American Values

 
AMERICA'S CORE VALUES

1. personal achievement
2. individualism
3. work
4. morality
5. humanitarianism 
6. efficiency
7. practicality 
8. progress 
9. material comfort
10. equality
11. democracy 
12. freedom

Personally, I would say that the bottom four are actually the top four and should be in this order:

• democracy
• freedom
• equality
• material comfort

Our constitution says that our basic rights are:

• life
• liberty
• pursuit of happiness

Everybody throughout the world, when they are born are given life.  But is everyone in the world entitled the liberty (freedom) and the pursuit of happiness?

Freedom and the pursuit of happiness is a byproduct of the type of government under which you live.

The USA is not just unique because of our government, constitution, and bill of rights, it is unique because of the values that made this country strong and united.

The USA may still be strong, but it is not UNITED.

For example,

it is misleading to say everyone is created equal because that is simply not true.

It is nice to think that we are all equal, but that sentiment is laced with faulty logic.

Human beings are different in so many ways even though the basic concept of male and female remains the same.

• Our intelligence
• Our beauty
• Our physical abilities
• Our height and weight
• Our personalities

And the list goes on and on as you well know.  To try and make us equal is a fool's errand.

However, freedom is a concept that is equally distributed, yet our freedom is not the same under the law or under our legal system.  There are slightly different laws for the wealthy and for the poor.  There are slightly different laws for the liberals and the conservatives.  There are slightly different laws for the blacks and the whites.

If we have these differences, then we do not all enjoy this concept of freedom.

When one thinks about it from this standpoint, American Values are not as important as we thought they were, because of our application of freedom in this country.

It would be nice to think that all AMERICANS share the same basic values...  that is no longer true and has not been true for a long time...

I would suspect this change began to take place about 40 years ago, although no one seemed to have noticed.