Social commentator calls on McCain to advocate traditional values

Washington D.C., Mar 31, 2008 / 23:17 pm

Social commentator Star Parker has written an open letter to John McCain asking him to promote traditional values to combat crime and family breakdown.

Parker said that though she was deeply concerned about the threats from terrorism and radical Islam, she did not agree with the senator that either constituted a “transcendent threat.”

Instead, she suggested that the breakdown of the American family was a true “transcendent threat,” since almost 40 percent of children are now born out of wedlock.  She suggested that the prospective bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare, which face a $50 trillion deficit, also constituted a “transcendent threat.”
 
Parker said she appreciated McCain’s concern for the Guantanamo detainees, but asked that he consider the 2.3 million people imprisoned in the United States.  She said that ten percent of black men between 20 and 34 were in prison or jail.

A vigorous advocacy of social conservatism, Parker proposed, would help ameliorate the conditions of the poor.

“If millions of low-income Americans would hear a genuine and aggressive message from our leadership about how conservative and traditional values address their problems, they'd be less susceptible to destructive illusions peddled by those like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright,” she said. 

Wright, the former pastor and spiritual advisor of presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama, became the center of a controversy after videos of him condemning America were posted to the internet.

McCain’s foreign policy proposal of a League of Democracies, Parker said, could not succeed because of a lack of shared values.  She cited the relative lack of religious observance in Europe compared to the United States.  Another indication of different values was the E.U.’s rejection of an Italian nominee for its justice minister because of his open Chiristianity and his condemnation of homosexuality.

Parker also criticized the Democratic presidential candidates’ opposition to school choice and the partial-birth abortion ban,