Saturday, October 12, 2013

The 2013 Values Voter Summit


This is an annual conservative event in the US where the so-called "social conservatives" get to tell the rest of us which values they are going to force us to follow.  It is also a window those conservatives use to misinform the rest of us on various issues.

The name of the event is fun, in a sick way.  It implies that nobody else has values at all!  And the assumption is that the values espoused in these conferences (the submission of women, death to gayness etc.) are good things, despite the obviousness of anger/wrath as the energy which motivates much of what I have seen.

Here's the funniest quote from this year's Values Summit,  so far:

“Obamacare is, really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery…it is slavery, in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government.”

It's not ha-ha funny.  It's funny in the sense that it freezes the eyeballs of the reader for a second and triggers those primitive flight reactions.  But then my analytical half or quarter starts immediately wondering whether the same isn't true about taxes or the health care for the elderly or even the fact that we are forced to drive on the right side of the road.

Never mind.  We are talking about a different reality, and that might be OK if the Values Voters didn't have such an urge to make me obey according to their desires which they call values.