How Liberal Values are Impacting Society? Should We Be Concerned?

Any discussion about crime, poverty, illegitimacy, riots, drug abuse, radicalism, and mental illness involves the importance of traditional values. People who have not matured and developed solid values often fall prey to these vices since most liberal values tend to do a lot of damage. So let us know the differences between liberal and traditional family values, how the former affects the latter, why liberal values tend to harm society, and the importance of traditional values. 

Psychology

Liberal values teach the youth to blame their folks, while traditional family values prepare them to be responsible for themselves and the world at large. Liberal values often blame traditional values for today’s problems, which is a false notion. It teaches people to be permissive, while traditional values help them be firm. The youth have been made to believe that they can express and be assertive wherever and whenever they feel like doing so. But traditional values train the person to be expressive and assertive only when appropriate. 

Liberal ideas teach that problems are a result of wrong thinking, feeling good comes first, we are all victims, relationships are basic to progress, getting fired is traumatic, calamities like fires and floods require mental health teams, and recovery from these is painful. While some of these ideas may not necessarily be true, the rest of them are completely false.

Education

This segment also includes some false notions of liberal values like education is the cure to everything, society owes everyone a college education, and those at the bottom of the class are teachers’ first concern. It also says that school is the primary influence on kids; school means social success. But the truth is that families and family values are the primary influence on kids, and school should prepare one for work. 

The Truth About Poverty

Liberal values aim at making us believe that society is wrong, the underdog is right, and poverty is unbearable and undignified when this is hardly the truth. One’s dignity does not depend on one’s income. Poverty is not entitled to minimum standards but to what one earns. It also recognizes menial work as undignified, which is an utterly false notion. It also encourages society to help all the poor and provide for them when we should only help the deserving poor and meet them halfway.

The most important things traditional values teach a person are responsibility, self-reliance, foresight, discipline, good faith, manners, respect for elders, law and order, authority, family teamwork, practical education, hard work, diligence, restraint, moderation, modesty, self-respect, some censorship, and conformity. 

These values became traditional because they worked. The most important one is the responsibility that most of our culture has been trying to duck since the mid-60s. Irresponsibility is the core of every problem in people with an addiction, criminals, and derelicts, and those wallowing in self-pity on daytime talk shows. Most socialists and idealists take responsibility for the individual and family and put it on the government. 

The liberal ideology is based on adults understanding the youth and not vice versa, which could be damaging to society. It thrives on many false beliefs such as the generation gap, which is not often seen among the well-adjusted; new ideas and ways are always better; avoiding problems; self-pity, rather than getting on with life; not holding people accountable and responsible for their behavior, focusing more on rights rather than responsibilities; the ‘me first’ rule; equal opportunity means equal results; problems are diseases; everything is complex; business should provide more benefits; there are only positives; everyone wins; winning is everything; love is all one needs; school and work have to be fun; not imposing values; discipline; authority and punishment are bad; lowering standards for the disadvantaged; etc.

Liberal values encourage people to take the fast lane rather than follow moderation, prudence, and wholesomeness. It celebrates instant gratification rather than saving, planning, and thrifting. Instead of teaching self-reliance, it tends to make people believe that life owes one a living; the government owes one a living and focuses on income and job security. It gives more rights to runaways, students, derelicts, criminals, mental patients, and the poor.

Liberal values are more tolerant of pornography and gambling, unlike traditional values; they do not identify laws as a fact of life, see tolerance of sexual explicitness as a sign of maturity, and say that responsibility starts on top when it starts at the bottom, with the person, family, and community. 

However, some of the liberal values have been much better, despite the damage the liberal ideology has done. It encourages more openness about public figures instead of putting them on a pedestal, and about battered spouses, lgbt, child abuse, addiction, abortion, incest, impotence, alternate lifestyles, intermarriage, euthanasia, single parenting, and birth control. 

It also teaches one to be open-minded about premarital relations in the long term and responsible relationships and encourages acceptance of ethnic diversity, separation, and divorce. Liberal values also focus on more rights for women, minorities, youth, the handicapped, and homosexuals. There is more questioning of religion and getting to the root of a problem instead of keeping it all in 

Bottom Line

Hence, we can conclude that, as much as liberal values are damaging society, there are certain points that have been extremely beneficial to the society, like the ones discussed above. However, traditional family values still have a larger and more important role to play in a person’s life.