White privilege, I think we all know is a complete absurdity, but there are two other kinds of privilege that we seem to be losing in this country, American privilege, and the privilege of being raised in a two-parent family.

TV journalist John Stossel is going to join me. We're going to talk about how he got Facebook to admit that it's fact-jacks, aren't fact-jacks at all.

I want to talk about Richard Nixon and his flawed greatness, a greatness that is apparent when you contrast Nixon with Reagan.

And finally, author Eric Metaxis will come on. We're going to talk about this is kind of a pre-Christmas discussion on the evidence for God and Christianity. This is the Dineshtus is a podcast.

I want to talk about the concept of privilege. Now we often hear about white privilege. And white privilege is largely bogus. One easy indication that white privilege is not very operative today is simply ask yourself the question, in which direction are people trying to quote past?

So to pass is to pretend to be a member of the other race. By the way, about a hundred years ago, lots of people who were black or mixed race would try to pass as white. Why? Because all the privilege then, let's just say in 1921, was in fact white privilege.

But today you noticed that from Elizabeth Warren to Rachel Dulles, all to many others, people are trying to pass themselves off as something else. Pass themselves off as Latino, pass themselves off as Native American. And that's because quite obviously the legal privilege, the benefits for college admissions and government grants and promotions. And even the social chic is with, you may say, minority privilege.

But I want to talk about other types of privilege. I've talked before about American privilege, the privilege of being an American in the world. And that's a privilege that was very real. I think it still is real. But it was even more real between the 1940s, the end of World War II.

And I would say perhaps the election of Barack Obama, because what's been happening under Obama, now continuing under Biden, is an effort. And I think it is largely a conscious effort, an ideological effort to unwind, to undo American privilege.

I want to talk today, however, about a different kind of privilege. And it's the privilege of being raised in a nuclear or two-parent family. Now there's a whole body of research on the importance of being raised in a family.

And I recognize that when I use the term family, family structures can differ over time. There is no one kind of fixed recipe. Just to give you an example, I grew up in a country that has more extended families, the nuclear families. You walk into the typical Hindu home in India.

And it's not a dad and mom and two kids. That is the case in some families. But I would say in the majority, you will find grandparents, you will find three brothers living under the same roof with their wives and their children. So this kind of extended family is the Hindu. And to some degree, the Indian norm.

And of course, I recognize with divorce with other things, family structures can be somewhat varied. But that being said, there's no doubt that children benefit enormously from being raised in a family with two parents, a dad and a mom ideally, that are looking after you and that give you the benefit of their labor, their effort, their savings, they provide for you, they look after you, they put time into you, they invest in you.

And other family structures, single parent families, for example, or foster care, you don't quite have the same thing. And even though single moms may be working heroically to try to do multiple jobs, it's not as easy as I think these moms would be the first to tell you.

Now, the strength of America is the strength of its families. And all of this is a way of saying that the nuclear family, which was once really the norm in America has been shrinking.

Here is an article based upon the latest government data, just 18% of US household today would be considered, quote, nuclear families with a married couple and children.

Now, this is down from 40% in the 1970s. And what we find that there are a bunch of factors causing this. One is that women are marrying much later.

Men are marrying much later. The fertility rate is down. Many more Americans are living alone. The percentage of adults in the US living with a spouse is down 50% from 10 years ago.

Wow. So you have a lot of places, not just single moms with kids, but single dads or just single men living just by themselves. And there's a trend that is away from marriage and away from the nuclear family.

In 2021, 34% of those over age 15 have reported never being married. That's up from 23% in 1950. So these are important and lasting changes.

And now, the family crisis a generation ago, in fact, in the 1960s, was mainly thought to be a crisis of the black family. Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan now dead, but Daniel Patrick Moynihan did a famous report on what he called the Negro family.

I believe in 1965. And he said there's a crisis of the Negro family. The illegitimacy rate for blacks in the country is 25%. And people were a little shocked. Now, of course, some leftists tried to blame this on slavery.

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