Who Owns Family Values?

While, for many people, family values is synonymous with conservative Christianity, in reality family values is something that exists just about everywhere. That means the Jews; that means the Hindus; that means the Russians; and that means the Orientals and the Africans.

In Jewish culture, child's education is paramount. Parents put in vast amounts of time and effort into their children's education, reading with them, studying with them and training them to be the best that they can be. For a Jew, the worst shame is to not take care of one's children. That is more than can be said of many American Christians.

In Asia we see the same stress on education, also on hard work. Asians work extremely hard to provide for their families, and they do a lot to sacrifice for their children. Same is the case in India – a place that is probably the most family-oriented in the world, where family is paramount and everything revolves around it.

Africans also have family values, and an average African woman works harder than just about anyone in America. These women practice exceptional self-discipline and strength. They do all the hard work while dealing with very misogynistic men; and a lot can be learned from these women.

The Middle East and Eastern Europe are full of family values as well. Families there are very strong, many decisions are made by them, and people do not have much to help them when the choices made by families are wrong.

In all of these cases, there are both good qualities and bad qualities to the respective civilizations. What it shows however is that American Right has no business claiming monopoly on family values. In having family values, they are just one group among many; and many of the groups around the world that also have family values are more advanced in family values than are they.

This also includes American liberals. Most of the liberals that I've met have been completely committed to their families. They would stick with their families through thick and thin, doing everything that they needed to do to help them thrive, prosper and be their best. Indeed I've seen more by way of family values in liberals than I have in conservatives.

It is wrong for conservatives to claim that they have family values and that others don't. Most of the world has family values, and that has been the case for centuries. Family values is a global phenomenon and one not limited to a population. And in America itself, there are many populations that have family values but are not
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