Al's Opinions

Conservatives say that elections should reflect the values of the voters.  To some conservatives, values are more important than economic well-being.  At least it seems that way to me.  I am not a conservative and I have great difficulty in understanding the conservative viewpoint on many issues.  Some of the values that conservatives espouse are "marriage between a man and a woman," "right of the unborn child to life," and "small government that does not interfere in the lives of ordinary people."  There are other values which I'm not going to try to list here.

Anyway, thinking about conservative values and the inference that many conservatives make that liberals have no values led me to thinking about values.  Sure, elections are about values.  I have values.  I'm going to list a few of them here:

• All Americans should receive good quality health care.  Health care is just as important as police protection and it should apply to all Americans in the same way.
• A person should be judged on the basis of his behavior and his moral code of conduct, not on his religious beliefs.  I value a sincere, honest atheist as much as I do a sincere, honest Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu.
• Men and women are both human beings and should be treated equally.
• There are no "races" among the species homo sapiens.  We are all descended from a small group of our species who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.  Some of us are descended from people who left Africa sometime between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago and who, in the process of living in areas with little sunlight lost much of the pigmentation of their skin.  Based on our ancient ancestry, we are all "niggers."
• As Americans we have, or should have, a right of privacy.  Neither government nor private institutions should try to control our thoughts or actions as long as our actions do not harm or threaten other Americans.  Thus, a pregnant woman has, or should have, the right to choose whether to carry the baby to full term.  Two homosexual persons, men or women, should have the right to "marry" or live together and be recognized as partners and enjoy all the legal benefits that apply to heterosexual married couples.

The preceding list is not a complete list of my values.  They are important ones.  In my case, not all values have the same importance.

Let the next election be about values.  I will vote my values with pride.

Labels: values in elections; all humans are descended from Africans