Snoop Dogg’s critics show the 70/90 Project to rebuild black families can work



The progressives criticizing Snoop Dogg and Nelly for performing at President Trump’s inauguration events know something most conservatives are too afraid to admit: shame and stigma work.

The left’s penchant for publicly ridiculing the wayward and disobedient is one of the main reasons Democrats receive 90% of the black vote every election cycle. What some people see as a sign black voters are taken for granted, I see as a ray of hope that conformity for the right purpose is possible.

Every person who is concerned about America's future should be talking about the state of the family.

If Democrats can get nine out of 10 black voters to support their candidate for the White House, I think even more should get behind efforts to rebuild the family.

That’s why I would like to propose the 70/90 Project — an initiative to completely reverse the current trajectory of the black family. The mission is simple: Move 70% of black children from being born to unmarried parents and 45% being raised by a single mother to 90% of black children being born to married parents and living in intact homes.

I acknowledge the goal is ambitious. American families are doing worse than in previous generations. The age of first marriage has gone up, and the marriage rate has gone down. Total fertility has decreased, but more children are being born to unmarried parents than ever before. Every person who is concerned about America's future should be talking about the state of the family.

Addressing these challenges won’t be easy, but as President Trump said in his inaugural address: “In America, the impossible is what we do best.”

One way to “do the impossible” is for black leaders to harness the community’s social, financial, and political capital to rebuild the family. That is a much better reason to work in unison than acting as mules for a party that will say and do anything for a vote.

The 70/90 Project’s success would depend largely on the individual choices of millions of men and women who decide when and under what circumstances to bring a child into the world. But that doesn’t mean institutions don’t have a role to play.

Historically black colleges and universities should be thinking about ways to help families in their surrounding communities build stronger relationships while encouraging a “ring by spring” culture on their own campuses. Black preachers would need to reaffirm the reality that God created two sexes, marriage is the cornerstone of the family, and the family is the bedrock of society.

Civil rights organizations and social commentators would need to be honest enough to acknowledge that “marriage inequality” is doing more to hold the community back than racial discrimination. Just 33% of black adults are married, compared to 48% of Latinos, 57% of whites, and 63% of Asians. Only a fool would argue that children could have such different family inputs but still achieve the same social outcomes.

The 70/90 Project will also require stakeholders to establish new family norms and use every tool available — from persuasion and affirmation to coercion and shame — to enforce them.

Doing so will undoubtedly lead to accusations that promoting marriage and intact families stigmatizes single mothers and their children. But the truth is that children need both parents. Fathers are not the family’s appendix — nice to have but not essential. Every child has a right to the protection, affection, and correction of the two people who made them. The ideal environment for this right to be exercised by a child is in a loving, two-parent household with a married mother and father.

Progressives often champion “diversity,” but their personal attacks on Snoop and Nelly reveal their true focus: enforcing conformity. They readily platform pimps, drug dealers, strippers, and professional twerkers — as long as they help drive the black vote on Election Day.

They only weaponize shame against people who transgress their political program. But if the gatekeepers of black culture are going to get 90% compliance in a particular area, ensuring every child is raised in a home with a married mother and father would do far more for racial uplift than getting another Democrat into office.

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Rift on the right: Entitlement vs. hard work revisited



A recent social media debate about the state of the American economy should make the GOP consider whether the party of self-empowerment should rebrand itself as the party of entitlement.

Christopher Rufo is a journalist who is well known for, among other things, his culture war crusades against critical race theory in K-12 schools and diversity, equity, and inclusion training in universities. But the goodwill he built up on the right began to evaporate quickly among his former supporters when he cited higher-than-expected salaries for managers at Panda Express and Chipotle as signs of a strong economy.

Life is hard, but part of being a man is doing hard things. Those bootstraps aren’t going to pull themselves up.

A descriptive point about the availability of work quickly morphed into accusations that right-wing influencers want young Americans — particularly white men — to accept the declining status brought on by unfettered immigration, the H-1B visa program, DEI, and other forms of anti-white discrimination.

As is often the case on social media — especially X — critics responded emotionally to the point they thought Rufo was making instead of replying logically to his actual words. One of the most illuminating aspects of the online chatter was the clear sense many people felt that working in the service industry was beneath young Americans today.

One popular account even suggested going to trade school was a sign that some conservatives want young men to willingly accept a life of mediocrity. In response, several commentators described having to struggle for years before becoming financially established — the same path every generation has had to take. The problem is that some people seem to think young people should have six-figure salaries within a few years of finishing college.

This debate is crucial for conservatives to hash out in public. While we all agree that elected officials must serve their constituents, opinions clearly diverge on the finer points of the deal.

This debate centers on a word that often makes conservatives uncomfortable: entitlement. Conservatives easily recognize entitlement when a newly graduated Ivy League student demands that co-workers respect his “she/they” pronouns. The same applies to progressives who insist on quotas in industries based on superficial identity traits like skin color, sex, or sexual preference. Yet expecting a specific type of job in an ideal location with a high salary is equally entitled.

This dynamic makes the current conservative debate especially compelling. For decades, liberals have argued that stagnant upward mobility in the working class — particularly for black Americans — stems from policy decisions, institutional bias, and market forces. They attribute disparities in unemployment rates and household income to employment discrimination. Similarly, they cite bias in banking as the reason for gaps in homeownership rates.

Conservatives often counter leftist critiques by emphasizing family, cultural norms, personal responsibility, and resisting self-pity. More people are starting to notice the heightened understanding conservatives display now that structural critiques are emerging from the right.

I hope policymakers and pundits in the MAGA era develop policies and cultural solutions that address the needs of all Americans, not just their favored groups. A hardworking young man should be able to pursue a meaningful vocation, find a good wife, raise a large family, support his community, and become part of a thriving local church. This vision applies equally to young black men in Brooklyn and young white men in Boise. Elected officials should consider both as constituents. At the same time, those men must work hard, seize every opportunity, and remain driven.

An entitlement mindset teaches people to focus on what they believe others owe them and encourages blaming external forces for personal failures. In contrast, an empowerment mindset fosters growth and the determination to make the most of available opportunities. Those who expect an ideal job in their desired location risk falling into envy, resentment, and self-pity. Meanwhile, those who take the job they can get and work diligently until a better one arises set themselves on the path to gratitude and fulfillment.

Yes, we should elect politicians who serve the interests of the American people. But even a booming economy doesn’t protect us from struggle. We can either respond with complaints about who owes us or get to work charting a path forward. Life is hard, but part of being a man is doing hard things. Those bootstraps aren’t going to pull themselves up.

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AP has to fix headline for its hit piece on DeSantis nominee to UWF board, Scott Yenor



Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) made eight new appointments to the University of West Florida's board of trustees on Monday. Among them was Scott Yenor, a professor of political science at Boise State University and a Washington fellow at the Claremont Institute.

Whereas individuals at the university appear happy to have Yenor aboard, scandal-plagued liberals such as Debbie Wasserman Schultz and elements of the liberal media were prickled by the appointment of a conservative both supportive of the family and keen on "dismantling the rule of social justice in America's universities."

In its rush to discredit Yenor ahead of his likely confirmation by the Florida Senate, the Associated Press distorted the truth this week and found itself having to correct another headline.

The Thursday article appears to have originally been titled, "DeSantis appointee to university board says women should become mothers, not pursue higher ed," but has since been retitled, "DeSantis nominee for UWF board says women shouldn't delay motherhood for higher ed, career," and fitted with a correction noting that Yenor has advocated prioritization of motherhood, not for women to opt out of education altogether.

'There can be no great countries without great families.'

In the hit piece, the AP's Tallahassee-based education reporter Kate Payne clutched pearls about the professor's warnings about the dangers of DEI — which a damning Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University study revealed in November "may foster authoritarian mindsets, particularly when anti-oppressive narratives exist within an ideological and vindictive monoculture" — as well as about the declines of traditional marriage and American birth rates.

After trying her best to tether Yenor to the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, about which the Associated Press previously spread falsehoods, Payne quoted from Yenor's 2021 speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando in an apparent effort to damn him with his own words.

Payne was evidently prickled by Yenor's Chestertonian critique of America's denigration of the institution of motherhood and his characterization of universities as "indoctrination camps."

"Our feminist culture points women, especially young women, away from marriage and family life through its celebration of careerism. Thus more and more women, every generation, delay marriage and increasingly forgo marriage," Yenor said in his speech. "As women delay and forgo marriage, they're increasingly likely to delay and forgo having children."

"We lie to young women when we tell them that it is easy to become pregnant whenever one wants in life," said Yenor. "Never does anyone say to the young women that the peak period for pregnancy is between the late teens and the late 20s. Rarely are young women told that their ability to conceive children declines quite a bit after their late 20s and declines rapidly after the mid-30s. Ancient people used to pray to the gods of fertility. We pray to infertility gods."

"There can be no great countries without great families," emphasized Yenor. "And today, America is destroying family life."

Yenor, whom leftist journalists have long been trying to get fired for membership in religious, pro-family groups, told Blaze News last year that the anti-natalist messaging he has railed against largely comes down to a "set of mores and manners that are the natural result of our sexual revolution and its associated ideology."

'My most important work of my life was being a mother.'

"'I think you need to wait to get married until you have a job and are stable.' Well, that's a great way of delaying marriage, and marriage delayed and deferred is much less likely to happen. That's a form of cultural messaging that's widely accepted," said Yenor. "Whereas previously, it was thought that marriage would be a foundation for life; that you kind of learn to live together with another person and go through life's struggles and have moments where you weren't prosperous. And now we have marriage as a kind of capstone to all of life's achievements."

"That new cultural messaging obviously leads to different kinds of marriages and later marriages and fewer children and more fertility problems. The fertility problems themselves are the result of waiting until you're 30 to get married," continued Yenor.

Payne packaged her AP article with comment from a single and, of course, critical voice from UWF, faculty union president and earth sciences instructor Chasidy Hobbs, who called Yenor's comments "disheartening" and "offensive."

"My most important work of my life was being a mother," said Hobbs, unwittingly reinforcing Yenor's argument, "while also working as a professional woman in a career that I find almost as important as motherhood — to help the future generation learn to think for themselves."

"Publishing quotes pulled off the sparsely stocked shelves of dirt every time Yenor successfully advocates for reform in higher education (which he does often!), [Payne] has done the intrepid journalistic work of adding a new headline to his @NatConTalk speech of 2021!" tweeted Andrew Beck, vice president of communications at the Claremont Institute and partner at Beck & Stone.

"Given the current decline of vast swaths of America's higher education institutions and the decay of its culture, I'm not sure how many, except for the most militant, reality-denying feminists, would naturally think these statements are unfounded, outrageous, and worthy of broadcasting when you can hear hundreds of women saying the same thing on social media every day," continued Beck. "All this shows that it is not Professor Yenor or Governor DeSantis who are out of line, but Kate and the Associated Press, who are out of touch with Floridians and what they want out of their universities: to do better, so that America can be better."

Yenor noted on X, "What @AP's reporter considers awful are things that are increasingly music to people's ears."

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The loneliness of 21st-century privacy



We are all public in a way we never were before. We also have an unparalleled amount of privacy.

Eventually, my mom would pick up the phone in her room and her voice would come over the line: 'This is O.W.’s mom, and it’s time for O.W. to go to bed now.'

Every day we send our thoughts, pictures, and videos out into cyberspace to be viewed by countless strangers — people we’ve never met and will never meet.

And yet we could go days without ever talking to another soul — even while living in the heart of a bustling city. We could order food online and have it delivered it to our door. Order all our stuff on Amazon and it comes a few days later. Work from home. Never leave.

Hiding in public

We are plugged into some sort of technological exhibition in a way that approaches science fiction, and at the same time we all possess the ability to become hermits at any given moment.

It’s a striking juxtaposition unique to our technologically advanced, materially abundant era.

We long for privacy. No one wants to be crowded. It’s part of some inner human need to seek open space, to long for the great horizon, the open sky, the place where we can stretch our arms wide. To be alone.

Yet it’s a conundrum. We seek this with all our might, but at the end there is something profoundly alienating that comes over us when we no longer need anyone else. When we have all the privacy in the world, all we want is someone there.

Room to spare

Look at family life. Part of it is being forced together, even when you don’t want to be together. It’s less privacy, more face to face. It’s being around one another whether you like it or not.

But there are more children with their own rooms today than ever before. That might sound like a fine thing on the surface. Who doesn’t want more space?

But is it good? Why does a kid need his own room? Why does he need to be alone so much? He doesn’t.

Some claim that paralyzing introversion as we know it today might be related to the large number of children who grow up with their own rooms. When kids grow up with all this privacy and all this alone time, they retreat. They don’t have to get in the mix of family life.

Everything is quieter and softer. That becomes their standard. When we aren’t forced together, we end up alone, and then being together ends up jarring to us. Paralyzing introversion by way of excessive privacy.

Cutting the cord

We had a landline when I was in high school. I would stay up and talk to my girlfriend late at night. I would drag that long, curly phone cord from the kitchen back into the study.

Eventually, my mom would pick up the phone in her room and her voice would come over the line: “This is O.W.’s mom, and it’s time for O.W. to go to bed now.”

It was, to put it simply, embarrassing. I knew it was coming every time, but it never got easier. I would have loved nothing more than to have my own cell phone so that I could talk to my girlfriend in complete privacy without worrying about everyone hearing or my mom chiming in on the other line.

Family plan

But just because we want it, is it good to have it? No, of course not. We understand this about lots of obvious things. But this one — privacy — is not so obvious. It sounds strange, but having my mom pick up the phone while I was talking to my girlfriend feels like family.

Calling your high school girlfriend’s house, having her dad pick up, and then having to ask him if you could talk to her — this also somehow feels like family. Not your family, but her family. The fact that she is a part of something else, that her family is there in the other room, that they know who you are, that you have to go through them to talk to her, that she doesn’t have all the privacy she wants. Something about this is right. It’s how we are supposed to grow up.

We might wish so much for simple peace and quiet, a space that is all our own. The pursuit of privacy might be what inspires us to build, grow, and conquer. We all work so hard so that we all have as much space as we want. We finally all have our own room, our own phone, our own car, and our own lives. My, is it lonely.

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Broken poinsettia, unbroken spirit



The Christmases of years past often blur together, but some stand out and remain cherished forever. My father’s last Christmas at home began as a disaster but became something extraordinarily special.

About a dozen years ago, my father was in rapid decline due to a cruel disease that had severely diminished his ability to walk and speak. We knew the time was approaching when he would require 24-hour skilled nursing care. My mother, supported by hired part-time caregivers and nearby family members, worked tirelessly to make his life comfortable and to keep him at home for as long as possible.

The broken poinsettia was such a minor incident, but it was one setback too many. 'Can’t anything go right?' my mother asked as she started to cry.

It was a little before Christmas when my father found the words to say, “It’s time,” lovingly helping the family make the difficult decision as to when we should seek out a nursing facility. He was a generous, compassionate man who even at this awful time sought to give what he could to help his wife and family. His assent to this final move was the gift he offered. A nice nearby facility that my mother could visit every day was found, and the move was scheduled for the new year.

Caregiving is also tough. My mother, who might otherwise have been enjoying her golden years with travel and leisure, was instead a round-the-clock caregiver who was extremely tired after several years in this role.

But there would still be one last Christmas at home! All of their children and grandchildren would be there, including those who lived in other cities and who had started making their own family Christmas traditions. We all made plans to converge on our hometown to celebrate one last all-family Christmas at my parents’ house.

My mother’s excitement about this Christmas gathering gave her strength as she planned for the wonderful meals and the time we would all spend together. The out-of-town family members were scheduled to arrive on December 23.

But things went very bad late on the night of December 22.

My dad experienced a medical emergency that caused him to take a bad fall. My mother called an ambulance and then contacted my wife and me, as we lived in the same city. By the time we arrived at her house, the ambulance had already taken my father to the hospital, and my mother had decided to drive herself there to meet it.

Her night got even worse. While driving to the hospital alone after midnight, my mother’s car had a flat tire, forcing her to pull over on the side of the highway. My wife and I changed course and headed to where my mother was stranded. Before we arrived, she called to tell us that a police officer had pulled up behind her. After hearing her situation, he kindly offered her a ride to the hospital. My wife and I redirected again, arriving at the hospital shortly thereafter. While my wife comforted my mother and assisted with the hospital intake process, I left to take care of the abandoned car.

By the time the rest of the family started arriving the next day, my father was checked into a hospital room and his injuries were being attended to.

Discharge would not occur until after Christmas, meaning there would be no final Christmas at home.

Over the next 36 hours, a constant stream of family members came and went from his hospital room. As the afternoon of Christmas Eve progressed, the family decided to celebrate Christmas Eve together in his hospital room.

Gifts from my parents to the grandchildren would be brought into the room, as would gifts being given to my mother and father. They would be opened on Christmas Eve in the hospital room. A few decorations would also be brought in, and although there wouldn’t be a Christmas tree in the room, a big, beautiful poinsettia from my mother’s house would be brought over.

As dusk settled in on Christmas Eve, the family converged on the hospital, with the grandkids hauling in presents from the cars and the women heading in with trimmings to decorate the room.

But during transport, some presents had shifted and fallen on the poinsettia, knocking it over and breaking several stems. The broken poinsettia was left in the car.

With the family all assembled in the hospital room, my mother inquired about the poinsettia, and she was told of its fate. While disappointed that this Christmas was not playing out as she had envisioned, until now she had stoically persisted in addressing the challenges. After all that had occurred in the past 48 hours, the broken poinsettia was such a minor incident, but it was one setback too many. “Can’t anything go right?” my mother asked as she started to cry.

The daughters-in-law led her into the corridor to console her, while others stayed behind to sing Christmas songs for my father. Meanwhile, the two oldest grandsons returned to the car to retrieve the scattered poinsettia parts. They brought the pieces back into the hospital and, with duct tape borrowed from a nursing station, carefully reattached the broken branches to the original stalks.

The boys triumphantly brought the taped-together poinsettia into the hospital room, and this time it was my father’s turn to be emotional. First there were a few tears, followed by his hearty laugh, as the boys showed off their poinsettia repairs. It was a laugh we all knew well but that we hadn’t heard much recently.

The family was now all back in the room, and my mother was beaming with pride at the love her children and grandchildren were showing to her, to my father, and to each other. We sang carols and opened presents. There was lots of hugging and abundant laughter.

At the center of it all was a beloved man whose earthly race was almost over and a poinsettia held together by duct tape, a poinsettia that will always be a cherished memory to the family assembled in that hospital room.