[skissane]

I didn't find rayiner's original comment which spawned this tangent about "normality" that ambiguous myself – because I've read enough of his other comments, I have some idea of how he thinks, and I read what he says in light of that understanding. I can see how it could be seen as much more ambiguous by someone who lacks that background.

I read rayiner as, first and foremost, talking about the norms and values to which he subscribes, which he believes to be correct. And to the extent he was talking descriptively, I think his emphasis was on the central tendency of global human society, not the central tendency of the contemporary United States (or West more broadly). And I think that's true – most societies in human history have put enormous emphasis on family ties, and that's still true in the majority of countries worldwide – their recent de-emphasis in the contemporary West is a significant deviation from the (descriptive) norm of human history as a whole.