American Thought Leaders - Why Women Can’t Find Good Husbands | Timothy Goeglein

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

“We are definitively, with no debate, in a demographic winter in the history of the United States of America. We have never had a lower marriage rate, and we’ve never had a lower fertility rate,�� says Timothy Goeglein, vice president of External and Government Relations at Focus on the Family.Goeglein is the author of multiple books, including most recently “What Really Matters: Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family.”In our interview, we explore how America ended up where it is today. Why are millions of prime-age men neither working nor seeking a job? Why do women find it so hard to find a good partner? What is the antidote to America’s high rates of suicide, drug overdose, pornography addiction, and family dysfunction?“The biggest single challenge facing America in its 250th year … is a spiritual crisis of a pretty substantial order,” Goeglein said. He believes we are witnessing in America “the practical ramifications of destroying an objective moral code … of saying you can’t really define good and evil.”Luckily, this is not the whole story. In this interview, Goeglein explains the signs of hope he sees and what he calls “a quiet Renaissance.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

We are definitively with no debate in a demographic winter. In the history of the United States of America, we have never had a lower marriage rate, and we've never had a lower fertility rate. Timothy Gaglien is vice president at Focus on the Family and author of multiple books, including most recently What Really Matters, Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family.

Destroying an objective moral code has real ramifications. We like to think our society is moving forward, but are we really? What is the antidote to America's high rates of suicides, drug overdose, pornography addiction, and family dysfunction? As George Orwell said, that the first duty of an intelligent man is to restate the obvious. And I think we have arrived at the generation where, in defense of the permanent things, we have to restate the obvious. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellick. Thank you. Gagling.

Such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. It's great to be with you. A real pleasure. Let me start with a quote from the foreword to your excellent book. It's not about creating a Christian nation. It's about returning to the things that made this nation stable, secure, and free in the first place. These are things that benefit everyone in a pluralistic society, whether they be people of

faith or people of no faith at all. That's right. People typically think of focus on the family as being very Christian. So explain to me what you're trying to do with this book. Well, I'm really pleased to be asked that right at the top because it's very important in the American experience to understand from the beginning that the country, although founded by a large number of dissenting Protestants, from the beginning was pluralistic by nature.

One of the items I mentioned in what really matters and one of my favorite pieces of Americana is that very early on in the history of our republic, the oldest Jewish congregation in the country in Newport, Rhode Island, writes this remarkable letter to no less than the ultimate founding father of our country, George Washington. And the Jews of this particular community want to... to know that in all aspects constitutionally, will they be equal citizens? And immediately, the president writes,

what is nothing short of a breathtaking letter, to be able to say, in all aspects, your congregation and others are more than welcome in this country. And I love the fact that he uses the phrase that Washington used more often than any phrase from the Bible. He creates this wonderful Old Testament view that you shall find peace and security under your vine and fig tree. And this is a phrase that Washington uses over and over again throughout his lifetime.

So right at the top, I think it's important to say that we're talking about things of the spirit, about the foundation of religion and faith from the beginning of our remarkable country. And you also mention no faith. Correct. No faith or perhaps other faith. So that you believe that George Washington's intention was beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition. I feel very comfortable that there is a reason in the United States Constitution that there is absolutely no religious test to be a citizen and there is no religious test to be an officeholder. You know, in 21st century America, we tend to say, yeah, that's the way it is. But if we think about the 18th century and when both the declaration was drafted and later the Constitution, it's breathtaking in its idea that this is a country, although religion and faith are absolutely foundational. And I argue strongly that it would be impossible to understand the United States of America

without faith, religion, and religious liberty. It's baked into the DNA from the beginning. But on the other hand, we are not a theocracy. We don't have an established church. Many of the dissenting Protestants I mentioned a moment ago, formally or informally, members of the Anglican Communion, George Washington, most prominently. And yet it's very important from the beginning that citizenship is not ultimately defined by faith.

You know, recently I actually got an award from the Religion Communicators Council. And so I didn't fully like grasp. spin away why that group entirely existed. I just know that they've been, you know, very good at, you know, giving us awards, I guess, over the last few years. Yes. And I realized at one point that just, you know, this is my own aha moment, right? So pondering is that they must have noticed that media tend to be somewhat hostile to religion in general. And so they created this just as a, as an award for pieces that are not.

Yes. I think that's right. I didn't, I didn't, I haven't even checked my assertion. I love that story. A number of years ago at a very elite media institution that everybody who's watching us or listening to us would know immediately, I was doing an editorial board meeting in behalf of focus on the family. And we spent about an hour and a half together and they seem to be quite pleased,

although it was clear they disagreed with just about everything that I was advocating, marriage, family, parenting, human life, religious liberty, conscience rights, parental rights, etc. And as kind of a departing comment, one of the associate editors said, you know, we've never really met anybody like you. And I said to her with great magnanimity, I pray, I said, you know, you ought to get out more because there are millions and millions of us in this country. And she said to me, a number of weeks later, she said, it's not lost on me what you shared. And she said, I will be making a national tour, a substantial national tour. And several months later, she was back in touch for a third time.

And she said, I stand corrected. I said, speaking as her, she said, I met, you know, endless numbers of people who share your worldview. And I said, welcome to the United States of America. But let me just qualify something here. You mean like your worldview, you agree on very few things, but you're nonetheless reasonable and like a decent human being. Like that's what she's saying. I think that there is this profound misunderstanding,

particularly in an era of very aggressive secularism, that somehow there are large numbers of Americans who do not understand or do not distinguish. between what St. Augustine called the city of God and the city of man. There are millions of us who believe, as our founding generation believed, that God created government, God created the church, God created family, but they are three distinct institutions who have their own roles. I was sharing with you before we began our great conversation off camera that I was doing a debate at a very elite New England college just before the end.

of the most recent academic year. And I won't go through the entire debate, but my interlocutor said to me, is it possible to make these distinctions between your faith and government, the role of religion and the role of government? And I said to her, there are millions of us who understand that the church is not the state,

the state is not the church, and we don't conflate the two. I said, you can accept that about us, can't you? and she said, you know, I need to think about that. And I thought that, you know, that's a very interesting thing, given the fact that her very prestigious college had been founded by a remarkable generation of Christians. So I think there is a very deep misunderstanding in this era that we're describing and discussing.

And it's one of the most important reasons that I wrote what really matters. Because I think, as George Orwell said, the first duty of an intelligent man is to restate the obvious. And I think we have arrived at the generation where, in defense of the permanent things, we have to restate the obvious. What really matters is in some ways, you know, a compendium of a lot of very good research or like an exploration of a bunch of different research in key areas of civic reality. Yes.

that happen to coincide with what you would want from a religious perspective. Would you say that? Absolutely. Yes. I want to go into some of them. I mean, the people on this show that have watched this show will be familiar with many of them. But is there anything that sort of where the research that you remember coming across, where the research doesn't match what you would theoretically hope would be the case?

Yeah, I think so. I think in two very dramatic ways. The first one is that we now have the lowest marriage rates in all of recorded American history. What I was particularly shocked by, and I write about this in one of the six chapters of the book called Restoring Marriage, is that for the first time in 2025, there were more babies born to American women in their 30s than in their 20s. And I think that is counterintuitive by almost any objective measure. The second one is that I found some of the most robust support for the natural nuclear family, for married husbands and wives having their children inside of marriage and the life that they give to their children as a result. I found some of the best empirical research data and support for this, not from a conservative Christian scholars or academics, but by some of the most progressive in the United States. And I, at length, am eager to use the empirical data.

Because I think, as Pat Moynihan famously said, everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not everyone's entitled to his own facts. And so I thought it was important in what really matters not to do a new book, my fifth book, as an assertion of a series of opinions, but to go back to the best empirical data and say, what is the best case that we can summon for marriage, family, parenting, human life, religious liberty, conscience rights, overall freedom? What is the best way we can summon those arguments rooted in the best and most recent research?

Is there anything that you found that the research shows that doesn't agree with the Christian belief system? But large, broadly. Of course, there's a lot of nuance and differences. Yeah. I think that it is surprising to me, and I would maybe better use the word sobering, that there are ruby red states where we have very high family dysfunction and breakup. And we have blue progressive states where those rates tend to be lower. And I think there are a number of circumstances, and so I'm eager not to, you know, paint broadly with the brush.

But I think counterintuitively, and I say this to my progressive friends, and I mean this magnanimously and gracefully. But I think that the anchor of what really matters is not just rooted in a worldview that says essentially to the facts, well, we'll set those aside for convenience. No, I think it's more important to be comfortable with abstraction, to be comfortable with data sets that don't ultimately add up to what has often become a cartoon or a stereotype. What would you say is the strongest evidence? I mean, you look at, you know, family, you look at, well, a huge thing, actually I've covered this quite a bit on the show is, you know, you call it the American male, but basically, there isn't a lot of support for the American male, or that has, you know, declined dramatically. Well-ordered society, faith. Where would you say the evidence for is the most dramatic in your mind? I think it is most dramatic in asking the question in the same demographic.

Why do there seem to be two not opposing but different trajectories, for instance, for, and I'm speaking broadly, American men 18 to 30? So on this side of the ledger, you have large percentages of American men who are in that demographic who of a sudden are going back to church. Faith and religion, things of the spirit, broadly defined, very important to them. When they're asked reliably, they want to be married, they want to have children. In my view, that is an absolutely great thing. I think we may even be having a kind of quiet renaissance in this regard. At the exact same time, we have millions of American men in the exact same demographic who are not in school, they're not applying to be in school, they're not working, they're not seeking a job. My great friend Nick Ebershtad at the American Enterprise

Institute has done path-breaking research on this group of men who I would argue in many ways are unmarriageable because the same demographic of young American women, very often more educated, doing better economically, they also, aspirationally, they say they at some point want to be married, they want to have children. But what is the chasm? The chasm is they're looking for marriageable men, whether you're progressive or conservative. In reliable studies, women say, if they're going to be married, they're looking for an economic partner. They're looking for someone if they're going to have children who can be an excellent father. So I think this question of unmarriage of a marriageable, men or all the things that are happening in that part of the ledger are important.

15% of all American men say they have no friends. Three out of every four suicides in America and drug overdoses are American men. I mean, there's a lot going on, and I thought to myself, when you look at these empirical data sets in a book like What Really Matters, you are honor bound to say, let's do a chapter on restoring the American male, and let's take a deep dive look at what is actually happening. And what is the factor

that differentiates these two stark groups? I mean, just diametrically opposite, seemingly. I think that the principal difference between conservatives and progressives is that conservatives believe that if you want to change the country or impact the country, you have to impact culture first. And progressives believe that if you want the same outcome,

you have to impact politics first. So being a conservative, I believe very strongly that it's important in this great question to look at things culturally, to say what has happened culturally. And I think we are dealing with historic levels of digital distraction. I think through COVID, this was particularly

tough on young American men for a host of reasons. When you look at curriculums K through 12 and how young American men are being educated, what is the best way to educate boys and young men over against girls and young women, it's very often very different. I think in many ways, K through 12 and this historic curriculum and the historic pedagogy that has been applied to educate young men and women in many ways. is outdated. I'm heartened by and I write at length in this book about the amazing uptick in homeschooling. It's incredible. I mean we have almost four million homeschooled

young Americans. I think that's great. School choice, charter schools. I think that parents need and deserve a lot more choices and I think that very often these panoply of choices are better choices given the cultural moment for boys and young men. You know, I recently had Kristen Jensen on the show who Wright has written a number of books trying to help parents deal with the ubiquitous online availability of pornography. Yes. In many cases, extreme pornography and younger and younger children being exposed to it, just kind of, I think, as part of the strategy of the pornographers to kind of get them hooked

because it's highly addictive. That has been demonstrated. The reason I'm mentioning this is my hypothesis is that, and I don't see very good data on this, actually, maybe you have seen that, but my hypothesis is that this is a kind of a massive, destructive issue, perhaps hitting exactly into this sort of why there's this group of men that are uninterested in doing meaningful things or something like that. But I believe it's one of these massively destructive aspects of society that for some reason very few people are interested in tackling or dealing with. At least that's my observation. I can't cover it too often either. There's even there aren't that many people that are working on this.

I want to hear what you think about this, because I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I can say confidently that those of us, I'm one of the vice presidents at Focus on the Family, and this is one of the most substantial issues that we at focus on the family hear about regularly. By the way, anecdote is not data, so I want to be careful in this regard.

But I, for instance, join, a Monday meeting every Monday with other vice presidents at Focus on the Family. And one of the people who joins us for that meeting runs our help center at Focus on the Family. You know, dollars to donuts, it is a categorical, ubiquitous, deep, wide, broad, massive problem of men and pornography. And this is for people who are kind of, you know, apparently seriously religious. Yes, right? Absolutely right. I'm just trying to imagine people who know this is bad. Yes.

Right? Like, I would think if you're Christian, it should be pretty obvious. But what about for people who haven't been told that or have you haven't been told that, hey, this is actually a good thing? Right. For problems. May I say, one of the things that I write about, as you know, and what really matters is what is the practical implication of what Pope Benedict, the 16th, called the dictatorship of moral. relativism of what another great jurist, Samuel Alito, called the New Orthodoxy. You know, the practical ramification of destroying an objective moral code, the practical ramifications

of saying you can't really define good and evil. You can only say acceptable and unacceptable. You know, this kind of cafeteria view of objective truth has real ramifications. And in an era, when you have enormous family dysfunction, when you have large chaos, I mean, we are objectively a large, complex continental nation of 340 million souls. You know, in some places, families, marriage, parenting, and I write about them too, are doing quite well. Praise God for that, but in other large sectors, they're not. I'd like to give one example, if I may. In behalf of focus on the family, I was speaking in Southern California just a couple of years ago.

And at the near end of my speech, almost as a throwaway line, I said, and you know, my father is my best friend. And when I said this, and I know you're out speaking a lot as well, you could snap your fingers and a large percentage of the young people who were there, probably two or three hundred young people, I'd say, you know, grades four to, you know, sophomore, junior in high school, kind of looked down at the floor and I thought, what had I said, you know, one of George Carlin's seven dirty words? And this young woman raised her hand. And she said, you know, Mr. Gagline, we really appreciated a lot of what you said. But a lot of us here, she said, we don't even know our biological fathers. Or she, or we've not grown up with our dads or to us, you know, a dad or a father, to many of us, this is a very distant

figure. And I, going back to the beginning of our wonderful conversation and the editorial board meeting I had, it's not just that progressives, in my view, need to get out more. But those of us who are Christians and conservatives, we need to get out more too. And we need to regularly interact with and better understand a categorically different worldview. You know, in the academic year, in behalf of Focus on the Family, I'm on a different college campus almost every two weeks. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Azusa Pacific, Hillsdale, the Concordias. I mean, the real gamut.

And I always love the so-called Q&A, you know, because I often feel that I'm the one who enjoys asking the questions of the rising generation to genuinely better understand where they're coming from. And to your great question, it's always a sobering reminder of the remarkable amount of moral relativism that has really sunk itself into Young America. Do you know of anyone really trying to tackle this in a serious way, this pornography, epidemic, which is kind of accelerating, right? I mean, I'm just sort of imagining with AI and being able to sort of concoct anything onto video now. Some people might will probably say, hey, that's great. No one's being harmed, except I imagine the psychological impact of doing that.

Basically, it's a very bad path. It seems to me. Yeah, I feel very comfortable. that the best data suggests, in fact, we have large numbers of Americans who are being harmed. And so I think even in principle right at the top, we can challenge that assertion. But yes, the answer is that there are a number of ministries that I'm personally aware of who are doing a lot to combat precisely the kind of thing that you're asking and talking about. Is it a national effort? Is it well-funded? Is there a large agreement?

Left-right center, no ideology, that we can identify this as a problem that needs to be addressed? Unfortunately, no. You probably know what I'm going to say, but you almost have to go back to the era of the very famous report during the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the Attorney General Edwin Meese, who headed the Anti-Pronography Commission

to better understand the way. width and the depth and the impact of what we're talking about, then and now enormous. Maybe it's time to have another such deep dive. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So very briefly on the success sequence. Yes.

Maybe just briefly talk about that because you, of course, it's how can you not mention the success sequence when you're talking about such things? I think it's one of some of the strongest data, right? Absolutely. Yes, I remember when the success sequence came out, we had focused on the family. We're among then and now its biggest champions. And in this book, what really matters, I write about the success sequence. I can't wait to share some really good news.

Some really good news. First of all, just tell us what it is for those that might not be familiar. Yes, it is the following. And it's very easy, which is that all of the best empirical data and research show that if you ask, the question what is best for the raising of children the best sequence is getting married then having children working almost regardless of what the position is and remaining married and the trajectory is such that over time every major empirical data study shows that in that trajectory children who are born inside of

marriage, who have a contiguous relationship with their biological parents birth through at least the age of 18, in a home where both a faith ethic and a work ethic are concurrent, overwhelmingly those are the children who do best. And I can't wait to share the following because you asked me earlier about the kind of counterintuitive sense. There is an MIT trained economist who is a full professor at the University of University of of Maryland. And her work, her study, her book is really one of the most important tools that I'm aware of, and I make great use of it in my own book, what really matters, to show

that what's best for young boys and young girls and the raising of this generation is the success sequence. In other words, it's not just an assertion, it's an absolute fact. our second president, one of my favorite, my fellow conservative, John Adams, a Berkian. Adams very famously said, facts are stubborn things. And I think one of the things I wanted to do in my book was not just to go to my fellow conservatives, academics, public intellectual scholars, and say, what is your data show? But for the things that I'm writing about, what is the best research. And lo and behold, as you know from the book, there are a number of people who are center-center left who are doing very important work regarding marriage, family, parenting,

and I'm eager to highlight their great research. What about the importance of history? It's a passion of mine. It was my third book, Toward a More Perfect Union, the moral and cultural case for teaching the great American story. And I see this with humility, but that book got a lot of attention because it was published in the midst of Wokistan, the era of Wokism, erasure culture, the beginnings of DEI. I didn't plan it that way, but I had been working on it for two years, and then it was published, and et cetera. And what I found in that book, is that I could have done one big thing better, which is to show what the moral and social revolution

that led to cultural and historic amnesia, how that has impacted our own time. And I think I can share one data point, which I think sums up why I wanted to write a chapter called Restoring American History, and that is that only 13%. of all American eighth graders, only 13% can, with basic proficiency, say what the American timeline is, which is to say less than 15% can accurately say at eighth grade, the American

Revolution, the Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, etc. I mean, that to me is really stunning. In fact, it's a lower number than I would have thought in light of the business billions of dollars that our country pours in to education of all kinds. I think it's a real failure. And I mentioned earlier that if I had to pick out one anecdote, and I try in every chapter in sharing sobering news, to also show hopeful news. I'm an inveterate optimist by nature. I really, and I believe the best chapters for America are in front of us.

I do believe that. But I believe that the Hillsdale College. college, K through 12 curriculum, simply called the 1776 project, is one of the absolute best tools to teach a kindergarten through 12th grade of the great American story. And I have recommended it endless numbers of times, and it's very user-friendly, and it works. When and how did this historical amnesia exactly happen? It really is rooted and categorically in the work of John Dewey, who in the 20th century was without equal or peer the most progressive American educator who sought to upend the whole idea of American education. He was a moral relativist.

He felt that public schools emphasized too strongly the idea of character. and that it was too definitively in the kind of Judeo-Christian mold. And he felt that we needed to change and shift from what was a rather remarkable American education model, character over intellect, not in opposition to academic achievement, but that character and the develop of citizenship was the way that you carry on liberty and freedom over time. And Dewey really went to war against that. What year are we talking about here? We're talking the very early 20th century, Columbia University, the University of Chicago,

and with in an era compatriots in other spheres of American life who agreed with Dewey, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who was really at war with anybody in America who came from a different ethnicity. a moral relativist of the first order, and I might even say a bit of an abortion fanatic. And really, I think the founder of the sexual revolution, which over time ran concurrent to the work of John Dewey. Roger Baldwin, the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, a very committed communist. And of course, Woodrow Wilson, one of our presidents, who was the ultimate progressive on steroids and highly uncomfortable with the Declaration of Independence and with the United States Constitution.

And I felt that in the 250th year of the birth of our nation, that it was very important to do a chapter on history and to show where the problem is rooted and a better way forward. I wrote a book called Stumbling Toward Utopia. And Stumbling Toward Utopia really documents the cultural and and social earthquake that I describe of the 60s and 70s, and the ramifications then and now enormous for the things that we're discussing. What about this people having children at 30 more commonly? You mentioned this at the beginning.

Yes. So my view basically is that if we're not above replacement rate, there must be something really fundamentally wrong. It's like we don't believe in ourselves enough to do that. Or maybe we do, but there's just we got, I don't know, down the wrong path. Like, how do you view this? Because it obviously seems to be a massive problem. We are definitively with no debate in a demographic winter.

In the history of the United States of America, we have never had a lower marriage rate and we've never had a lower fertility rate. I mean, those are facts. And in fact, the data that came out from the federal government just a few weeks ago confirms precisely the second part of what you just said, which is that even beyond a view of how you carry on the greatness of the country,

and I argue that it's rooted in the family, it's rooted in marriage. We need to tell a new generation that marriages are really good thing, Babies are really good things. Children are really good things. Intergenerational connections among families and communities of faith are really good things.

But I believe with the same fervency and passion that if we really want to resolve most of the cultural challenges to 21st century America, it's impossible, in my view, to have that conversation without an immediate immediate conversation on tell me the future of the American family. Tell me the future of American fertility. Are we at replacement level? Are we above replacement level? And as my friend Mary Ebershtad has shown so beautifully, faith and religion and family formation and children, it goes together. And so I would argue, as I do in what really matters, that if someone were to ask me,

what is the biggest single challenge facing America in its 250th year? I would say that the biggest challenge facing us is a spiritual crisis of a pretty substantial order. And I would say, show me a country with a strong spiritual and religious base, and I'll show you a strong country, and show me one with a weakened spiritual base, and I'll show you a country that is lacking the things that we need to move into the to the rest of this century and ahead. And that's why I'm pleased that we're seeing not a plateau or a falling off, but we're seeing a gentle upward trajectory.

I think of young Americans who are converting, they're going back to church. And I think that unlike most of the rest of the developed countries, this is a very good sign. And just sort of adjacent to that, you said something very interesting before, which I hadn't fully grasped until you said it, which is that the American education system was focused on character over intellect. Absolutely.

Until the beginnings of the 20th century, where that started to shift. Yes. Seems important. I would say it's central. And in fact, I have been a regular reader to the Epic Times since the beginning. And of all of the writers

and narrative that that news division does so well, your news division does so well, is there are regular pieces across the news organization on the centrality of the concept of the gentleman, the concept of an unbreakable moral code, the importance of honor, courage, gallantry, virtue. I was giving a speech at Georgetown University, just a couple of years ago here in Washington.

And a young man who was sitting in the very front row said to me, he said, I've gone to Catholic schools my entire life. I'm at a very prominent Catholic university. Across this time, I've never really heard someone speak about the concept of the gentleman and why that is so important to the idea of citizenship and to the formation of a good life.

And so in what really matters, I do a whole chapter on what constitutes the life well lived. And I would say it's directly related to the idea of character, of honor, personal integrity, this idea of immutable standards and good taste. And I think that raising the next generation to hit a high mark of the direct relationship between character and liberty and freedom over time,

they're absolutely connected. If someone said to me, what is the greatest commencement address in American history? And I've read a lot of them. I say that with humility, but I've read a lot of them, especially in preparation for my first two books. I would say that Justice Clarence Thomas,

who is now the second law, longest serving justice in all of American United States Supreme Court history, his commencement address at Hillsdale College is a tour to force. And Justice Thomas being a great Frederick Douglas, you know, Abraham Lincoln, Dave Otee shows that, and he doesn't just assert, but he demonstrates this very important relationship between character and and liberty and freedom over time. And it really arises from the founding generation. They believe that if you wanted liberty and freedom over many, many years,

you had to have moral excellence or what they called virtue in the citizens and in the leaders. And in the American experience, they were very specific. In the United States of America, the country they were founding, that kind of virtue and that kind of excellence would arise. from faith and religion, in their own instance, overwhelmingly, from Christianity. And of course, from the early era of the Republic, from the Judaic Christian tradition, which was very deeply connected. Well, Tim, thank you for your own regular contributions to the epoch times very much in this vein

of everything you've just been talking about. And again, congratulations. Yeah, big congratulations on what really really. matters. I hope everyone gets a chance to read it. A final thought as we finish up? A final thought is the following. There is an ongoing debate across the centuries of whether restoration and renewal and, you know, this kind of regeneration that we've been talking about, whether it's possible in a great nation, or whether you kind of hit the apogee, the so-called American century, and then it's a predictable decline. And I'm very happy to say that not just

born of my own optimism, and I, as I mentioned earlier, I'm an illimitable optimist, but I believe that there are examples of regeneration and renewal in great nations. And I think that the Victorian period of England and the British Empire is just the most recent example. So I believe that we should plant excellent seeds in the way that you and I have discussed today and then prepare to see them germinate down the road. And I believe that marriage, family, and parenting, parental rights, human life will play a very big part of the next very successful chapter of the American experience. And right at the center is religious liberty and freedom. Well, Timothy Gagling, it's such a pleasure to have you on.

Thank you so much. Thank you all for joining Timothy Gaglian and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janja Kellogg.