Dr. Kevin Roberts

In fact, to your point about the research, all, all of the social science research from the leaning politically left, leaning politically right, all of it bears that out.

And it reminds me of one of the studies that former Education Secretary Bill Bennett made.

He was trying to get at with some great research, you know, what are those factors that go into a poor child's success?

And ultimately what it boiled down to, it wasn't even the school that they went to.

It wasn't after school study to sort of improve someone's skills in something like math.

It was the fact that when that child woke up, regardless of how rich or poor his or her family was,

that they woke up in a family.

And that remains true.

And so what we're saying at Heritage is, if in fact we want to expand upon what we truly believe can be the golden age of America and be successful with all of our policies at home and abroad, at the heart of that success moving forward has to be the restoration of the American family.

And we're urging policymakers in Washington and in state capitals to participate in this restoration.

No, it's true.

In the same way that politics has replaced religion for so many leftist Americans, the government has replaced the institution of the family for so many Americans.

And so our argument at Heritage is we ultimately have to focus on those

factors that are upstream of politics and policies culture society economics but that downstream of them have been some government policies that actually have changed behavior and so let us have the boldness let us frankly have the hopefulness about the future that through a couple of tax credits that we can

amplify some of the decisions that Americans want to make to restore that beautiful image that you mentioned.

It doesn't ultimately mean that every woman needs to say, we're going to have nine children or any specific number of children, as much as as an institution, we want the American family to be revitalized.

I think so.

I mean, you and I both know because of our shared faith that where evil exists, where challenges exist, there's always at least a commensurate amount of good.

The question for us as Americans is, what are we going to do about the opportunity?

in addition to what we do about the challenges.