Not Race, Not Income Levels, but Family Structures are Weakening the Nation: The Family’s Impact on Society, and Society’s Impact on the Family

Statisticians and social scientists are concluding, sometimes reluctantly, and often against their own ideologies, that the single most significant variable in the life of a child from before birth to the late teenage years is whether or not that child is a member of a functioning and functional family.

There is a set of variables which shapes the family: income level, religion, race, the presence or absence of substance abuse, gambling, etc. But the single most powerful variable is whether or not the family is headed by an intact married couple.

The divide between rich and poor, the divide between races, and divide between other demographic factors all pale in comparison to the massive influence which parents have on their children.

The biggest gap in society now is not between levels of income, and not between races, but between the single-parent family and the intact family. Citing the research of James Wilson, Mary Eberstadt writes:

It’s the family divide, Wilson argued in his book Two Nations (1998), that has become the best indicator for all kinds of problematic behaviors: dropping out of school, going to jail, delinquency, emotional problems, out-of-wedlock births, early sexual activity, and unemployment, to name just some. “These differences,” noted Wilson as he analyzed the piles of numbers, “are not explained by income. Children in one-parent families are much worse off than those in two-parent families even when both families have the same earnings.”

Statistically, the impact of different income levels is erased when the factor of family structure is included in the calculations.

This surprising result was not sought, and not even wanted, by those who found it. Both culture and policy have believed that race, ethnicity, and income were the variables which most influenced the nature of childhood.

It is an idea so potent that it still has the power to shock, even 14 years after its first appearance: Family structure has replaced poverty as the best predictor of youth problems.

Policies and programs designed to help children have instead merely enabled the underlying cause. With good intentions, society has created mechanisms which make it ever easier for parents to abdicate their responsibilities.

Think of all the institutions created to replace the family. What is the dawn-to-dusk school day, and the concomitant attempt to abolish summer vacation, if not a necessity mothered by the empty home? What is the tres chic anti-bullying movement, if not an elaborate, improvised response to the need to do something that capable fathers, especially, used to do — i.e., stick up for their kids?

Nothing will substitute for parents. The best and most ethical social workers, teachers, counselors, and coaches are excellent ancillaries for parents, but poor replacements for parents.

The search continues for substitute mothers, substitute fathers, and substitutes for all the others who once took care of their own.

An effective way to address education problems, to address recreational or illegal drug use, to address juvenile crime, and to address teen pregnancy is to explore, and then reduce, the underlying causes which create increasing numbers of single-parent families.

Few girls or women, in their late teen years, have it as an express goal to become a single mother. They do not, and did not, want this. Which factors have led to the rise in single-parent families, and how can they be curbed? Both the factors, and the actions which can reduce their impact on society, may be partly addressable by policy actions, but will certainly require interventions that no city, county, state, or federal government can orchestrate. Organic changes in culture and society, in families and lifestyles, cannot be legislated.

The occasional policy move might help, but it will be people, not governments, who begin to create better lives for children in American society.

Kennedy Opposes Eisenhower’s Civil Rights Act: JFK Resists Ike’s Move Toward Justice

In late 1944 and early 1945, General Eisenhower took bold steps to integrate the U.S. Army during the Battle of the Bulge. Defying orders from President Roosevelt and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Eisenhower ordered Black soldiers and White soldiers to work together in combat units. This opened the way for Black soldiers to receive combat pay and be eligible for more promotions.

African Americans enthusiastically voted for him in 1952, and General Eisenhower became President Eisenhower.

During his eight years as president, in the words of historian William Hitchcock, Eisenhower acted, and acted “decisively, to advance the progress of civil rights.”

Known fondly as “Ike,” his actions included appointing Blacks to high federal offices. Ike appointed Jesse Ernest Wilkins, who became the first African American to attend White House cabinet-level meetings.

Ike also used federal troops to overcome the resistance of Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. Ike ordered the troops to protect Black children who were attending public schools in the city of Little Rock.

When Eisenhower proposed a civil rights bill to Congress in 1957, he encountered fierce opposition from future president John F. Kennedy, as historian C.N. Trueman writes:

Kennedy put political realism before any form of beliefs when he voted against Eisenhower’s 1957 Civil Rights Act.

100% of the Republican votes cast, both in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, supported the bill. But many Democrats, under the leadership of Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, opposed the bill:

The Democrats were almost united to a politician in their opposition to the bill / act. Kennedy had aspirations to be the Democrats’ next presidential candidate in the 1960 election. If he was seen to be taking the party line and demonstrating strong leadership with regards to opposing the bill, this would do his chances no harm whatsoever. This proved to be the case and Kennedy led the Democrats to victory over Richard Nixon in 1960.

So it was that John F. Kennedy opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, while President Eisenhower supported it. Eisenhower won.

Why was Ike so adamant in championing civil rights legislation? Because he saw that, despite the advancements he’d already made, there was still work to be done, as historian Nate Sullivan writes:

During the 1950s, African Americans continued to suffer racial discrimination. While the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870, gave African Americans the right to vote, they often were subject to voter intimidation.

“This was especially true in the” states controlled by the Democratic Party.

Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower sought to change this through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which provided federal oversight to ensure that African Americans had the opportunity to vote free from intimidation or coercion. This was the first federal civil rights legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

While the Republicans were united in their support of the bill, the Democrats were divided. Among the leaders of the Democratic Party at that time were both Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

As a Democrat, Kennedy was hesitant to lend his full support to the Republican’s civil rights bill.

While some Democrats were willing to vote for the civil rights bill, many Democrats “were fiercely opposed to civil rights reforms.” Some Democrats opposed the bill simply by voting against it. Others took the additional step of adding hostile amendments to the bill, hoping thereby to weaken its effectiveness. “By 1957, Kennedy had his eye on the White House, and he did not want to lose the support of” his fellow Democrats. Voting for the bill would have destroyed Kennedy’s presidential hopes.

He therefore voted against the bill (it did pass however). In fact, throughout his career as a senator, Kennedy chose not to make civil rights an issue. Many historians feel he took this approach because he did not want to lose the support of his party. He likely was concerned about coming across as too radical and alienating his own base.

In an ironic twist, Lyndon Johnson found a way to claim that he supported civil rights: he supported an amended version of the bill. But Johnson’s amendments were designed to weaken the bill to the point of ineffectiveness. So Johnson was able to gain support from both sides. Yet it was clear that Johnson had no genuine desire to see advancement in civil rights.

Eisenhower signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act into law. He’d worked together with his vice president, Richard Nixon, and with Martin Luther King. The three of them had found or created enough support to move the bill through Congress.

His next move, to overcome the opposition of Kennedy and Johnson, was to see the 1960 Civil Rights Act through Congress, which he likewise signed into law. The 1960 version of the act was designed to close certain loopholes which Johnson had put into the 1957 version.

When Eisenhower completed his time in office, leaving the White House in January 1961, he’d compiled a series of civil rights victories.

The Eisenhower Presidency: A Pivotal Moment in America’s Civil Rights Era

When Dwight Eisenhower won the 1952 presidential election against a resolutely segregationist Democratic Party, he did so in part because of the credibility he’d earned with African American voters nearly a decade earlier.

In late 1944 and early 1945, Eisenhower, as Supreme Allied Commander, was engaged in the intense fighting at the Battle of the Bulge. As an officer, he needed maximum flexibility in maneuvering his troops to different locations as needed.

The mobility of U.S. soldiers was limited by directives from President Roosevelt, and from Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. Both Roosevelt and Stimson wanted Eisenhower to move his troops within the confines of their segregationist directives: they wanted Black and White soldiers to remain in separate units, and to deny Black soldiers the opportunity to volunteer for combat service.

Eisenhower was massively frustrated by the segregationist regulations. Logistics within a major modern army are complicated in any case, and the blatantly racist policies of Roosevelt and Stimson only made matters worse.

In a courageous move, Eisenhower disobeyed the orders from Washington, integrating the troops under his command, and giving African Americans in the army the opportunity to be in combat. With combat came quicker and more significant promotions, and extra pay. Black voters did not forget, and in 1952 voted for him in large numbers.

African Americans voted for Ike in even larger numbers to reelect him in 1956.

Known fondly by his nickname, “Ike” was popular among all Americans, and he used his social capital to promote the civil rights movement, as historian William Hitchcock writes,

He presided over two enormously important developments that would shape the history of race in America. He lent support to Attorney General Brownell’s strenuous efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957; and he used the power of his office to enforce court-ordered school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, overcoming the resistance of the demagogic governor, Orval Faubus.

Eisenhower, and his vice president, Richard Nixon, had invited Martin Luther King, Jr. to the White House. Ike, Nixon, and MLK strategized about how to find enough votes in Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957. In the end, of the votes cast to turn the bill into law, 100% of the Republican votes cast, both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, supported the bill. A number of Democrats also voted for the bill.

Between this victory in Congress, and Ike’s use of federal troops to protect the “Little Rock Nine” as they attended school, 1957 was a landmark year in the civil rights movement. Encouraged by these developments, Eisenhower went farther. He introduced another civil rights bill.

The strength of the 1957 Act had been somewhat weakened by Senator Lyndon Johnson, who’d added some hostile amendments to it. Ike sought to strengthen the provisions of the 1957 law by passing the 1960 Civil Rights Act.

By the time Eisenhower left office, he’d passed two major pieces of civil rights legislation, collaborated with MLK, and made a clear and adamant stand in favor of desegregation in Little Rock. Ike achieved significant forward movement in civil rights.

When Government is a Problem: The Unintended Consequences of Ignoring the Separation of Powers

All kinds of people complain about the government: rich and poor, old and young, men and women, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Progressives and Libertarians. Why? As historian Ben Shapiro notes, “the problem with government isn’t that government doesn’t get enough done — it’s that it gets too much done.”

The government is often tempted to be overactive — to do more than it should. The main task of the government is to protect the lives, freedoms, and properties of its citizens. But often, governments want to do more than that — to regulate, encourage, or discourage activities; to undertake programs and projects that go beyond defending people’s individual political liberty.

To be sure, often government actions are undertaken with good intentions, and with sincere desires to help. But even when the government wants to help, it cannot. In some situations, the best thing the government can do is stand back, and let society fix its own problems.

As President Ronald Reagan said in 1986, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.”

Well-intentioned government programs usually have unintended consequences: Government programs to end poverty actually cause more poverty; when the government tried to reduce illegal drug use, such use increased; when governments try to make peace, the result is usually a war; when governments try to fix the economy, wages fall and more people become unemployed.

In 1849 Henry David Thoreau wrote, “That government is best which governs least.” He was likely recalling a magazine article from 1837 which included this line: “The best government is that which governs least.”

To protect people’s freedom is to limit the power of the government. The idea of “limited government” is the foundation of freedom.

People should not, in the words of Ben Shapiro, “become accustomed to the government taking care of them.” It seems like a nice idea, but throughout history, it has led only to dictatorships and atrocities.

There is a choice: people can have freedom, or they can have a government which reaches into their lives and tries to help them. They cannot have both. Solutions to social problems come from society, not from the government. Solutions to economic problems come from businesses and economists, not from the government.

If people mistakenly believe that the government can fix problems, then that belief “leads to calls for government action with every supposed crisis,” as Ben Shapiro says. He continues:

If we want to restore logical boundaries to government, we can begin by restoring logical boundaries to our desire to rely on the government. To do that, however, we must first understand how the government currently works. Here’s a hint: it has almost nothing to do with the Constitution.

Consider how our government currently works, how it worked in the past, and how it might work in the future.

Again, people from nearly every political viewpoint, from every race, from every religion, all agree — the government isn’t working well at present. That’s because, as Shapiro points out, the government currently has little to do with the Constitution.

While nearly every elected or appointed political leader will quote from the Constitution and praise it, in reality, the organizational mechanisms of the Constitution are routinely ignored.

When the Constitutional system is working properly, it does things like end slavery, as it did between 1863 and 1865, or ensure women’s right to vote, as it did in 1869, long before the amendment confirmed it in 1920.

So what does it mean for the Constitutional system to work properly? What does that look like? A big part of the answer is the “separation of powers.”

Each part of the government has its own assignment to do. The legislature, or Congress, is supposed to make laws. The executive, or president, is supposed to apply the laws. The judiciary, or court system, is supposed to interpret the laws.

Yes, it gets a little more complex than that in some situations, but the basic principle of “separation of powers” is this simple principle.

Things go wrong when the executive branch makes laws. For example, the president appoints people to operate government agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or Department of Commerce. When those agencies start making their own rules and policies, instead of applying the laws which Congress has made, then there is a problem. They have effectively taken Congress’s job. There is a name for this problem: “administrative law.” It’s when the administration, instead of the Congress, makes laws.

Another way things can go wrong is this: The legislative branch can usurp the role of the executive branch. This happens when Congress has hearings and investigations. While it is appropriate for Congress to hold committee meetings and to gather facts relevant to debates about potential legislation, it is not appropriate for Congress to investigate (that’s a task for the executive branch), and it is not appropriate for Congress to hold hearings (that’s the work of the judicial branch). The one rare exception is an impeachment process for a federal employee.

Many of our current problems arise from the fact that the three branches of government are not restricting themselves to their assigned tasks. If each branch of government will do its work, and not the work of the other branches, then many of our problems will be solved, and desired outcomes like freedom, prosperity, justice, and peace are more likely.

The Flag, the Anthem, and the NFL: Unity and Race

The question of race in America has a long and bitter past, and for this reason, continues to manifest itself in new and different ways. Honest and intelligent people seek a sense of unity among the nation’s diverse citizenry.

This unity remains elusive, and sometimes the very moment of unity is itself attacked as being unjust and racist. The word ‘racist’ has become weaponized, and by means of this word’s abuse and misuse, there is confusion about exactly what it might mean.

People often unite around symbols. A piece of music and a bit of cloth stand for ideas and ideals. So it is that the United States flag represents something profound. It was the flag carried into battle during the Civil War to end slavery. It was the flag on the uniforms of those who escorted the Little Rock Nine into educational equity.

The flag is a symbol of justice, freedom, and unity. Martin Luther King understood the flag in this way when he wrote:

Since Crispus Attucks gave his life on Boston’s Commons, black men and women have been mingling their blood with other Americans in defense of this republic. For the protection of our honored flag which still floats untarnished in the breeze, Negro men and women have died on the far flung battle fields of the world.

The national anthem, too, symbolizes the concepts which not only all Americans, but all people, value. Martin Luther King encouraged students in Alabama who stood on the steps of a government building and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1960 in Alabama, and he likewise encouraged Rose Battle English, a gifted vocalist, who sang the national anthem at a “Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom” in 1957.

At some relatively recent point in history, some people lost, or forgot, or discarded, the near-universal recognition of the flag and the anthem as unifying symbols. The flag and the national anthem are symbols of justice and unity, and specifically of justice and unity in matters relating to race. But one segment of society doesn’t, can’t, or won’t recognize the meaning of the flag and the anthem.

Martin Luther King incorporated the flag and the anthem into his movement, calling the flag “honored” and “untarnished.” He saw the flag and the anthem as symbols of everything he and his movement worked to achieve.

Yet some, who would present themselves as a continuation of King’s work, now do not see justice and unity in the flag, and do not hear unity and reconciliation in the national anthem. They do not perceive that all which they claim to desire is encapsulated in these two unifying symbols.

The National Football League has been one of several venues in which a group has explicitly denied that these national symbols point to, and contain, the goals for which the group claims to strive. Instead of acknowledging the flag and the national anthem as enshrining justice, they claim that other gestures or rites are needed to symbolize justice.

So some NFL players kneel during the national anthem, refuse to acknowledge the flag, remain in the locker room during the presentation of the flag and the singing of the national anthem, etc., and introduce instead other rituals which they claim to be symbols of justice and unity.

In an October 2020 publication, author Peter Speckhard writes:

People react to competing narratives almost viscerally. For example, at the first NFL game of the season this year, the Houston Texans and the Kansas City Chiefs linked arms at midfield for a “moment of unity” on the issue of racism. The stadium announcer asked the mostly empty (due to the pandemic restrictions) stadium to observe a moment of silence. But the intended moment of silence featured a loud chorus of boos from the few thousand fans in attendance. After the game, superstar player J.J. Watt expressed confusion that anyone would be booing a moment of unity to end racism. Well, it could be that many of the fans were racists opposed to expressions of racial unity. Or it could be that the fans instinctively sensed an alien narrative at work.

To be clear, many of the NFL players who participated in this event and similar events did so to be good sports, and to get along with the other players. But those players who advocated for such events, and their handlers who directed them to do so, ignored the fact that the “moment of unity” which most authentically reconciles all manner of people to each other, and which most directly points to justice, is that moment which centers around the flag and the national anthem.

Because the flag was an integral part of the abolition of slavery, an integral part of school integration and desegregation, and an integral part of movement for civil rights, Martin Luther King embrace the iconography of the flag and the anthem. Civil rights arise from citizenship.

Citizenship is a common bond, and when recognized and understood, unites people across the usual dividing variables: race, religion, ethnicity, language, color, etc.

Peter Speckhard continues:

What I think the fans understood is that the national anthem, for which many NFL players routinely kneel in protest, is itself supposed to be the moment of unity before the game. That’s why the tradition got started and the only reason to perpetuate it. The bitter rivals on the field, the competing fan bases, the furious coaches, and the blind referees might not have anything else in common, but they have their nation in common. The only reason to have a separate moment of unity on the field this year in addition to the anthem was to endorse the idea that the national anthem doesn’t unite Americans. Holding an additional moment of unity only endorses the outlook of those who kneel for the anthem. Two competing moments of unity are actually just one larger moment of disunity. People booing at the moment of unity were not expressing racism. They were rejecting the idea that the American flag and our national anthem actually represent systemic ongoing racism.

If the United States flag, and the “Star-Spangled Banner,” authentically point to justice, then to ignore or oppose such symbols, and to suggest alternative symbols, moves us further from justice, moves us away from unity, and moves us further into bitter division.

Symbols of national unity are effective against racism. To dismantle rituals of national unity is to open the door to increasing racism.

Falling for Socialism: How Redistribution Schemes Fool Voters

Not only in the United States, but in many nations, various socialist economic plans are presented to the public in charming phrases and attractive anecdotes. Socialists can be persuasive.

The rhetoric of wealth redistribution is filled with metaphors, vignettes, and parables.

The socialist movement needs such picturesque language, because the public will not happily digest abstract statements like this one from Michael Harrington: “The politics of international economic and social solidarity must be presented as a practical solution to immediate problems as well as a recognition of that oneness of humankind celebrated in the Biblical account of the common parents of all human beings.”

The socialists also need these folksy similes and stories because these engaging little tales hide the unpleasant realities lurking in socialist schemes like those promoted by Harrington.

Garrett Hardin produced one of these distracting and seducing narratives, as historian Amity Shlaes recounts:

One of the thinkers of the era, a microbiologist at the University of California in Santa Barbara named Garrett Hardin, sketched a picture to try to convey the need for great public-sector interventions. Shepherds live by a rich common pasture. All want to graze their own sheep there, and all do, each driving as many of his own sheep as he can into the common area without regard to the needs of others or the grass of the commons. Soon, the grass is gone. The sheep starve. This dynamic Hardin labeled the “Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin recommended a collective solution of the sort Harrington would have praised: let governments play the shepherd, managing or rationing resources of the common.

Hardin’s myth has several factors typical of propaganda. He presents a binary scenario: evil shepherds, good governmental regulators. He also places the vast majority of the citizens into the category of sheep who are the mercy of either shepherds or regulators, but who apparently can’t act or think for themselves.

In his metaphor, Hardin also reduces the amazing complex world of technology, politics, and economics into the overly simplistic symbol of pasture land where sheep graze. He first published his allegory in 1968.

Then, as now, the world of interest rates and taxes, of microeconomic and macroeconomics, of data storage and transmission, of spacecraft and pharmaceuticals, of election cycles and intragovernmental negotiations was exceedingly complicated. To reduce that world to the undemanding analogy of grassland is to engage in massive oversimplification.

Redistributionist and socialist campaigns habitually rely on such oversimplification, from Huey Long to Bernie Sanders.

A more accurate assessment of modern civilization regards the majority of people not as sheep, but as decision-makers. Citizens are constantly making economic, political, and technological choices. The millions of choices made daily shape the nation, the marketplace, and development of new software and hardware.

An accurate picture of socio-political economics includes people who are more farsighted than the shepherds who quickly destroy the land’s grazing material, regulators who are not omniscient angels who know all and always act altruistically, and scenarios with a nearly infinite number of options instead of the two presented in Hardin’s parable.

Socialist schemes for redistribution are almost always presented in such oversimplified rhetoric, and intentionally so: only by means of oversimplification can the socialists gloss over the universe of flaws and problems which come to light whenever someone attempts to implement such programs in the real world.

Gerald Ford: America’s Favorite Vice President

Many people respected and liked Gerald Ford, but few thought that he’d one day become the vice president of the United States, and even fewer suspected that he’d one day be president. Until 1973, he was a leader in the United States House of Representatives, and congressman representing the state of Michigan.

In that year, Spiro Agnew resigned. Agnew had been vice president since January 1969, but questions about his financial ethics forced him to leave the office. Under the watchful eyes of the American public, and of Congress, President Nixon had to appoint a new vice president. The new VP had to be able to undergo the most careful investigations and be able to show that he was free of any hint of scandalous behavior.

Despite the detailed scrutiny of both government and media, Gerald Ford proved to have a spotless record regarding both public and private behavior.

Once he was confirmed by the both houses of Congress and became VP December 1973, he found that his work would be challenging, as historian Thomas DeFrank writes:

As vice president, Ford was faced with one of the more daunting assignments any American politician has ever confronted. He was determined to remain loyal to his president, the old friend and former congressional colleague who’d made him VP. He was also intent on staying true to his conscience, and much of what he saw unfolding at the White House troubled him. More than anything else, he was also desperate to do everything in his power to hold his beloved Republican Party together amid the wreckage of Watergate.

As VP, Ford was immensely popular with Americans. He was, in fact, much more popular than Nixon at the time. It is awkward for a vice president to be more popular than the president for whom he works.

Realizing that he would eventually, and probably soon, be president, Ford was careful to preserve his connection to the ordinary American citizens by not supporting Nixon too much, as Thomas DeFrank notes:

Every vice president struggles under the yoke of playing second fiddle, but Watergate made the part far trickier for Ford. Even in the beginning, when he still believed Nixon was innocent, Ford was smart enough to realize there was a reasonable chance he might become president anyway. If it happened, he’d need to come before a wounded and troubled nation as the Great Healer. By defending Nixon too forcefully, he risked being tarred as an Agnewesque polarizer, diminishing his capacity to reunite the nation

During his brief time — less than one year — as vice president, the public, the media, and the other leaders in government uniformly perceived Ford as honest, ethical, and decent.

This would become vitally important when he became president in August 1974.