Family Values
What, exactly, are "family values"? You hear this a lot from politicians and clergymen. Usually conservatives tout their adherance to traditional family values. It's an interesting buzzword. It's sort of the right wing version of political correctness. I have some news to break to any halfwit who hangs on the words "family values", though: there isn't any such thing as family values.
No unit of people has any shared system of values. Values only exist to the individual, as well as value itself, which can only be assigned to indiviuals. Families, traditionally, are units that were formed with the intent of holding land and property. Somehow, in the past few decades, politicians have expoused their fondness for "traditional family values". If you value the sterile, unloving concept of merely existing to propogate the species and own material goods, that's fine. But, of course, politicians never mean that when they say "family values".
No, that term is nothing more than a code word for an adherance to anachronistic, narrow, white male-based, fundamentally religious, homophobic, racist, American exceptionalism. When somebody says "family values", they should end their sentence with a series of primitive grunts, as that would more clearly attune the listener to the type of mindset they're dealing with.
Here's a little eye-opener for you. Your family doesn't have values. If they did, they would be idiots. There's nothing more frightening that large groups of people who agree on something, let alone everything. It's severely naive to believe that there are any inherint values applicable to the family unit. The traditional family, much like traditional values of any sort, are subject to constant change. Traditions, by and large, are merely the result of a mass consciousness suffering from obsessive-compulsive tendancies.
So, when you hear somebody speak of family values, it's likely that individual is a completely delusional fuckwit. The proper response is to demand that they remove themselves from this world so that we may enjoy a better life without them.
Not Necessarily
Believing that the family in the traditional sense is simply a form of land and property holding leads to a much greater problem in the sense of where you're coming from. Not one person on this planet can think that their family was simply a sophisticated rouge to own property!! I think what you are referring too is the term "marriage" where in the original sense DID mean that one would prosper from the dowry attained by entering into a marriage. However the term "family" would suggest that two people entered into the agreement and had offspring, thus a system of values, whether they be changing or unchanging would be passed down to their heirs at any given point.
While I tend to agree that the term "family values" which is passed around now a days is in fact a play on the once established moral code in which many used to abide by; by saying that the term is only slung by right winged conservatives is a lie. John F Kennedy was a democrat but even then, they said he had a strong moral sense. You're kidding yourself and your readers by exploiting the term to swing persons to your side of the equation while completely demeaning the sense of what moral values used to uphold. Long gone are the days where people actually cared about their fellow man, let alone the actual world in which they lived in. These are the TRUE "family values" in which you speak. You are referring to a self propagated stance on the conservative society, on which no truth stands, only hatred toward ideals that have been far removed from the family long ago.
While I would tend to agree that traditional conservatives to tend to be homophobic I wouldn't say that racism spawned out of religion. You are suggesting that a strong moral code is "anachronistic", and I'm guessing, does not have a place in our current era. I feel that you couldn't be further from the truth, and while I'm not standing up for the conservatives...they certainly haven't executed well in their current term in office...I would state that a laissez faire approach to the system will only bring destruction. Allowing for the unacceptable and praising the inadequate is what will come. By adhering to a moral code, you are looking to uphold man. Religion and strong values do not corrupt, power does. Give any free willed spirit enough power and they can cast destruction and leave despair in their wake. I urge you to take a step back and think of the ramifications of a world without a moral code. Without morals there will only be war and dire destruction. There is no correct side in our party system. Only a system of checks and balances will prevail and the checkbook hasn't been balanced in a long while.
What I'm really trying to
What I'm really trying to communicate is that there are no values inherint to families that the individual does not also posess. I may have carried my railing against religion a tad too far, but I've always felt very strongly that religion itself is a set of arbitrary, imaginary rules, that, while somewhat well-meaning, is unnecessary in establishing moral code. Family as a unit does not have any sort of special value that I do not have as a single person. Togetherness? I have a sense of that, too. Bonding? I have that quality, too. Family only has the convenience of being able to apply these values more directly.
"Family values" don't exist because there are no values which a family shares that cannot also be represented by lone individuals. It's simply a catch phrase for the right to pander to the delusional religious folk (which is to say, any religious folk).
The Pander
While I agree that you probably possess those values outright, did you get them simply by being yourself? Something or someone normally teaches you those values, or hands them down. Since one normally spends most of their developmental years let alone much more time with the family than anyone else, I tend to think that's where the term family values came from. I'll agree with you though, it's pandering in the poorest sense, but then again all pandering is an unfortunate means of gaining votes. Values are represented in each individual but I feel that they are passed down. By the way I'm a school friend of Judd's, which is who I thought wrote the post. I probably would have taken it a little lighter had I known! But I enjoyed the conversation, and I like to think outside the box. Also, not all of us religion folk are delusional as I hope I got to show. :)
Example
True values are passed down by example. (such as a child seeing his parents return a lost wallet.) Not lectured or forced upon others.
Nailed It
You hit the nail on the proverbial head my friend. Nothing can be lectured. All are to lead by example, and practice the examples taught (if of course they were meant to be good ones...). That's why many learn by example and then by practice. I like it.
However, a human being
However, a human being needn't necessarily learn values from their parents. It is likely that a person learns a set of moral standards by their parents, because normally (and especially if you believe that we all start out as blank slates), nobody just "has" standards, they are set by experience or example, but it's not necessarily true that these values come from family. It can be communal. It can be through personal, individual experience, as well. Expecting a person who has not had guidance from traditional parenting to turn out to be amoral or lopsided in morality and values is to give too much credit to parenting and not enough to the often overlooked functions of the human mind.
Plus, as I've established, the "family values" term is usually used as a buzz word meaning something entirely, anyway. To say that a conservative mindset has stronger values than a liberal one is a ponderous assumption. No particular mindset has any value unless applied to person action.
i couldn't agree more
I couldn't agree with you more! I would totally hate my family if we would all have the same ideas. It's bullshit and the conservatives way to appeal to the older population that is still stuck in a disillusioned sense of the world needing to revert back to a 1950s way of thinking.
Also, your language and sense of honesty is refreshing to read. Put simply, kick ass post Penguin Truth!
(and I read your captcha comment from another blog and i couldn't agree more. get on it judd! ;-P)