{"id":3262,"date":"2013-11-17T07:54:02","date_gmt":"2013-11-17T12:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/?p=3262"},"modified":"2013-11-17T07:54:02","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T12:54:02","slug":"traditional-american-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/general\/traditional-american-values\/","title":{"rendered":"Traditional American Values&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why does it seem that every time I hear someone talking about \u201c<strong><em>Traditional American Values<\/em><\/strong>\u201d what they are really doing is selling spin?<\/p>\n<p>The phrase \u201c<strong><em>Traditional American Values<\/em><\/strong>\u201d is a leading statement designed to entice you into accepting something as truth.\u00a0 The speaker is more interested in selling you on how they want you to behave than they are in discussing history.\u00a0 You see, the truth of matters is that there is no such thing as <em>Traditional American Values<\/em>.\u00a0 <strong>This is not an opinion, it is a fact<\/strong> which I will illustrate in this post. \u00a0Yesterday I tweeted<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">There is no such thing as \u201ctraditional American values\u201d,<br \/>the USA is a cultural melting pot,<br \/>not a one pot kitchen that only cooks cabbage.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; C.G.Ayling (@CGAyling) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/CGAyling\/status\/401799957444710400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 16, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h6>There is no such thing as \u201ctraditional American values\u201d, the USA is a cultural melting pot, not a one pot kitchen that only cooks cabbage.<\/h6>\n<p>One of the essential truths I believe about the USA is that it is a social melting pot.\u00a0 I believe that the premise on which the USA grew to be a superpower is this: The USA cares naught about your origins, your culture, your religion, your gender, your race or any of the historical things that strive to mold you.\u00a0 What the USA cares about is who you have the potential to become.\u00a0 The USA cares about the real you, not about the you others would have you be.<\/p>\n<p>In my opinion, that is how the USA should remain \u2013 more concerned with who individuals might grow to be than how their history has tried to shape them.<\/p>\n<p>Must each of us abandon our heritage and the things we hold so dear?\u00a0 Absolutely not.\u00a0 I treasure my troubled past, and I hold my heritage in high esteem.\u00a0 My culture and family did shape me, however I now have a family of my own, and it is much more important than me.<\/p>\n<p>The moral values I\u2019ve developed had their origins in my past, and all of them are important to me.\u00a0 Yet I hold one of my values higher than any other, and that is this: <strong><em>Provided they do no harm, everyone is entitled to their own values<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>And thus my taking exception to meaningless leading phrases like \u201cTraditional American Values.\u201d\u00a0 Precisely whose traditional values is the speaker attempting to impose on me?\u00a0 The Native Americans? \u00a0The Eskimos?\u00a0 Perhaps the Apache, or maybe the Cheyenne, or any other unique tribe&#8230; for surely if anyone can be termed a Traditional American it is each and every one of these?\u00a0 They all are the true traditionals, and much more so than any immigrant which the majority of us are.<\/p>\n<p>But no, that is not whose <em>traditional values<\/em> they are attempting to impose on us.\u00a0 The values they are attempting to impose on us, are theirs.\u00a0 Sorry, I am not buying since not only do I already have my own values but I think my values are of equal worth to yours, and yours, and yours as well.<\/p>\n<p>So, the next time you hear someone say \u201cTraditional American Values\u201d you would be well advised to turn on your brain, pay close attention, and listen with a skeptical ear.\u00a0 The chance is good that what they\u2019re about to tell you isn\u2019t about values at all, but about them leading you by the nose onto their train of thought.<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I don\u2019t like people telling me how to think, I particularly don\u2019t like being led by my nose, and I really don\u2019t want to get onto anyone else\u2019s train.\u00a0 For some reason the metaphor of trains just doesn\u2019t sit well with me \u2013 it conjures visions of unwitting, innocent animals being shipped to the slaughter, and of tight-packed emaciated bodies en route to Auschwitz or Siberian Gulags.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<strong><em>Traditional Values?<\/em><\/strong>\u201d &#8211; you can keep yours, and I\u2019ll keep mine.\u00a0 Or even better, let us start a dialog about our differences.\u00a0 Who knows, I might find some of your values to be better than the ones I already have and mix them in with mine.<\/p>\n<p>Sounds a little like a melting pot, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why does it seem that every time I hear someone talking about \u201cTraditional American Values\u201d what they are really doing is selling spin? The phrase \u201cTraditional American Values\u201d is a leading statement designed to entice you into accepting something as truth.\u00a0 The speaker is more interested in selling you on how they want you to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[429],"class_list":["post-3262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-traditional-values"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}