Colin Powell on Families & Children Secretary of State (Pres. Bush Cabinet)

1990s: Focused on kids, not think tanks

It is revealing to note not only who attended these meetings from 1998 to 2000 but who was absent. Colin Powell was not at the table.

Even if Powell had been invited, he would probably not have come. He avoided foreign policy study groups. In private life after retirement from the military, he devoted his energies to several youth organizations, including the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Howard University and the United Negroes College Fund. He prided himself that he liked to focus on kids, not think tanks.

Promise One: Ongoing relationships with caring adults

Communities need to provide all young people with sustained adult relationships through which they experience support, care, guidance, and advocacy. Ideally, youth develop sustained connections with:
• Parents or other caregivers.
• Extended family members.
• Neighbors and other adults youth see in their daily lives.
• Adults who spend time with youth through schools and programs, including coaches, teachers, mentors, child care workers, youth workers, and employers.

Promise Two: Safe places during nonschool hours

Young people need structure, and they need to be physically and emotionally safe. Providing safe places and structured activities has many benefits both to young people and society. This promise can:
• Connect youth to principled and caring adults.
• Nurture young people’s skills and capacities, including social skills, vocational interests, and civic responsibility.
• Protect youth from violence and other dangerous or negative influences.
• Create a peer group that exerts positive influence on each other.
• Provide opportunities for children and youth to contribute to their community and society.
• Enrich young people’s academic performance and educational commitment.

GOP values fuel families; families build communities

And values fuel families. Families that are bound together by love and commitment. Families that then have the strength to withstand the assaults of contemporary life -- to resist the images of violence and vulgarity that flood into their lives every day. Families that come together as communities to defeat the scourge of drugs and crime and incivility that threatens us. That’s why we Republicans believe that the family, fueled by values, must be restored to the central place in American life if we are to keep the dream alive.

Family is important, but don't impose "family values"

Family is important, but don't impose "family values"

Family is important, but don’t impose “family values”

A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass

A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass. I remember who easy it was for my mother to snap me back into line with a simple rebuke: “I’m ashamed of you. You embarrassed the family.” I wonder where our national sense of shame has gone.