The conservative monopoly on values is bogus. And by the way just what are values?
Family values cross political lines, and there can, you know, be family togetherness even without saying Grace at the dinner table. Besides, family together at the kitchen table is a forgotten art — at best having fresh bakery rolls together on a Sunday morning. Both sides of the aisle have the same problem in trying to reach their kids. Of course, it’s helpful to have money whereby you can kidnap your kids for a Christmas vacation at a ski resort or in the summer shanghai them on a yacht. Yet on occasion a simple backyard barbecue works out just as well as long as you don’t contain them too long.
It was Tipper Gore who got labels on questionable rock ’n’ roll albums — no big deal inasmuch as kids will be kids regardless of their parents’ bent. I rather doubt that conservatives necessarily have conservative teenagers — surely GW was a hell-raiser in his youth. Most parents are not guided by politics in raising their kids; it’s simply a matter of concern that they do the right thing most of the time and settle for sometime. Just because Bill Clinton was an extreme womanizer doesn’t mean the die was cast for all Democrats to experience orgies under the desk; a starchy Republican, too, can just as easily have his eye on the women in the office without tearing off their dresses.
Granted church-goers might have an advantage in being able to control their kids better, but when the kids are away from home they are usually hooligans, enjoying the thrill of rebellion. How many times must it be said that church-goers usually practice good values one hour a week and are devils for the rest of the time? Unless one is willing to place himself or herself in a monastery or nunnery — assuming they are not perversion infested — for a lifetime, religion is not much of a guide for living other than haunting hypocrisy, such as Texas permitting guns in church, or the proverbial parishioner, mumbling after Mass: “Jesus, Father Finn was a self-righteous ass with his damnably long-winded sermon!” Is it presumptuous to think that kids in the Peace Corps or any community service have the same moral fortitude as those in faith-based organizations?
Do you possess high mindedness when you interpret the second amendment loosely by stressing the right to bear arms without regulation and omitting the amendment’s thrust of a “well-regulated militia”? Or are you just macho?
To bring God into issues doesn’t make your stance right: it’s simply the old sophist principle of clouding the argument. If conservatives want the Supreme Court to be like God, why shouldn’t God be like such a lofty and desirable Supreme Court and mind His own business? Does He really care about Gays, which is really a prurient obsession rather than a topic for the sanctity of marriage?
Patriotic values mean that you follow your commander in chief regardless of the many history lessons in which they have been wrong. During WW II everyone matter of factly supported the troops because there wasn’t a family who didn’t have a member in the armed forces. Today, even with so many questionable issues in the air, the bellicose support is more apt to be from families who don’t even know anyone in the armed services — such selfless nobility. Still, it stands to reason that once committed the troops are always supported, thus another bogus issue.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: March 26, 2004.