From: howard@netcom.com (Howard Berkey)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton
Subject: Family Values (long)
Date: 28 Aug 92 23:51:05 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)



Imagine a family with a father, mother, and several children.  Now, the family
has a traditional method of making decisions, etc. at family meetings, which 
is that the father picks one son to be his alternate leader, for when he is 
sick and such; the remaining children choose two representatives; and the
mother makes up a third vote, presumably to make sure the decisions are all
fair and just.

	The family has had a fairly high income... in fact, the
highest on the block.  Unfortunately, a couple of the children have
been out of work (in this family everyone is supposed to contribute a
fair share to the family income).  With prices rising and such, the
family must spend more to maintain the same standard of living.  

	Some of the children think it would be better if everyone
contributed a little more to the pot, so to speak.  Instead, the angry
father castigates the unfortunate unemployed children as lazy and
decides the best bet is to just borrow money to live a little higher
on the hog.  Furthermore, he decides that since a couple of the kids
earn more than the others, they should contribute a lower percentage of
their income to the family, and the burden will be carried by the kids
with a middle income.

	The representatives of the kids (and the mother, for that
matter) are wary but the father is very persuasive (he used to be an
actor, after all).  They finally agree.

	All this time, there has been a dispute with the family across
the street.  Even though the two families were run differently, they
had roughly similar incomes and were actually not as different as the
father tried to convince the family they were.  The father spent
enormous amounts of money on expensive weapons in case the neighbors 
across the street launched a sneak attack.  Each year, in fact, he
spent nearly a third of the family's resources on the weapons.
Since the family couldn't afford this, he borrowed more and more money
to do it.

	From time to time, he would arm his children with these
weapons and send them up and down the street to make threatening
gestures and thereby force his the whole neighborhood to buy more weapons
(which they would do anyway... parents are all alike in some ways).
Occasionally he would even send his children far across town to show
everyone how well armed his family was.

	Needless to say, some of the children didn't like this idea,
and they told their family meeting representatives this.
Unfortunately, when these representatives brought these concerns up to
the father, he accused them of not being willing to work with him, and
getting in the way of his plan for the family.  It didn't matter that
some or even most of the family didn't agree with him, because by this
time the ones who did agree with him were becoming just as silly and 
accusational as he was.  Plus he had long ago managed to achieve total
control over the mother.  After all, he used to be an actor.

	And he kept borrowing money.  Hell, he'd never have to pay it
back, he was getting very old.  Most people looked over the fact that
he had borrowed more than all his ancestors had borrowed, combined,
since the family tradition had started.

	Finally, the time came when he had to step down as the leader
of the family.  He would have loved to go on, but not even the mother
had the power to overturn some family traditions.  Many of the
children were happy, since they disagreed with the Father's policies.
The ones who had lost their jobs and the ones who didn't like to carry
guns around town were especially happy.  The ones in school were happy
as well, because now they might be able to afford a better education.

	Unfortunately, the son that the father had picked to be his
second-in-charge (remember him? He didn't do very much while the
father was in charge...) had a fast tongue and promised many things.
He promised to spend more on education.  He promised that people
wouldn't have do donate as much to the family as before.  He even
promised to keep the yard looking nice.  And some of the children were
convinced.  After all, the ones who were paying the most to the family
didn't have much left for themselves anymore.  And to the horror of
the children who were constantly being called names because they
didn't like guns or didn't have jobs, he was elected to be the new
'man of the house'.  What made it worse was that the man he picked to
be second in charge was always saying stupid things which even
embarrassed the leader of the family.

A little while later, it was almost time to choose a new leader of the family.

And it turned out that everything he had promised was a lie.

He had promised new jobs for 14 of the children and their children. 
(it's a big family, because education about birth control was always 
discouraged.  It was much better to spend time talking about church.)

Well, he only had 13 new jobs to go...

He had promised more money for the education of the children.  In
reality, he'd been forced to take their lunch money to help buy more
weapons to impress the neighbors.

He had promised not to make the family members give a bigger percent
of their money to the family.  Instead, he first found new things for
them to give money for, and then just plain made them pay more.

And the family now owed an immense sum of money.  Even if they devoted
the same amount of money to paying back their debt as they did to
buying guns for the children, it would take nearly twenty years to pay back
their debt.

The leader of the family wanted to stay the leader.

He began telling new lies, and there were still some children dumb enough to
believe him.  It didn't help that the best his opposition in the
family could do was a charismatic man of dubious honesty himself.

He began a campaign to divide the family, in a time when the family
really needed to pull together.  He renewed with vigor verbal attacks
on his brothers, sisters, and children who didn't like guns.  His dull
vice-leader jumped on the bandwagon and insulted those who were in
school at a certain ivy-league college, and those who were culturally
active.  No one really understood what he meant.  The leader, a
religious man when convenient, said that he felt that those in the
family who didn't believe in the religion  he believed in
were not true family members, even though to some family members his
religion was a strange death cult with an offensive history.

He even said things completely at odds with his previous statements.
He was now calling himself the leader for change, although he had
prevoiusly advised the family to 'stay the course', which basically
meant to keep borrowing money and harass the neighbors.  At least he
was no longer the leader for education.  He still promised to take
care of the lawn, even though he all but refused to go to learn how.
Even the children who were paid to have the guns were out of luck,
since he decided to keep the guns but eliminate half the children's
jobs who took care of the guns.  And these were some of the most
skilled and professional children of all.  

Some of the grandaughters had opted to terminate pregnancies which
they could either not afford or not healthily bring to term.  The
leader stopped just short of calling them murderers (although some of
his supporters did call them murderers) even though twenty years
before, when he was a family representative at the family meetings, he
was famous for saying EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE THING, that the family
should protect these women, and guarantee safe and legal abortions.


Worst of all, he tried to alienate a large number of the children,
just because they liked to play differently or more often or with more
people than he did. (When he used to be able to play, that is.)
Somehow these kids were 'wrong'.  Luckily the family had strict
traditions about not making rules just because some old geezer's
interpretation of an ancient book translated from another language said
something was wrong.  

And he even now is trying to convince the other children of how he
represents traditional 'family values'.



What could he mean by that?




-- 
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Howard Berkey						howard@netcom.com
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
		-- Mark Twain
Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton