Taking Back America--Part 3, "Family Values"

One of the most important fronts in the task of taking back America is to reclaim the moral high ground on "family values." I place this quotes because family values are of course defined as Christian values and really conservative Christian values. We can and must take back both rhetorical and factual ground on these issues.

First, we must stand up to the anti-abortionists. We need to adopt the Clinton mantra of making abortion legal, safe, and rare. Of course abortion is not an ideal situation for anyone. But it must be made available to all women. In the late 1990s, it was impossible to have an abortion in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This is completely unacceptable. Most Americans support Roe v. Wade. We need to remember this and stop cowering under the rhetoric of the evangelicals.

While perhaps adoption is a better option than abortion in many cases, it is not supported. The government should play an active role in supporting adoption. The thing that bothers me the most about the anti-abortion movement is that they will stop at nothing to prevent women from having abortions, but they don't give a shit what happens to the unwanted and impoverished children. Then when they are 16 and shooting each other in the parking lot of their local 7-11 they want them thrown in prison. These people are the ultimate hypocrites when it comes to family values and we need to point that out consistently. The way we do this is through making economic programs the core of our family values program.

We need to make an argument that Americans have a history of helping each other and acting as a community to solve problems and that these are family values. We must argue that food stamps, Medicaid, and Head Start are family values. We need to argue that raising the minimum wage is a family value. We need to argue that the right to health insurance is a family value. And when the conservatives come out against these things, we need to throw it in their faces and accuse them, without mincing words, of not supporting family values. We must be aggressive in these arguments in order to make the Democratic party the party of family values. I believe that such a strategy would have a high chance of success and would play a major role in helping us take back America.

Next--Part 4, Foreign Policy