How Should Families Be Supported?

Families are stronger when churches, governmental leaders, and ordinary individuals support them, and strong families strengthen communities, states, and nations. Dr. Ben Carson and his wife, Candy, will be honored tomorrow (Friday) by the Sutherland Institute at its 30^th anniversary awards dinner. Carson is a retired neurosurgeon, former GOP presidential candidate, and former U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary.

According to numerous sources, Carson and his wife work as a team, and they will be honored as a team. In their article published at the Deseret News, Jennifer Graham and Jason Swensen quoted Rick Larsen, the institute’s president and CEO: 

And it is their own strong union that compelled the Sutherland Institute to present its Family Values Award to both of the Carsons together.

“We find it remarkable that in public life, there are so few people of (Dr. Carson’s) standing and profile who will unapologetically defend the family as a core institution and make the connection with families of faith,” Larsen said, Thursday, explaining why Sutherland initially considered Ben Carson alone as a recipient.

But then, looking closer at “The Perilous Fight” and other books, the Sutherland team realized how important Candy Carson is to the work.

“When you read their book, and when you read Candy’s book, ‘A Doctor in the House,’ you realize they’re inseparable, they’re in this together.” And so we adjusted the award to recognize both of them,” Larsen said.

According the Carsons, the fight for families is “perilous” – a word taken from a line in “The Star-Spangled Banner,” written by Francis Scott Key about the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Navy during the War of 1812.

Like Fort McHenry, the Carsons write, “the American family is under heavy bombardment and sustained attack. Our enemies have been chipping away at their target for decades, and they now believe the time is right for a full-scale assault.” …

The Carsons believe that the institution of the family is being deliberately undermined by modern-day Marxists, socialists and globalists whose values are at odds with those of America’s founders.

They cite the 1958 book “The Naked Communist,” written by former FBI agent and Latter-day Saint W. Cleon Skousen, who argued against communism and put forth the movement’s 45 strategies that some believed would result in “the ideological capture of America.”

Among them: “Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce” and “emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.”

The assault on the family is ongoing through the entertainment media and through liberal forces in education, the Carsons believe, at the same time that religious faith – another component of strong families – is also experiencing erosion.

The Carsons are not 100% convinced this new “perilous fight” can be won, but they offer strategies that give families a fighting chance. Among them: They advocate for public policies that strengthen and grow families (such as streamlining the adoption process and making it more affordable), divorce laws that incentivize staying married and punish fathers who abandon their children….

Like his mother before him, Ben Carson believes that education can overcome a lot of the problems we face.

“Things like what happened in New York yesterday [election of  Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York] would not happen if people were truly knowledgeable, but they’re not knowledgeable. You see that all the time. You see the man-on-the-street interviews, and they ask people just the simplest questions, and they have no idea what the answer is. You could ask them who wrote Mozart’s 40^th Symphony, and they wouldn’t know. That’s the level of ignorance that exists. We have to fight that,” he said.

The Carsons are doing their part to help educate America with the American Cornerstone Institute, the nonprofit they founded to promote conservative principles and policy solutions. Through their Young Patriots program, the couple want to make sure that American children are taught to value faith, liberty, community and life.

“We have a wonderful story to tell with this nation – the most prosperous nation that ever existed, and provided more opportunities for people than any other place ever has. It has a moral base, and as we allow all of that to recede, we’re suffering the consequences.”