Editor:

President Obama says he wants “a return to old-fashioned American values, a fair shot for everyone, and everybody doing their fair share.” Manipulation of these values reflects the promulgation of social justice ideology which began slowly in the mid-1800s, moved rapidly during the 1960s and reached warp speed with the election of President Obama.

An alarming aspect of this agenda is the deceptive manipulation of reality required to lure people into participation. Social justice curricula and the president successfully misrepresent American values because Americans unfamiliar with their founding documents fail to notice.

Our founders established American values in a Constitution based on Judeo-Christian principles that identify inalienable rights supported by the Ten Commandments: It is wrong to steal, lie, or defame another person’s character. It is necessary to protect the most vulnerable and to respect the rights of all. These are not the values actively supported by the President and Democratic leaders today.

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) groups moved into vacant buildings and declared them theirs for the taking. Reports of rapes, drug use and defecation on police cars were met with praise from Democratic leaders for this “authentic grassroots movement.” To advocates of traditional American values, these behaviors represent theft and disrespect for the rights of others.

Our founders created a republic which assures a “fair shot” for anyone who contributes his “fair share”. Every citizen has a fair shot to create a product, sell that product, and keep a fair share of the profits as defined in the market place and limited by taxes declared acceptable by law. Taxing citizens into dependency upon the government is not an American value. That is the goal of social justice ideology.

If citizens are encouraged to ignore ethics and use the power of their numbers to take a “fair share” from those who obviously have more, soon the neighbor who planted a pumpkin seed and nurtured it daily to provide food for his family will lose those pumpkins to anyone who feels justified in taking an unearned share. Social justice advocates who find this direct theft unacceptable can justify it by granting government the power to implement this theft in their name. Theft and failure to contribute personal effort are not traditional American values.

If Americans no longer know the difference between traditional American values and distortions of those values, the evidence will appear in the results of the next presidential election.

Karen Schroeder, Rice Lake