After getting the holiday decorations out and hanging and setting everything out, my three year old daughter got quite excited. “In the morning,” she said, “Santa will come and bing me my new toys.”

“Not yet,” I replied, “as you still need to tell him what you want.” With the gleam of potential loot in her eyes, she wasted no time in getting some paper and literally scribbling him a letter detailing what she wanted.

After she mentioned the two toys she wanted, she started to feel a bit generous, and repeated (while she scribbled), “…and peas bing my beebee brother some widdle people to play with.”

She then asked my wife what she wanted, and then wrote down her response of “diamonds.” She then asked me what I wanted for Kissmas.

I replied that I wanted a new president.

“OK, Daddy,” she asked, “What do you want in your new present?”

“Morals.”

“OK, peas bing Daddy a new peasant with *moowals.”

The innocence of youth being used as a pawn in my play to get Santa to work some useful magic to improve the world.

But it got me thinking, and I realized that while the media has said that “morals” were the reason why the conservative half of this country voted the way they did, we all voted based on our morals. It is just half of the country ranks their choice of morals differently than the other half.

Personally, I ranked, and therefore voted, for the value of equal rights over the values of forbidding homosexual marriage. I also value the lack of morals associated with a preemptive war as more important than outlawing abortion.

I even feel that civil rights are more important national security. Sure I want national security, but not as the expense of civil rights. Its all about priorities and not about a lack of morals on my part that caused me to vote the way I did.

While half of the country won’t believe it, the other half of Americans are not immoral or even amoral. We just have a different priority of what those morals are.