Why Women Can’t Find Good Husbands | Timothy Goeglein

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “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.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

Timothy Goeglein, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Timothy Goeglein:

It’s great to be with you. A real pleasure.

Mr. Jekielek:

Let me start with a quote from the foreword of What Really Matters, 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.”

Mr. Goeglein:

That’s right.

Mr. Jekielek:

People typically think of your organization Focus on the Family as being very Christian. So explain to me what you’re trying to do with this book.

Mr. Goeglein:

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 mention 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

know that in all aspects, constitutionally, will they be equal citizens?

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. I love the fact that he uses the phrase—that Washington used a phrase from the Bible. He creates this wonderful Old Testament view that you shall find peace and security under your vine and fig tree. This is a phrase that Washington uses over and over again throughout his lifetime. Right at the top, 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.

Mr. Jekielek:

And you also mentioned no faith, correct? No faith or perhaps other faiths, so that you believe that George Washington’s intention was beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Mr. Goeglein:

I feel very comfortable that there is a reason in the United States Constitution that there is absolutely no religious test, you know, to be a citizen and there is no religious test to be an officeholder. In 21st century America, we tend to say, yes, 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. 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, were 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.

Mr. Jekielek:

You know, recently I actually got an award from the Religion Communicators Council, and so I didn’t fully grasp why that group entirely existed. I just know that they’ve been, you know, very good at giving us awards, I guess, over the last few years.

Mr. Goeglein:

Yes.

Mr. Jekielek:

And I realized at one point that just, you know, this is my own aha moment, right? 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 an award for pieces that are not.

Mr. Goeglein:

Yes.

Mr. Jekielek:

I think that’s right. I haven’t even checked my assertion on this.

Mr. Goeglein:

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 on behalf of Focus on the Family. And we spent about an hour-and-a-half together, and they seemed 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, and parental rights. As a departing comment, one of the associate editors said, we’ve never really met anybody like you.

I said to her with great magnanimity, I pray, I said, you ought to get out more because there are millions and millions of us in this country. She said to me a number of weeks later, it’s not lost on me what you shared. She said, I will be making a substantial national tour. Several months later, she was back in touch for a third time and she said, I stand corrected. I met endless numbers of people who share your worldview. Then I said, welcome to the United States of America.

Mr. Jekielek:

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.

Mr. Goeglein:

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 that have their own roles.

I was doing a debate at a very elite New England college just before the end of the most recent academic year. 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? 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? Then she replied, I need to think about that.

I thought that was very interesting, 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. It’s one of the most important reasons that I wrote What Really Matters. As George Orwell said, the first duty of an intelligent man is to restate the obvious. We have arrived at the generation where, in defense of the permanent things, we have to restate the obvious.

Mr. Jekielek:

Your book, 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.

Mr. Goeglein:

Yes.

Mr. Jekielek:

That happens to coincide with what you would want from a religious perspective. Would you say that?

Mr. Goeglein:

Absolutely, yes.

Mr. Jekielek:

Are there, is it, I want to go into some of them. I mean, the people on this show that have watched the show will be familiar with many of them. But is there anything that, sort of, where the research that you remember coming up, where the research doesn’t match what you theologically hope would be the case?

Mr. Goeglein:

Yes, in two very dramatic ways.  The first one is that we now have the lowest marriage rates in all of 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. 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 conservative Christian scholars or academics, but by some of the most progressive in the United States.

At length, I am eager to use the empirical data, because as Pat Moynihan famously said, everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not everyone’s entitled to his own facts. 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, and overall freedom? What is the best way we can summon those arguments rooted in the best and most recent research?

Mr. Jekielek:

Is there anything that you found that the research shows that doesn’t agree with the Christian belief system at large, broadly? Of course, there’s a lot of nuance and differences.

Mr. Goeglein:

Yes, 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 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, 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.

Mr. Jekielek:

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 declined dramatically. Well-ordered society, faith. Where would you say the evidence is the most dramatic in your mind?

Mr. Goeglein:

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? On this side of the ledger, you have large percentages of American men in that demographic who, of a sudden, are going back to church. Faith and religion, things of the spirit, broadly defined, are 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, they’re not applying to be in school, They’re not working; they’re not seeking a job. Nick Eberstadt 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, also aspirationally, say they at some point want to be married, and 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. This question of unmarriageable men or all the things that are happening in that part of the ledger are important.

The data says that 15 percent of all American men say they have no friends. Three out of every four suicides in America and drug overdoses are American men. There’s a lot going on. 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.

Mr. Jekielek:

And what is the factor that differentiates these two stark groups, I mean, just diametrically opposite?

Mr. Goeglein:

Yes.

Mr. Jekielek:

Seemingly.

Mr. Goeglein:

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. Progressives believe that if you want the same outcome, you have to impact politics first. 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. We are dealing with historic levels of digital distraction. Through COVID, this was particularly tough on young American men for a host of reasons.

When you look at curriculums, K-12, and how young American men are being educated, what is the best way to educate boys and young men vs. girls and young women? It’s very often very different. In many ways, K-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. We have almost four million homeschooled young Americans. I think that’s great. Concerning school choice, and charter schools, parents need and deserve a lot more choices. Very often these are better choices given the cultural moment for boys and young men.

Mr. Jekielek:

I recently had Kristen Jensen on the show, who has written a number of books trying to help parents deal with the ubiquitous online availability of pornography. In many cases, extreme pornography is exposing younger and younger children to it. I think this is part of the pornographers’ strategy to get them hooked because it’s highly addictive. That has been demonstrated. The reason I’m mentioning this is my hypothesis, and I don’t see very good data on this, actually. Maybe you have seen it.

But my hypothesis is that this is a kind of a massive destructive issue, perhaps hitting exactly into this sort of reason 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 our 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 aren’t that many people who are working on this. I want to hear what you think about this because I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

Mr. Goeglein:

I can say confidently that those of us—I’m one of the vice presidents at Focus on the Family—consider this one of the most substantial issues that we at Focus on the Family hear about regularly. By the way, anecdotes are not data, so I want to be careful in this regard. For instance, I join a Monday meeting with other vice presidents at Focus on the Family. One of the people who joins us for that meeting runs our help center at Focus on the Family. Dollars to donuts, it is a categorical, ubiquitous, deep, wide, broad, massive problem of men and pornography.

Mr. Jekielek:

And this is for people who are kind of, you know, apparently seriously religious, right?

Mr. Goeglein:

Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Jekielek:

I’m just trying to imagine people who know this is bad. I would think if you’re Christian, it should be pretty obvious. But what about for people who haven’t been told that, or even been told that, hey, this is actually a good thing, no problems?

Mr. Goeglein:

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 XVI called the dictatorship of moral relativism, of what another great jurist, Samuel Alito, called the new orthodoxy, 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. This kind of cafeteria view of objective truth has real ramifications. And in an era when objectively a large, complex, continental nation of 340 million souls. 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. On behalf of Focus on the Family, I was speaking in Southern California just a couple of years ago, and near the end of my speech, almost as a throwaway line, I said, my father is my best friend. When I said this, 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 through sophomore, junior in high school, kind of looked down at the floor. I thought, had I said one of George Carlin’s seven dirty words?

A young woman raised her hand and said, Mr. Goeglein, we really appreciated a lot of what you said, but a lot of us here don’t even know our biological fathers, or we’ve not grown up with our dads, or to us, a dad or a father, to many of us, this is a very distant figure. And 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.

In the academic year, on 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, the real gamut. I always love the so-called Q&A, 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—moral relativism that has really sunk itself into young America.

Mr. Jekielek:

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.

Mr. Goeglein:

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 Attorney General Edwin Meese, who headed the anti-pornography commission, to better understand the width and the depth and the impact of what we’re talking about. It was then and is now enormous.

Mr. Jekielek:

Maybe it’s time to have another such deep dive. So very briefly on the success sequence, maybe just briefly talk about that because you, of course, how can you not mention the success sequence when you’re talking about such things? I think it’s some of the strongest data, right?

Mr. Goeglein:

Absolutely. Yes, I remember when the success sequence came out, we at Focus on the Family were 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.

Mr. Jekielek:

First of all, just tell us what it is for those that might not be familiar.

Mr. Goeglein:

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. Her work, her study, and her book are really some of the most important tools that I’m aware of. 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 favorites, my fellow conservative, John Adams, a Burkean, very famously said, facts are stubborn things. 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 does your data show? But for the things that I’m writing about, what is the best research? Lo and behold, as you know from the book, there are a number of people who are center or center-Left who are doing very important work regarding marriage, family, and 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. I say this with humility, but that book got a lot of attention because it was published in the midst of Wokistan, the era of wokeism, erasure culture, the beginnings of DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion]. I didn’t plan it that way, but I had been working on it for two years, and then it was published, etc. 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, and how that has impacted our own time.

I can share one data point, which I think sums up why I wanted to write a chapter called Restoring American History. Only 13 percent of all American eighth graders, with basic proficiency, can say what the American timeline is. Which is to say, less than 15 percent can accurately say at eighth grade the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the First and Second World Wars. That to me is really stunning. In fact, it’s a lower number than I would have thought in light of the billions of dollars that our country pours into education of all kinds. I think it’s a real failure.

I try in every chapter in sharing sobering news, but also show hopeful news. I’m an inveterate optimist by nature, and I believe the best chapters for America are in front of us. I do believe that. But I believe that the Hillsdale College K-12 curriculum, simply called The 1776 Project, is one of the absolute best tools to teach a K-12th grade of the great American story. I have recommended it many, many times. It’s very user-friendly, and it works.

Mr. Jekielek:

When and how did this historical amnesia exactly happen?

Mr. Goeglein:

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.

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 development of citizenship was the way that you carry on liberty and freedom over time. Dewey really went to war against that.

Mr. Jekielek:

What year are we talking about here?

Mr. Goeglein:

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 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, was 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.

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, which really documents the cultural and social earthquake that I describe of the 60s and 70s and the ramifications then and now, which are enormous for the things that we’re discussing now.

Mr. Jekielek:

What about this: people having children at 30 more commonly? You mentioned this at the beginning. 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 is it, 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 in a demographic winter.

Mr. Goeglein:

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, confirmed 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 a 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 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?

As my friend Mary Eberstadt has shown so beautifully, faith and religion and family formation and children—they go together. 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. 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 rest of this century and ahead.

That’s why I’m pleased that we’re not seeing a plateau or a falling off, but we’re seeing a gentle upward trajectory of young Americans who are converting; they’re going back to church. Unlike most of the rest of the developed countries, this is a very good sign.

Mr. Jekielek:

And just, you know, 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.

Mr. Goeglein:

Absolutely.

Mr. Jekielek:

Until the beginnings of the 20th century, where that started to shift.

Mr. Goeglein:

Yes.

Mr. Jekielek: 

Seems important.

Mr. Goeglein:

I would say it’s central. And in fact, I have been a regular reader of The Epoch Times since the beginning. With all of the writers and narrative that that news division does so well, 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 weeks ago, and a student who was sitting in the very front row said to me, you know, he said, I’ve gone to Catholic schools my entire life. I’m at a very prominent Catholic university. Throughout 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.

In What Really Matters, I do a whole chapter on what constitutes a 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 raising the next generation to hit the high mark of the direct relationship between character and liberty and freedom over time. They’re absolutely connected.

Someone might ask me, what is the greatest commencement address in American history? 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 longest-serving justice in all of American United States Supreme Court history, his commencement address at Hillsdale College is a tour de force.

Justice Thomas, being a great Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln devotee, shows that, and he doesn’t just assert, but he demonstrates this very important relationship between character and liberty and freedom over time. And it really arises from the founding generation. They believed 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.

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 Judeo-Christian tradition, which was very deeply connected.

Mr. Jekielek: 

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, big, big congratulations on What Really Matters. I hope everyone gets a chance to read it. A final thought as we finish up?

Mr. Goeglein:

My 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 I’m not just born of my own optimism, and 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, parenting, parental rights, and human life will play a very big part in the next very successful chapter of the American experience. And right at the center is religious liberty and freedom.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, Timothy Goeglein , it’s such a pleasure to have you on.

Mr. Goeglein:

Thank you so much.

 

This interview has been partially edited for clarity and brevity.