Regardless of your party affiliation...Do you want American to move back toward Traditional Family Values?

Question

I sure do!

Answer 1

Even if every answer to this question is "yes", you will never know if the people agree, with each other or with you.

What are "traditional family values"? Whose traditions? Traditions from when?

One man, one woman?
Birth control banned?
Stay at home mother?
No TV?
Christian church every Sunday?
Arranged marriages?
Two slaves for every household?

Bottom line... America is a great country, because you can choose to live according to your values. Don't try to impose them on me.

Answer 2

Absolutely. But don't make the mistake too many people have made in confusing empty rhetoric from the right with substantive action.

You are not going to get a renewal of real American values (not just "family values"--that is part of a greater whole) unless we start supporting the social institutions that are needed to promote them.

And that DOESN'T mean turning the clock back to some imagined golden age that never existed. It means facing the realities of the modern world and thinking about how to make those serve to promote the family.

I could bore you with a long list of specifics, bu tI'l point out just one. We've allowed a system to evolve in which olderpeople are warehoused by the millions in "nursing homes." Why? Because most families simply don't have the resources to care for them. Yet the means to keep older people independant--able to sstay in society and remain an active memer of their families exists (specificallly, this is generally termed "assisted living"). So where is it? Answer--existing special interests (the nursing home, HMO, and pharma industries) have blocked legislation to allow Medicare to pay for this in most cases--but they do pay for nursing homes.

Besides saving taxpayers billions (assisted living seervices are much cheaper than institutionalization) this would allow families to be familiies again--instead of housholds cut oof from their roots.

Again--don't mistake the right-wing "family values" rhetoric for reality (though I'm sure that is why many otherwise decent people have been fooled into following them). But--jsut to finish the example--if you look at the opposition for this particulaar reform beyond the special interests, you'll find it among only one group: the right-wing (NOT real conservatives). And you'll find that same pattern everywhere.

And don't even get me started about the fine example the right-wing sets: Haggard, Foley, the Bush/Cheney brats. . . .

We do need to restore family values--but the real thing, not extremist fantasies and hypocrisy.

Answer 3

I agree with what others have said/asked. How do you define Traditional Family Values? But, I suppose you could argue that simply asking that question perpetuates the problem.

I agree that a lot of things have gotten way out of hand. I work hard as a parent to instill certain values in my chilren, just have them torn apart by the school or everything people. It is really difficult at times to keep things together.

Answer 4

Whose ideas of 'Traditional Family Values'? The christian ultra right wing? The social anarchists hold up in the mountains of Idaho? They each have their idea of traditional family values. Which would you prefer?

Answer 5

It depends on what you consider Traditional Family Values to be. If those TFVs include imposing fundamentalist Xtian "morals" onto all American regardless of their own beliefs, then no. For instance, I consider it extremely unAmerican to continue denying marriage to gay couples. Fifty years ago my grandfather thought our TFVs had gone to hell because interracial couples were given the go ahead by the Supremes to marry without fear of legal reprisal. He was wrong about that. So, without details of what you mean by TFVs it's sort of hard to answer this truthfully.

Answer 6

Definitely. Polygamy, for starters. And your traditional right to impregnate your slave girl. And your obedience to God which will cause you to take firewood and a sharp knife and walk your only son up to a hilltop ready to sacrifice him. Oh yes, we must get back to traditional - and biblical - family values.

It will be permissible to have lots of concubines [2 Sam. 5:13; 1 Kings 11:3; 2 Chron. 11.21].

If a women isn't proved to be a virgin on her wedding night, she shall be executed. [Deut. 22:13-21].

You will be banned from marrying anybody not of your faith. [Gen. 24:3; Num. 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12].

If a married man dies without children, his brother shall be required to impregnate his brother's widow, and if he fails to do so he shall be fined one shoe. [Gen. 38:6-10; Deut. 25:5-10].

If a woman can't find a husband because God killed off all the eligible men, she and her sister should get their father drunk and have sex with him. [Gen. 19:31-36].

Yes, oh yes, we need to get back to traditional family values like these set out in the wunnerful inspahred hawly werd of Gawd.

Answer 7

It would be a good thing. But the problem is that there are too many that are trying to drive the country to the extreme. Either that be left or right it is a bad thing. Anything done to the extreme is bad. People are just way to sensitive to words.

Answer 8

Definitely. Let's move towards traditional Muslim Family values. How about traditional Jewish family values. traditinla methodist family values. traditional wiccan family values. Traditional satanist family values.

See the problem? *Your* traditional family values may not be *my* traditional family values.

However I wouldn't want to move towards traditional fundamental Christian family values since that seems to involve guy-on-guy sex.

Answer 9

Yes, I agree. I think it would help with a lot of issues we face today.