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 individuals. 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".