Universal Values

I would like to hear our President once and for all tell us what he means by common, shared or universal values. That's what he talked about on the campaign trail, what he talked about since being elected and taking office and especially what he talked about on his first world tour as President. What are those specific universal values? Now I understand he means these are values held universally, or by most societies/civilizations, but again what are they? By the way, if these values, whatever they are, are universal, why should there be any war? Does this nation possess or espouse these universal values? Did the values of this nation conform over the last 230+ years to the world's values, or did the world conform over that time to those of this nation? This is kind of like telling someone that your faith got you through a difficult situation. Faith in what...the sun, or the Son? Everyone has values; even a drug addict values that next high. Everyone has faith in something; even the evolutionist has faith that we came from pond scum.

He even went so far as to imply that we were not founded on Judeo-Christian values or that our value system is not essentially Judeo-Christian but a mix of many faiths. I believe that it is Judeo-Christian, but do we risk offending the world if we say so? Is it hate speech to even admit this truth? Does saying so mean every American has to accept Jesus as their Savior or otherwise be imprisoned, executed or banished? Does it mean that we are a theocracy like Iran?

I recently attended a conference on Christainity and the Constitution. It was yet another review of our founders' writings and reinforcement of the notion that this nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Although there are few references to the name of "Jesus", there are numerous references to the name of "God", "Creator" and "Lord", which also appear numerous times in the Bible. The generic name "Supreme Being" also shows up in their writings, but I have not once seen the names Confucius, Buddha, Zeus, Molech, Allah, Baal, Satan, slug, tree, sun, rock, etc. Although I do not believe that our founders recognized these gods, any citizen of this country can believe so without fear of imprisonment, execution or banishment. This is what the First Amendment is all about...not keeping religion out of state affairs, the so-called separation of church and state, but keeping the state out of religious affairs. Why do people still seek religious freedom here more than anywhere else on earth?

Again I ask...what are these universal values, and were they the foundation of this nation? Are clean air, water and land universal values? I suppose everyone wants those, but is he really referring to such tangible issues? If I accept the premise that we were founded on universal, rather than Judeo-Christian, values, as our President implies, then why did our founders fight a war for independence from them? It certainly wasn't for a clean environment; the Declaration of Independence makes no mention of it. It certainly seems like they had something else in mind such as the sanctity of human life, religious freedom, speech freedom, print freedom (Blogs!), innocent until proven guilty, right to self-defense, property ownership and others as spelled out in our Constitution our President, along with judges, justices, senators and congressmen, took an oath to defend. I'll call them Judeo-Christian values; he can call them whatever he wants as long as he does everything in his power to defend them for us and our posterity.