From the Book Manifesto
Why This Book Exists
Working draft · Subject to change
I did not write this book because I believe America is doomed.
I wrote it because I believe America is worth saving.
Like many Americans, I have spent years watching our national conversation become increasingly consumed by politics, outrage, and division. Every day we are presented with new problems, new villains, and new solutions. We argue about taxes, healthcare, education, crime, race, gender, immigration, and countless other issues.
Yet I became increasingly convinced that we were arguing about symptoms while neglecting causes.
As a student of economics, business, leadership, organizations, and human behavior, I learned that the quality of outcomes is often determined upstream. Organizations rarely outperform their culture. Teams rarely outperform their leadership. Nations rarely outperform the people who compose them.
That realization led me to a simple question:
Where do citizens come from?
Before there are voters, workers, entrepreneurs, teachers, executives, doctors, soldiers, and politicians, there are children.
And before there are children shaped by schools, employers, governments, churches, and communities, there are homes.
That observation eventually became the central thesis of this book:
Every institution is downstream from the home.
This book is not an argument for returning to a particular decade.
It is not an argument for a political party.
It is not an argument against women.
It is not an argument against men.
It is not an argument for bigger government or smaller government.
It is not an argument that every family must look the same.
It is an argument that healthy societies depend upon healthy homes.
The weakening of the American family did not occur because of a single event, a single law, or a single cultural movement. It emerged gradually through generations of economic, technological, social, and cultural change.
At the same time, responsibilities once carried primarily by families were increasingly transferred elsewhere.
Schools were asked to teach character.
Employers were asked to teach professionalism.
Governments were asked to provide stability.
Technology was asked to provide connection.
Social media was asked to provide community.
While each institution can help, none can permanently replace what healthy homes naturally produce.
Responsible adults.
Capable children.
Strong communities.
The purpose of this book is not to assign blame.
The purpose is to restore priority.
For too long, America has focused the majority of its attention on downstream problems while neglecting the institution that sits upstream from nearly all of them.
We have spent trillions of dollars addressing symptoms while investing comparatively little attention in the conditions that produce them.
If we want stronger schools, we need stronger homes.
If we want safer communities, we need stronger homes.
If we want greater economic mobility, we need stronger homes.
If we want a healthier democracy, we need stronger homes.
If we want a stronger nation, we need stronger homes.
This book is ultimately not about decline.
It is about rebuilding.
Because the future of America will not be determined by the policies we pass nearly as much as by the people we raise.
And the people we raise are shaped first and foremost at home.