Excellent Sarah!

oh come on now!

we all know that in America the true family values are stealing, abuse, usuary, demagoguery, misogyny and hypocrisy.

stupid is as stupid does!

Most of the things on the list are available to citizens of several European countries - Denmark, Norway, Sweden, for example.

Of course, they have higher taxes than we do, but look what they get for them. What do we get for having low taxes? We have to pay for all of them ourselves, at rates set by corporations whose goal is to make money.

And we're expecting this from what Congress again ???

We could have all of this if we did not love war so much.

The essence of this article might be better put by saying what we all need is an end to all hierarchy everywhere, to hypocrisy of the power elites, and to the horrible horror show of policies they have put on us.

As for family values, the place to start is a return to real and natural families made up of parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, and cousins all living together and with less wasteful, unnecessary consumption for things we don't really need, and with this move toward natural families coming out of the beginning of modern human history at least 100,000 years ago and lasting at least for 88,000 to 90,000 years of modern human existence with a true track record for something which works as opposed to the nuclear or really the nuked family, nuked as it was by the hierarchy when it got in the way of the hierarchies' power elties' power and privileges.

If we can't do this in the fullest and purest sense, we can at least improvise to move in that direction by socializing our systems and humanizing them to make them sustainable and thus move toward evolutionary and thus adaptive behavior including such things as all employee owned companies now making their influence felt in the north of UK border kingdom of Scotland. Let freedom from capitalism ring from Glasgow to Dublin to Toronto and even down in the USA sweltering under the weight of slave labor oppression of its people until we can all be able to sing in the words of that old African American spiritual "free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we're free at last." Freedom from all hierarchy and over pampered and over wealthy power elites with their oversized egos and arrogance to match their complete lack of any ethics at all would be a transformation that would reach nation state borders to echo around this world for an egalitarian, caring, and sharing world we should all struggle for.

This is the real deal. It's simple. Move back to the traditional and real family, the extended one still extant among the truly civilized people such as the IKung in the heart of Africa and other indigenous peoples in the Pacific and even in some of Asia, and to a lesser degree in Southern Europe. This would bring back the whole idea of all such extended families not throwing anyone to the wolves and bring back real humanity and civilization at its best and be the best antidote to modern Western Savagery coming from the dark continent of Europe so famous for inventing tribal warfare that it hurts to talk about the two biggest ones, the First and Second World Wars.

AD

This is an excellent bunch of ideas, Sarah! Unfortunately, however, there's no more of a chance of this taking place under the present Administration in Washington than there would be under a Republican Administration. Frankly, the old two-party system has to be done away with and a different kind of a system implemented and a whole different kind of society created in order to make the occurrence of your ideas possible.

Excellent list.

May I add one more, though. You did hint at this one under Protect Our Health and Protect Our Future. I just think it deserves a category of its own.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES

1. Supporting wilderness, park systems. This is the greatest idea from our democracy, protecting natural areas for recreation, biodiversity and stock replenishment, the environmental cleansing services that plants and ecosystems provide. Kids need environmental awareness programs and nature experiences.

2. Regulating air/water pollution. I feel so sorry for the folks of the Gulf. The Marcellus Shale families are struggling against amazing odds. Ask the millionaires and billionares surrounding Sublette County in Wyoming how effective their protests were against Big Oil poisoning their environment, driving their wildlife extinct.

3. Environmental Justice -- so key to keeping all our diverse families healthy. I honestly believe most illness today is caused by toxins in the environment rather than bacterial/viral pathogens. There is great evidence that hormones/toxins in the environment can increase obesity in children.

4. Real science education. Kids need science programs now more than ever in our complex modernity. Kids face a future of navigating experiences with climate change, health issues, ethical living choices, rational and critical thought and need to be well-prepared. Adults as well need an environment where intelligent, science-based thought is continually updated, demanded, perpetuated, honored, heeded, funded and valued.

Thanks for your time considering these progressive values.

This article summarizes how our society could look. It changes the "rugged individualist" paradigm that has been part of our heritage. This is a blueprint for a just community.

Good for you for expressing a basic positive blueprint!

Thanks for the comments! We'll never succeed by getting more negative than the right. Maybe we can get somewhere if we set our own agendas, and then organize.

"Perhaps what we mourn is the belief that ” the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” We mourn for we stopped participating in our communities and fell into the belief that our social value is our family. Family values have destroyed our belief in social democracy and kept us from understanding the entire meaning: “It bends towards justice, but here is the thing: it does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice...."

Social democracy comes when we disobey our rulers and join together to rule ourselves." Scott ffolliott