America's Traditional Values: The Conscience of a Nation‪.‬

Discussion of "traditional values" has been prominent not only in political slogans and speeches but some polls indicate that they are an important concern for a significant segment of the electorate as well. Yet as a university professor who has researched and written in this area, I have become disturbed (and alarmed) by the way value terms are employed in public discourse. Discussions have often been confusing, misdirected, and skewed for partisan advantage. And, for the most part, those using the rhetoric of traditional values have totally missed the point of how a very special set of values developed as an integral part of the great experiment called the United States of America. Therefore, we need to take a historical look at the values that have served as the goals for America's evolving society and ask three important questions: what are these values, from whence did they come, and how well have we lived up to them? Over the centuries a number of foreign visitors have traveled through much of the United States, met with citizens from various walks of life, and studied American social-political institutions. The observations and conclusions of these travelers are available today in published essays and books. Their writings provide us with interesting insights about what the United States is all about and what being an 'American" is like. Also, in hearing and reading what citizens say and observing what citizens do, they are able to peel away the veneer and make explicit the values and value conflicts inherent in the American experiment.