{"id":1094,"date":"2004-09-20T13:56:31","date_gmt":"2004-09-20T21:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/09\/20\/family-values-aint-all-bad\/"},"modified":"2004-09-20T13:56:31","modified_gmt":"2004-09-20T21:56:31","slug":"family-values-aint-all-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1094","title":{"rendered":"Family Values ain't all bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Blankenhorn<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n

\n“FAMIY VALUES”: I know I keep repeating this, but here’s another example <\/a>of how the term “family values” is almost always used today as a term of abuse, accusation, or irony, never anymore as a term aiming at sincere communication.<\/div>\n

(The event he links to, a debate between feminist Susan Brownmiller and anti-feminist Cathy Young entitled “Whose Family Values?: Secularism and Religion in Campaign 2004,” actually sounds pretty interesting. Unfortunately, it’s in NYC, and anyway the webpage writer neglected to include the date of the debate. Oy.)<\/p>\n

David has beaten this particular horse quite often – reading his blog, you’d swear that the only people using the term “family values” were sarcastic lefties. As he wrote last year<\/a>: “My thesis is that the term ‘family values’ is used almost exclusively today as a term of ridicule and accusation.”<\/p>\n

I became curious enough to check how major American papers have used the term this week. And although there were, indeed, two or three sarcastic references, a strong majority of the uses of “family values” were either neutral or positive. Here’s a few examples – all from the past week.<\/p>\n