Traditional American Values

freewilly · Aug 31, 2005

What in your opinion are they? Are there any we all hold?

Besides the Bill of Rights (if you would even call them values)

billwald · Aug 31, 2005

I gag every time I hear the phrase, "traditional values." Real life was much closer to "All In The Family" than "Happy Days."

k9catts · Aug 31, 2005

I guess traditional American Values are anything Conservative and not liberal.
Did Jesus have traditonal American values?

freewilly said:
What in your opinion are they? Are there any we all hold?

Besides the Bill of Rights (if you would even call them values)

ACougar · Aug 31, 2005

Liberty, Justice, Equality.

freewilly · Aug 31, 2005

ACougar said:
Liberty, Justice, Equality.

Equality is hardly a traditonal value in Ameirca. Any equality by any group, women, blacks, immigrants had to be hard fought and won.

ACougar · Aug 31, 2005

freewilly said:
Equality is hardly a traditonal value in Ameirca. Any equlaity by any group, women, blacks, immigrnats had to hard fought and won.

It may not have started out that way however it's been a driving value in our society from the civil war, to womans sufferage, to the civil rights movement. We as a people have recognized the need for equlity and after a struggle always sided toward it. I'd say that makes it a traditional American value.

freewilly · Aug 31, 2005

ACougar said:
It may not have started out that way however it's been a driving value in our society from the civil war, to womans sufferage, to the civil rights movement. We as a people have recognized the need for equlity and after a struggle always sided toward it. I'd say that makes it a traditional American value.

Nahh more like a value that had to be forced on people.

ACougar · Aug 31, 2005

I forgot Greed.

Law of Loud · Sep 1, 2005

freewilly said:
Nahh more like a value that had to be forced on people.

Ah c'mon. Don't be quite so pessimistic. Compared to most of the world at that point, America was making a push for equality. There was an effort to make slavery illegal as early as the Constitution. You'll note that the Declaration of Independence reads: all men are created equal.

Now, I'd argue that it was the southern voting bloc in Congress that maintained slavery. It took the south a long time to break old habits, but conversing with a person I knew from there, she think's racism's being looked at honestly for the first time.

But equality? It was a value that we've had since the start. It took awhile for that equality to spread to all people, but it has always been an American value.

draper · Sep 1, 2005

Law of Loud said:
But equality? It was a value that we've had since the start. It took awhile for that equality to spread to all people, but it has always been an American value.

It still hasn't.

Law of Loud · Sep 1, 2005

draper said:
It still hasn't.

In what way? Just because every American doesn't hold it doesn't make it a non-American value. Just because it's a northern and western value doesn't mean it's not an American value. It is. We're Americans too, we just don't have the clout at the moment.

draper · Sep 1, 2005

Law of Loud said:
In what way? Just because every American doesn't hold it doesn't make it a non-American value. Just because it's a northern and western value doesn't mean it's not an American value. It is. We're Americans too, we just don't have the clout at the moment.

Hmm? I meant that...

Law of Loud said:
It took awhile for that equality to spread to all people, but it has always been an American value.

Equality still hasn't spread to all people. It might be an American value, but it is certainly a poorly administered one.

freewilly · Sep 1, 2005

Law of Loud said:
Ah c'mon. Don't be quite so pessimistic.

Don't mistake reality for pessimism. I am merely looking at things as they actually occurred.

Compared to most of the world at that point, America was making a push for equality. There was an effort to make slavery illegal as early as the Constitution. You'll note that the Declaration of Independence reads: all men are created equal.

Yes and yes. Yes some were against slavery/servitude but the vast majority were not. Yes the DOI read that but absolutely NO on did it mean it. All men are created equal at the time translated in reality to; all White European (English mostly) Male property owners and even within them there were classes.

Now, I'd argue that it was the southern voting bloc in Congress that maintained slavery. It took the south a long time to break old habits, but conversing with a person I knew from there, she think's racism's being looked at honestly for the first time.

That is inconsequential really to the slave/immigrant/woman on the ground. It was the people in their everyday lives who held sway over how they were treated. In other words the masses supported the idea of inequality. It actually is probably part of human nature, the idea of thinking of yourself as better then x, where x is someone or a group.

Such is evidenced in the long long road to even being remotely viewed as equals, which probably did not occur in this country all of those groups until the late mid to late 1970's.

But equality? It was a value that we've had since the start. It took awhile for that equality to spread to all people, but it has always been an American value.

Took a while is an understatement.

trunks2k · Sep 1, 2005

There is no such thing as traditional american values. It's just a catch-phrase. Much of the modern idea of what a traditional american value is has is some sort idealized vision of the way things supposedly were in the 50s. Read the book "The Way We Never Were" to get an idea of how these values were never really present (in a large scale that is).

freewilly · Sep 1, 2005

trunks2k said:
There is no such thing as traditional american values. It's just a catch-phrase. Much of the modern idea of what a traditional american value is has is some sort idealized vision of the way things supposedly were in the 50s. Read the book "The Way We Never Were" to get an idea of how these values were never really present (in a large scale that is).

I agree I think people use it because it sounds and feels good just like the phrase we are a Christian nation.

Verv · Sep 1, 2005

freewilly said:
What in your opinion are they? Are there any we all hold?

Besides the Bill of Rights (if you would even call them values)

Traditional American values are the Bill of Rights, period.

Let's put it this way:

America is a land of libertarian politics, on its basis, being one that is founded by the desire for freedom from all forms of oppression and control; we are a nation that desired to be free from the overtaxation, that desired to be religiously free.

We are founded by people looking for opportunity, bold enough to give up their Old World for an entirely new one.

We are a nation of rugged individuals who occasionally band together to oppose those who threaten our rights as individuals.

jayem · Sep 1, 2005

A traditional and uniquely American value was social mobility. At least, the idea was valued. In old-world Europe, there was a long-standing rigid class structure. Whatever class you were born into was generally where you stayed your entire life. In the US (if you were white, anyway) with hard work (and some good luck and good connections) you could rise out of the lower class. In theory, at least, your family background didn't necessarily mark you for life. Of course, it didn't work perfectly (and was hampered by racial and religious prejudice), but the concept of achievement-based social standing was pretty revolutionary back in the day.

neverforsaken · Sep 1, 2005

freewilly said:
Equality is hardly a traditonal value in Ameirca. Any equality by any group, women, blacks, immigrants had to be hard fought and won.

something given has no value. even the men who had all the rights back then had it due to the revolutionary war. they fought for their right too.

freewilly · Sep 1, 2005

neverforsaken said:
something given has no value. even the men who had all the rights back then had it due to the revolutionary war. they fought for their right too.

I don't think the philosophy transfers so easily to human rights.

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