An interesting development in our culture is taking place that I think could end up being pretty damaging. It has to do with the recent “Values Voter” Conference.
Enemies of value voters are not attacking them now of falling short of their values like with Sen. Larry Craig. They’re now questioning the term “values” at all.
They’re upset that Republicans have a corner on the term “values” so they’re attempting now to expand its meaning into meaninglessness. This from a recent column entitled “Just Whose Values Matter at the Values Summit?”
But let’s deconstruct the words “values voters” for a minute. This term connotes many things, including purity, morality, piety, superiority and a recognition of its own importance in American elections. However, such a connotation is not enough to define it. For “values voters” to hold any meaning both as a political movement and as a term to describe political evangelicals, there has to be something in opposition, a block of “non-values voters”, if you will.
In their implicit definition, “non-values voters” describes the non-evangelical segment of America, including the dreaded liberals, who have no morality, no religious faith and, apparently, no concern for values whatsoever.
Never mind that the “non-values voters” in America support a health care plan for living children, support women who wish to have control over their own bodies and lives, support working against religious extremism but not with the death of thousands of innocent people, and support homosexual men and women who want to share the same rights of marriage as heterosexual couples. In the world of values voting, these values are inferior to those that are backed by fundamentalist Christian faith.
This is where values voting as a political movement begins to erode. Presumably, we all vote in a way that is relational to how we view the world and the values we hold dear, and even some non-values voters have a faith that defines their voting decisions. There is, essentially, little moral difference between “values voters” and the rest of us, even atheists, feminists and homosexuals.
Doesn’t it matter at all the value we put on values? And more to the point: There are some greater values from which all other lesser values derive -namely life.
October 27, 2007 at 9:42 pm
I like Tim Gray’s comment about being willing to talk about values but not being willing to talk about virtues. He compares it to flying. Lots of people value flying a plane in as much as think it would a neat thing to be able to do. Very few take the needed steps to make it happen. That is what virtues are for. Making what we value happen.
October 28, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Liberals always pervert language. It is required if one is to make vice into virtue.
October 31, 2007 at 3:09 pm
I think there is a valid semantic point being made that the term “values” can be used to represent all importances and individual attaches to things.
The problem, of course, is that people use “values” to mean “virtues” – a point to which Randy alluded.
Virtues are what make a man a man (or more generally, what make a human a man…he he…)
People who are interested in virtues considered from this perspective really have to consider things that are important regardless of opinion. For instance, killing people is not manly, especially if those people are children – part of the basic human instinct is to protect life in particular when it is most vulnerable. Those who don’t have obviously deformed lives.
Having sex with arbitrary people is not manly, especially if those people are of the same sex, considering that another part of human nature is to procreate and then care for children which result from those actions. Research proves easily that this doesn’t happen at all with homosexuals (obviously no procreation) and only slightly more with non-married heterosexual couples (who most often cannot establish a solid social foundation for their families because of the lack of commitment and consistency).
Not that you all didn’t know this – but just an illustration of the obvious points which really smart liberals are persistent in ignoring. At least, I thought they were obvious – but I’m a stupid religious fundamentalist who takes historical evidence and natural science as a basis for understanding reality…