Barack Obama Versus the Traditional American Family

by Francisco Gonzalez ~ September 2, 2008

From my last few posts about Obama’s views on social issues, I pointed out that Obama’s high voltage voting record is obviously shocking. It raises weighty questions like, “why would kindergarteners need ‘sex education’?” “Why would someone allow newborns to be left to die?” and “Why would a politician who identifies as a Christian advocate for so-called “same-sex marriage”? Does Obama’s far left voting record represent the type of “change” that most Americans are looking for, or, are most Americans looking for a candidate who will support more traditional family values?

To answer, we may look to the book, The American Way, where author Allan Carlson begins by noting that in the fall of 1999, “the Wirthlin Worldwide polling organization conducted an international survey regarding social values. Nearly 2,900 randomly selected persons in five global regions responded to the following question: ‘If you could create a society the way you think it should be, what would that society be centered around?’ The choices offered were family, government, business, church, and individual.”

“The results of the survey were surprising. In the United States, fully 67 percent of persons chose ‘family’ and another 20 percent chose ‘church.’ If we add these numbers together to form a kind of ‘communitarian index,’ the figure of 87 percent is as close to unanimous as polling usually gets. The U.S. participants, moreover, chose “family” and “church” more than did those in any other region of the world. In Europe for example, 58 percent chose ‘family’ and only 4 percent chose ‘church.’ Only 8 percent of Americans would build their society around the ‘individual.’ ‘Business’ was the choice of a mere 3 percent and ‘government’ was the choice of 2 percent. In sum, nearly 9 out of 10 Americans in 1999 claimed to believe that social order should be centered around families and religious communities.”

It appears then, that when it comes to traditional family values, Barack Obama is not offering the type of “change” that nearly all Americans are looking for. The consensus among citizens of this Republic is solidly in favor of the traditional family and for good reason. The family is where most Americans believe we ought to start because the family is where we all, in fact, do start.

** Since this is a blog post, and not the full book, stay tuned to these posts as I will substantiate my claims further over the next few days.