A Return to Traditional American Values?

A Return to Traditional American Values?

EVENT DESCRIPTION--- (from Glenn Beck .com)
Throughout history America has seen many great leaders and noteworthy citizens change her course. It is through their personal virtues and by their example that we are able to live as a free people. On August 28, come celebrate America by honoring our heroes, our heritage and our future.

Join the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and many more for this non-political event that pays tribute to America’s service personnel and other upstanding citizens who embody our nation’s founding principles of integrity, truth and honor.

Our freedom is possible only if we remain virtuous. Help us restore the values that founded this great nation. On August, 28th, come join us in our pledge to restore honor at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

Yesterday on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech,” there was a rally at the Lincoln Memorial sponsored by conservative entertainer Glenn Beck. The purpose of this rally was to champion a return to traditional American values and restoring honor in the United States. All of this left me wondering exactly what traditional American values are and if all of those traditional American values were worthy of returning to.

On an extreme level and in much of the United States for a long period of time; the ownership of another human being was a much accepted practice; slavery in and of itself isn’t a value per se, but the practice of accepted abuse, defilement and dehumanization was. I don’t imagine that any in attendance at this rally would propose bringing those values back but given how reactionary some folks on the right and left can be and how knee jerk and unenlightened some thought processes can be perhaps clarification of what the rally was about should have been articulated before hand. A couple from Florida was interviewed at the rally and they equate folks who aren’t working and collecting assistance to animals in a zoo. Hmmm, a de facto rationalization or VALUE of slavery was equating slaves to...animals. Was this honorable?

On an extreme level and in much of the United States for a long period of time; the theft of land from indigenous folks was a generally accepted behavior. Theft isn’t a value, it is a behavior but the generally accepted abuse, defilement and dehumanization of the Native American peoples would be considered an accepted value at the time. Now I am certainly not saying that those at the rally or those sponsoring the rally propose theft from others or abusing others, but clear articulation of purpose is required. For example a man named Don Jellema traveled from South Dakota for the rally, this man is concerned about immigration and a system of commerce that needs much LESS regulation. Is this honorable? Let me clarify.

Umm, ok simplistically less regulation works, but Jellema needs to understand that because there is so LITTLE regulation his 99 cent Lettuce is born on the backs of cheap, cheap, cheap migrant labor which equates to abject slavery and really involves stealing from others. Theft of dignity; is it dignified to leave one’s home, travel by night, sneak across the border and live a life in the shadows while performing manual labor for all but slave wages? Is this a traditional American value? Looking long and hard at our history perhaps yes it is but is this honorable?

In Salem at about 1692 neighbors vilified neighbors to the point of proclaiming witchery and then burning at the stake, drowning, and imprisonment without due process. Of course none of these are values; they are behaviors, which lead to value thinking. Thinking that because of some petty difference between oneself and one’s neighbor that the neighbor could be denounced, tried and killed, the value is in the thought that a neighbor is NOT valued. Is this a traditional value that we want to return to?

When I listen to the rhetoric from the podium and endless notes to turn back to God and honor, I understand and agree with those assertions; but I have to point out that our founding fathers and slave owners believed in God. They saw NOTHING wrong with their behaviors and VALUES. Similarly those who stole from the Native Americans believed in God, but they saw NOTHING wrong with stealing from the indigenous people, dehumanizing them and relegating them to “reservations.” The same is true of those who indicted at Salem.

So it is easy for me to sit here and tippitey tap out my thoughts, without offering a solution to any and all of this. In watching the news and reading the news Beck’s crowd was by appearance white and affluent. These folks had the means to in some cases pay $300 to bus ride from South Dakota to DC. To use a tax funded interstate transit system, tax funded water systems along the way, transported by fossil fueled buses powered by petroleum shipped in to the US through tax funded ports, fed by farmers subsidized by tax; clearly they have benefited from our system. Do they recognize to what extent?

Matthew 25: 35-40 "‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38 ‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39 ‘When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 “The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’ "

AND...if we won’t do this voluntarily and individually, and WE DON’T then we must do this collectively. It is honorable to be gracious and charitable. It is honorable to look to our past and recognize GREAT acts by human beings. It is also honorable to look at those human beings with a realistic eye, they were human, fallible and driven by thought values of their times. Our goal, our charge is to be driven by thought values of OUR time and OUR circumstances. Look to the past for lessons but reason our own destiny.