What ARE "Family Values"?

The cover of the most recent RTE Guide - sort of the TV Guide for Ireland - talks about "family values". What, exactly, *are* family values, and why are conservatives always talking about them? Are family values a conservative thing? What's the fuss?

I'm going to bare-bones this: family values refers to the concept that your family will provide you the best moral, spiritual, and ethical support available AND that you, as a member of that family, have a moral, spiritual, and ethical responsibility to be supportive of your family members.

Conservatives tend to include God and country and all that in the definition, but those values are unique to those families. Hippies raised in a commune can have family values just as strongly-held, but very different in terms of what is valued and even how the family is defined. Culture clashes occur when different families conduct social or financial transactions according to their own values, violating unwritten laws of conduct (Which is more important? Being fair to an outsider or being loyal to a dishonest cousin? A dishonest brother? A dishonest mother? Theft of bread to feed the hungry? Theft of a tractor to till a field to feed the family?).

Progressives? Sure. They define society-at-large as their family, and their values change with each new session of congress. When fascists are in power, they are fascists. When pacifists are in power, they're pacifists. They're the ones who stop squirrel hunting in Maine, plow over vegatable gardens in New Jersey, and shut down lemonade stands in Needham. And when your family values clash with their laws - however arbitrary those laws may be, however capricious - know in your heart that they don't hear your lamentations.

For progressives, the state *is* their family, and they hold their family values above yours every time.