Roman historian Tacitus, for example, tells us that the ancient Germanic tribes often worshipped in groves rather than temples. It’s easy to figure out why: Observe the oak in winter, and it stands, barren and leafless, a pillar of death. Visit it some weeks later, when spring is in full bloom, and you see it flourish again. The oak, like the gods, is change embodied, and therefore deserving of worship.
The clearest connection I can make between #3 is that of the American practice of abortion, and the Western practice of birth control being behind that. But this is by no means universal in America. The "right wing" sort of pagan (which seems to exist in America and indeed be growing) will be steadfastly against abortion - or at least will be against abortion for his own people. I have seen these kind of people make statements that abortion for "those who are not like us" is a good thing. To me, this seems to be an embrace of #3 - instead of sacrificing one's own children, one fully supports sacrificing one's rivals' children.But if pagans have always found the questions of how to treat others and how to live in nature relatively uncomplicated, the third question—that of how to please the gods—is infinitely more shaded. What do the gods want? Study pagan mythologies and you’ll emerge none the wiser, in part because the gods, like their human worshippers, seem to consist of little more than appetites and caprices. But while they may not be understood, they have to be appeased—and this left classical pagans with a question of a more practical order, namely what might they possess that the all-powerful deities could possibly want.
Gold, silver, and other dear things were frequently the answer, but rarely exclusively: Being the creators of the natural world, after all, the gods could hardly care that much about things that they can easily forge themselves, ex nihilo, by virtue of their divine will. And so the pagans scanned the horizon for something truly precious and exquisite, something whose sacrifice would be an unmistakable sign of devotion. And, across time and across cultures, they alighted on exactly the same thing: kids.
At once the embodiment of innocence and the object of our deepest and most sincere emotions, children, the most vulnerable of mortals, were the ultimate offering to the gods—proof that the pagan believer was so certain in his belief that he would offer up his own offspring to show the gods the strength of his faith, appeasing them and avoiding potential punishment. So prevalent among the heathens of antiquity was the practice of child sacrifice that the Torah issued a strongly worded prohibition against it, in Leviticus 18:21: “Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek.”
