It is time to return to core values time to get back to basics to self-discipline and respect for the law to consideration for the others to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family - and not shuffling it off on other people and the state.

I was raised by a single mother who made a way for me. She used to scrub floors as a domestic worker put a cleaning rag in her pocketbook and ride the subways in Brooklyn so I would have food on the table. But she taught me as I walked her to the subway that life is about not where you start but where you're going. That's family values.

It is the logic of consumerism that undermines the values of loyalty and permanence and promotes a different set of values that is destructive of family life.

We will see a breakdown of the family and family values if we decide to approve same-sex marriage and if we decide to establish homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle with all the benefits that go with equating it with the heterosexual lifestyle.

We are special because we've been united not by a common race or ethnicity. We're bound together by common values. That family is the most important institution in society. That almighty God is the source of all we have.

Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way government gets bigger and you become less free.

The promise of America has always been that if you worked hard had the right values took some risks that there was an opportunity to build a better life for your family and for your next generation.

I come from that society and there is a common thread specifically family values - the idea that you do anything for your family and the unconditional love for one's children.

I think it's a good thing for a president or political leaders to want to put their values or their faith into action. Desmond Tutu did that in South Africa. Martin Luther King Jr. did that here. This is a good thing.

The solid middle-class values of hard work responsibility family community and faith my father talked about tirelessly from Iowa to New York he lived at home. The hopes he had for his family and for me he had for all Americans. I think Americans understood this.