CHAUTAUQUA–Let’s pick up where we left off 13 weeks ago.

“When this columnist was in elementary school, it was common for children from Christian families to ask each other where they went to church.

“Almost all such children and their families did so regularly, not just when the church had poinsettias or Easter lilies. …

“It’s no secret that many American Christians have pulled up their own such anchors. …

“Attendance drops because people for many reasons drift away from organized Christianity.”

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Another building block of Western civilization is the household headed up by a married couple.

It’s no secret that the drop in such households is hardly a positive trend.

Does that mean divorce is never necessary? No, it doesn’t. It can be the least worst way to put an end to unsolvable problems.

Still, this drop is hardly a positive trend.

If you like analyzing issues with demographics, please consider this: The greatest number of people on social-welfare programs of whatever variety are unmarried white women and their children.

Yet whatever the demographics, it’s no secret that the absence of fathers from households is hardly a positive trend for either boys or girls, and for quite different reasons.

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With that in mind, meet Larry Elder, lawyer, radio-talk show host, and the candidate for governor of California in the unsuccessful 2021 gubernatorial-recall election who received the most votes of all the challengers.

Elder is also a Republican and by no stretch of the imagination a Republican in Name Only, or RINO.

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A fellow airline passenger once recognized him and called him John Elway.

Get it? Elder and Elway?

“No,” Elder said: Elway won Super Bowls with the Denver Broncos, “and he’s white.” Other than that, the fellow passenger “nailed it.”

Speaking to Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC, on July 28, Elder made many points, including during the question-and-answer time.

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Speaking of households, Elder said “the breakdown of the family … is by far the number-one problem plaguing the black community and plaguing the country. By far.

“Forty percent of all American kids enter the world today without a father in the home married to the mother.

“Twenty-five percent of white kids do, up from 8 percent back in 1965 when Lyndon Johnson launched the so-called war on poverty. What he did was incentivize women to marry the government, and incentivize men to abandon the natural role of financial responsibility.

“That’s the number-one social problem in America.

“Not systemic racism, not covert racism, not overt racism, not any of the other adjectives that they put up there. It’s a bunch of nonsense.”

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A pastor in the audience asked whether Elder has “been able to meet with a group of black pastors … and what has been their response to you?”

“Good question,” Elder said. “When I ran for governor, I had a virtual meeting with around eight of them.

“And everything was going okay until I told them the number-one problem facing the black community was not police brutality. It was the epidemic of fatherlessness, and they went ballistic, and it was caustic.

“And I stood my ground. … They didn’t want to hear it. I said Barack Obama … once said if you’re raised without a father, you’re five times more likely to be poor and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in jail. So (this) is by far a bigger problem than the police systemic racism that you speak about. And they weren’t happy about it.

“These are people that are influence makers and … not facing up to the number one problem facing this country.”

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On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of most of its speakers.

ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

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Dr. Randy Elf’s Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on “How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich,” is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3ebymA7xOo.

COPYRIGHT © 2025 BY RANDY ELF