The Essential Ingredient of a Strong Constitution

The Essential Ingredient of a Strong Constitution

October 23, 2025

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: David New

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 10/23/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand In the Gap Today, and it’s also our bimonthly focus on the Constitution and US history and other things as we get into it. Our recurring guest on this program from the very beginning when we began this years ago is Constitutional attorney David New. Now, while there are numerous and there really are, are many fundamental things, policies and changes being made or implemented or threatening to be made by, for instance, the current administration that directly impact one way or the other, the constitution, the constraints of the constitution, the guidelines, whatever. We could go that direction today that we could talk about it, but we’re not, we’re not going to do that. We’ll do that later. Instead though we’re going to go to a more fundamental underpinning and discuss a subject of great cultural importance, but one not normally directly associated with the Constitution, but according to David New and my guest today and should be, and I agree.

So you say, what is that? Well, the subject has to do with the family because we’re talking about the Constitution, we’re talking about the American family, but David argues and we’re going to talk about it more, that the secret to a strong constitution is the family. In other words, is there a direct connection between or there is a direct connection between the condition of the family and the strength of the Constitution. There’s a connection. Now. For instance, we know that God’s word places a great deal of emphasis on the family, the institution of the family. Why? Well, God himself instituted that concept in the book of Genesis as a religious institution because the family is not the only institution of civil society, but as a religious institution, the family is of the highest order. Several of the 10 commandments we know address specifically the family, including like the fifth and the Sixth Commandments.

And according to David, perhaps the most unusual thing about the institution of marriage is how, well, it’s how much atheists. Interesting. They like marriage, but they deny the existence of God and certainly God as the creator of the universe. So we’ll get into a number of things today, but he also claims that the strength of the US Constitution is in serious trouble today pointing to, well, for one thing the falling rate of marriage is in the United States. In today’s program, we’re going to examine the connection between the strength of the constitution and the condition of the American family, the statistics, the research describing the condition of the family and why the family condition impacts the strength of the Constitution. Then we’re going to conclude by identifying other related factors, kind of like a ripple effect. When the family is not well, it affects many other things, not just the fact that it’s a weak family. We’ll talk about all of those today. So the title I’ve chosen to frame our conversation is simply this, the essential ingredient of a Strong Constitution. Of course, you can figure out what that is. That’s the family. David, welcome to the program.

David New:

It’s nice to be with you and blessings to everyone with us today.

Sam Rohrer:

David, it’s always great to have you back. Look forward to this program and I know our listeners do too because we hear from them. Let’s get right into it. You claim that there is a direct connection between the condition of the family, in our case, the American family and the strength of our US constitution in several terms because we’ll build it out more, but what is that connection?

David New:

There is a direct connection, the 39 signers of our constitution. In 1787 they wrote a constitution with limited powers, limited powers, and the reason is Americans wanted the federal government to be a limited government so that they can live their lives the way they want to. And in freedom the less government there is, the more freedom the people have, the more government there is, the less freedom the people have. That was the philosophy of government in 1787 in the United States. Now, if you want to have limited government, how can you have that? How can that exist? How can government be doing limited things in society? Where’s the slack going to be made up shall we say? It’s going to be the family. If you have a strong family, you can have a limited government. If you have a very weak family in your culture, it’s going to be very difficult for the government to be small because a weak family will demand more services from the government. A strong family will not. A strong family will require less services from the government. In other words, you can have a limited government with limited powers as long as you’ve got a strong family to carry the load.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, David, make this connection here because our founders, we’ve talked about it before going way back into the days of William Penn here in Pennsylvania where I’m from and others made the comment that our frame of government from which came the declaration from which came the Constitution about which we’re talking this limited concept of could only succeed if individuals all were to voluntarily constrain their actions according to the 10 commandments of God. So they went right to the level of the individual, each individual, so there’s connection obvious between the individual, how he learns what he is and the family, but make that connection because they fully understood exactly what you said. You could not have a free government, I mean a free nation like ours unless there was a small government, but somebody else had to take up the slack. You’re taking the family, but they went right to the individual, make that connection.

David New:

Yes, in order to, it’s in the family where people learn to police themselves. If you want people to follow the 10 Commandments, that’s where they learned to do that. It’s in the family. It doesn’t come from the government. The government is not going to teach you to keep the 10 commandments. It’s going to be your mother and your father. So if you want to have a society with less government, that means people have to police themselves. If you don’t police yourself individually, each of us, then you’ve got to have more government to police them. So you have to internalize the police force. If the police force is internalized in my heart and in my spirit, I don’t need a policeman 24 7 watching me on how I behave.

Sam Rohrer:

All right, ladies and gentlemen, does that make sense? I’m sure it does. Maybe never thought about it quite like that, but the family is more important to everything than just the fact that you’ve got a family. It’s the laboratory, it’s the classroom, it’s the place where the values that carry out in the society are either learned or not learned, including individual self-control, which is what our founders said was necessary. Now that in mind we’ll be back in just a moment to continue the essential ingredient of a strong constitution, it really is the family and we’ll talk more about the state of the family in America today. Well, welcome back to Stand in N Gap Today. This is our bimonthly do it on Thursdays, bimonthly emphasis on the Constitution, American history and things involve with that. And David new constitutional attorney, historian, author and public speaker, that is who he is.

Been with us from the very, very beginning on this program for years now. We always learn a lot. Everybody learns a lot When we go down this road today, our theme is this, the essentially gradient of a strong constitution and we identified that in the last segment as the family. And so if you didn’t catch that first part, you need to go back and get it because we’re going to build on that going forward. David, let’s go here at this point because I’m going to say this if or since it makes sense to draw a correlation between the condition of the American family and the strength of the US Constitution. And you made it clear and I made it clear that there is a direct link and we built out just a few of those connections, but it also makes sense then to consider exactly and asked the question, what is the condition of the American family? So start out here, would you share some of the findings which you believe, current findings that you’ve looked at that you believe to be accurate and most important when it comes to actually diagnosing or looking at the condition of the American family today?

David New:

Absolutely. The statistics are very important. These are statistics that people don’t hear too much about and don’t talk too much about, but these numbers are just as important as the inflation rate, the unemployment rate, all these generally interested statistics that people watch and study and monitor the interest rate. These statistics that we’re going to go over now are just as important if not more important. And in fact, in many ways what we’re going to be talking about right now, the results of these bad numbers will show up at the crime rate. We’re talking about the future of the crime rate of the United States when we talk about these numbers, let’s start with USA fax.org. That is the source for these numbers, us a fax.org as well as a couple of other groups. All of ’em are secular just to make sure there’s no hidden agenda on the spiritual side because naturally Christians are very much interested in the family and we should be, but these are secular numbers.

Let’s talk about them. The US marriage rate plummets by 60% in the last 50 years. The marriage rate plummets nearly 60% in the last 50 years. When you hear that statistic, you understand why there is so much disunity in the country, why there’s so much ranker and anger in the country, why the crime rate is unreasonable and why kids are shooting each other in the public schools. All of these things come from this one statistic. Here’s another one. The marriage rate, the number of marriages per 1000 unmarried women has fallen by almost 60% since 1970. The increase, the first marriages, the age of people getting married in their first marriage has also gone up. The average age for a first marriage has increased from 24 for men and 22 for women in 1980 to today of 31 rather for men and 29 for women. Here’s interesting to show you how America has gone south in so many important ways. Compare this difference between 1949 and 2024, the percentage of households with a married couple peaked 75 years ago in 1949, at that time, the percentage of households with a married couple was 78.8%, just rounded to 80%. Now look what’s happened and 2024, that number has fallen from 78.8% in 1949, it has now fallen to 47.1%, 47.1%. That’s last year’s number.

Sam Rohrer:

And David, I’m going to change

David New:

When it became less than 50% was 2010. Since 2010 in the United States, the percentage of married couples leading households has been below 50%. At that year it was 49.7%. In other words, less than half of American households included have had a marriage couple at the head for over a decade, and that is very bad.

Sam Rohrer:

And David, I’m going to throw in here at this juncture, these numbers, that’s a lot. I mean people hearing this can’t remember all of what you have just stated, but when you’re talking in terms of 50% and 60% drops in the numbers that either say there is a home or people getting married or when if they do get married it’s way down the road, which obviously means less children and you’ll get into that. Some of that I thought it was interesting. I’m going to just restate what you said at the beginning. Here’s the connection. There’s an impact of this. You said, and I fully agree with you, these statistics that track marriage and the condition of the family and the home are numbers that actually are more important than the numbers of relating to economic growth or employment or unemployment or inflation number or crime statistics, all of those things which people focus on the most, they’re not focusing on the thing that in most cases creates them. That’s a great point and I wanted to emphasize that again before you go on.

David New:

Absolutely true, absolutely true. The key to a healthy society, to a healthy culture is marriages. Marriages are the thing that God has used as the building block for a community, a local community, a neighborhood, a city, a state, and a nation. It all boils down to moms and dads and little boys and little girls.

Sam Rohrer:

David, that’s interesting. We’ve got a couple minutes left in what you have researched. Those numbers that you gave are general numbers. Did you find any distinctions that they tracked relative by various cultures like white culture or black culture, Asian culture, those kind of things? Did any of those kind of numbers come up as well?

David New:

Yes, we can compare Asians with whites and blacks, Asians, their marriage rate have declined across all races and all ethnicities except for Asian men and women. This community is still very more traditional. Let’s see, their marriage rate has remained stable in 20 24, 60 0.8% of Asian men and 62.2% of Asian women were married. That’s nearly identical to 1990. Now whites, here it is. The marriage rate for white men dropped from 62.8% in 1990 to 54% in 2024. For white women, the rate dropped from 59.1% to 52.3%. So the marriage rate among Asians has remained relatively stable for whites, it has gone down. And then here’s a very bad and sad statistic. Black men and women have historically had the lowest rates of marriage among all races and ethnicities. And why is that true? That is the result of slavery. People who think that the problem of slavery and the effects of slavery have gone away and we’ve solved that problem are incorrect.

Slavery still has its effect in this country, in the United States and throughout the world, wherever it existed. For example, for black men, that rate dropped from 45.1% in 1990 to 37.8% today for black women, it dropped from 40.2% to 33.3% when they were debating the ratification of the 13th Amendment in Congress to pass it to end slavery, to make slavery illegal in the United States. One of the arguments that members of the Senate and the House made was saying that this institution of slavery violates the 10 Commandments. Because what happens is when black slave and a white woman’s slave, they get married by their standards, then the slave master can sell one or the other and what have you done? You’ve just destroyed any chance for that family to exist. And that’s why marriages are weaker still to this day among the black community. And that’s why the prisons are filled a lot with black minorities in this country. It’s the family,

Sam Rohrer:

Ladies and gentlemen, the essential ingredient of a strong constitution. The condition of the family, direct correlation to the strength of the constitution starts with the family. We just went through and gave the condition of the modern American family and the changes, it’s been significant. When we come back, we will make some application to this mountain. Alright, David, let’s continue in this discussion. I know that those listening found a lot of that information that you shared in the last segment to be astounding in some respects. Who would’ve known those statistics and the change that’s made? Although I would say most people listening are very much aware that there has been a major change who does not know whether it be perhaps their own family or families down the street or across the country that changes in the family have occurred. And it’s not like you connecting some of the numbers you’re talking to with the family to for instance, crime imprisonment.

It’s not like that’s the first time it’s been done. Those are numbers that actually have been connected for a long time. When I was in the legislature years ago, those numbers were there and people knew that there was a direct connection. But it is interesting to me, David, that the connection to those factors, there was not a connection made directly to the strength of the Constitution. And so we’re going to make a little bit more of that. We started the program here today, the claim that the condition of the American family stands in a direct relationship to the strength of the constitution. That is a key thought. So let’s build that out a little bit more and that would be the why. Now we’ve talked about the of the family, the condition of the family, but build this out a little bit more why question is, why is the family so important to our constitution? Why do you believe the family is the best indicator of the strength of the constitution?

David New:

Question. The family is the foundation and the building block for society and government. The family makes it possible for a constitution to work. Why? What is the first government, the very first government in any society, it is the family. The family is the first government. The family has its own executive branch. It has its own legislative branch. It has its own judicial branch to resolve disputes. The executive is supposed to be the husband, the father, the legislative branch very frequently is a combination of the father and the mother. And of course these two very frequently will be involved in solving disputes within the family. So how does a child learn how a constitution should work? The child learns the basic rules for government and society from his or her own family, and it goes on the family is the first church. That’s the first church or the first synagogue or anything.

The first church is the family. This is where children learn social skills to live in society. This is where children learn to obey the greatest commandment, to love the Lord thy God. And the second greatest commandment to love thyself is thy neighbor. The father teaches a child the justice of God. The mother teaches a child the love of God. You’ve got to have both. The family is the first public school. If you’ve got good public schools, you’re going to have a good constitution. So the family is very, very important in so many ways. It is the first step to having a strong nation and a strong government.

Sam Rohrer:

You built that up very well, David, because it really, really is, and again, it’s interesting to, as you’re doing to note that I would submit that there are far too few people regardless of their position. I mean I’m going to say if then because what you said is true, the family that microcosm, that is the demonstration of God many times. I mean not many times. It is true that for a child, their first view of God is their father, how their father deals with them. That’s a common thing that most people would know or if they don’t know, they ought to consider that because it’s true. The Father is the law giver. Justice and truth is what you’re talking about there. And the mom comes along and together they bring the justice and the love of God, a demonstration, all these things you’re saying laying out perfectly correct.

If a child cannot function in the setting of a home, how can he function in society? I mean it makes sense, but that’s perfect. It’s just that those in government today don’t know that correlation. They don’t speak about it. They don’t encourage it for the reasons that you just said. But even in our own churches, I don’t think that’s taught sufficiently. It’s a profound thought, but it’s biblical and it’s very simple. Now let’s walk to this next piece here and then we’ll come back into it. One of the things, the numbers you gave indicate this, that not only are official marriages, husband and wife together committed. Not only is that marriage rate the number of men and women together go enter adulthood that in the marriage relationship, not only is that plummeted, which means you have that many children in homes. If children do come along, they’re not in a home with moms and dads, they’re not married, they may be living together. But another one of the things you’ve noted is that the dismal marriage rates also relate to or they should consideration of why do young people choose either not to get married in the first place or to postpone their marriages to where you’re saying now the average age is like 31 or whatever you said for males and 29 for women, very, very, they’re way into the age of childbearing. So why is that delay the decision not to get them right in the first place?

David New:

Well, for one thing, we’re not reproducing ourselves in the United States. We’re not replacing our population, we’re having in the family is about 1.6 birth rate where we need a birth rate of over two to replace the current population We have, this is one of the reasons why Democrats and other groups want open borders to bring these people, to increase our population, to at least be able to keep the number where it’s at. It may be a good idea, but the consequences are quite severe in terms of crime. We’ve got over 300,000 kids, we don’t know where they are, we don’t know what they’re doing and we don’t know how they’re being abused or whether anybody’s taking care of them. If you want to find out what the family means, go to prison, talk to those people. The theme that you will see over and over and over again is the family they came from.

Now the government does try to do things to help the family that gives a child tax credit. These numbers suggest we should raise for those who filed married filing jointly, couples, married couples. These statistics say that we probably should increase the child tax credit to make it more affordable to have children. The earned income credit that you can get if you’re very, very poor from the federal government, that basically is limited to married people, especially married people with children. So the government is doing some things to help the family along, but it’s also doing some bad things because they extended the marital deduction to gays and lesbians who are not married. They may go down to city hall, they may stand before a civil clerk and the civil clerk will hand them a marriage license, but that is as close to a marriage they’re ever going to get. God does not recognize gay and lesbian marriages. So there are many things that the government is doing to help the family, but it’s not doing it enough.

Sam Rohrer:

And David looking at our time, we’ve got about a minute left in this segment that probably is causing people to think because there are more things even than that and people can, under the guise of helping families is how socialism advances. We’ve talked about that. So there are things like subsidy programs and all of that that are put out there as a, we love the family, but in reality it makes dependence, it makes people dependent on government and then people begin to look to government instead to God. There’s a whole lot of things. So what we’re saying and what you’re saying is not, I mean it’s simple in some regards, but it requires a great deal of wisdom to understand the application of it, doesn’t it?

David New:

Yes, because it is very expensive to have children. It is very expensive and this is part of the problem. It’s so expensive that a lot of people are choosing not to have children. So either the economy road, the pie has got to get bigger so that there’s more money to go around for everybody. We don’t want the government to doing too much but always had child tax credit. We’ve had that since the tax credit, not

Sam Rohrer:

Since we started. Okay. All right. Well David, we’re at the break, so I’m going to have to go on here. Ladies and gentlemen, you understand that. Anyway, we’ll come back and we’ll extend this a little bit and say, all right, now if you’ve got a weak family, in what way, what other ways does this ripple go out in effect, Nicole? Well, welcome back. We’re entering into our final segment now. Thanks for being on board with us today. And I hope that this consideration, this linkage between the condition of the family and the strength of the constitution that David knew and I’ve been talking about today, that that connection is not only if it wasn’t made before, that you do see it now and understand just some of why it is so important to have strong families. It’s not just, well, you cannot measure the impact of weak families or strong families other than the fact that God says he will bless those who fear him and keep his commandments as a condition to his blessing on a nation or a family.

And that of course starts with the family and then everything else works out from there. David, before we, I ask you to identify some of those other, I’m going to call them those ripple effects that flow from either a strong family or a weak family that directly relate to whether or not in this case our constitution is adhered to, is maintained, is revered, that is honored or however you want to say it, whether or not it has any viability or not and how that relates to the family. But I want to give you just a couple of minutes here just to give some commentary on the fact of how did we get to where we are now? We cited and you cited where we are, but frankly, how did we get there? And because we started in Genesis with the family, connect some of those pieces, it should be obvious, but make the

David New:

Connection ladies and gentlemen, one of the excellent parts of the Bible that talks about the family and the marriage relationship can be found in the book of Ephesians, the fifth chapter starting in verse 19 all the way down to verse 33, the end of the chapter. It is just filled with wonder and beautiful things to say about the husband and the wife. One of the reasons why families are the marriage relation has declined in the United States is respect for marriage itself as an institution has declined. Respect for the institution of marriage itself has declined in the United States. How and what way? Liberal leave divorce laws, you want to destroy the institution of marriage. You back liberal leave divorce laws in the United States before the revolution, you couldn’t get a divorce in the United States. You couldn’t go to court and get a divorce if you even tried to get a divorce before the revolution, you had to go to the state legislature, to the colonial governments and they didn’t give it.

There are constitutions like the South Carolina constitution of 1895 if I got their date right, that specifically says divorce is not allowed in South Carolina. What does that do? It makes the marriage institution a highly prized institution. It gives respect to the marriage institution and it elevates the status of woman in the community because she is not a slave, she’s not a sex object, she is a marriage partner. So if you want to have strong marriages, you’ve got to reinforce the institution itself. If you want the marriage rate to go back up, you need to reinforce the institution of marriage. And of course another way that people have lost respect for the institution of marriage is gay marriage. There’s nothing more destructive than having an alternate lifestyle that is fundamentally immoral, andr and physically extremely unhealthy. There’s a few things more destructive to the institution of marriage than to have same sex marriage. It is a poison pill to any society.

Sam Rohrer:

And David, I think that is all very, very clear and well stated and it does come back to ladies and gentlemen, our view of God. And of course we talk about in some other programs that George Barn and I we’re down to what 3% of the American public hold actually embrace a biblical worldview. Do you not think these things are connected? Of course they are connected as one’s view of God determines all of these things. So as a nation views, God does not make sense. That so will be our view of life and how that shaped and it goes way just beyond the view of marriage or the institution of marriage. When the view of God is weak, the home is weak, the family structure is weak, so will be the citizen’s view of life and duty and attitudes towards the law, their understanding of what is truth and what is justice and what is the purpose for government.

And then when they get into government, do they think that they’re there because they’re kings and they’re smarter than anybody else? Or are they there because they understand what the Bible says, that they are there as a servant of God accountable to him and to the people? Does that not make sense? Dave, we only have a couple of minutes left here, but give just a couple of the other ripple things, which I threw a few things in there. But when you have that weak family and those children are not coming out equipped as we’re talking about understanding God’s plan, it makes the adhering to the Constitution, the respect for the Constitution. It makes all of that an impossibility, doesn’t it?

David New:

Yes, it does. It’s not going to work. And that’s why the Constitution is in trouble. That’s why the law in the United States, respect for the law is in trouble because we don’t have strong families. One of the most beautiful passages in the Bible is in Ephesians 5 32. This shows you how important God thinks of the family. Because look what Paul said. He said, this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church that shows you how important the relation of Christ to the church is. And he used the institution of marriage to show that relationship between Christ and the church. God himself is a family. You’re talking about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. You are talking about a family and what God is doing through the salvation process is increasing his family

Sam Rohrer:

And ladies and gentlemen, the family of God. And I hope that you are a member of the family of God. How’s one do that well by faith in Jesus Christ alone, faith alone in Christ alone, God’s plan. That’s how it’s done. And that’s how one can become an adopted child within God’s family. But that’s God’s plan. And that model is the model that is the model for what the family, civil family of today should be. Well, it’s hard to do, but the Bible tells us the benefits of it and it does give us instruction in how to do it. So just as we end up here today, a correlation between the family, the essential ingredient between that and our constitution, the condition of the family direct relationship to the strength of our constitution. David New, thank you so much for being with me today. A great theme and I believe a lot of information that practical, helpful to all who are listening. For all you listening, thanks so much for being a part of the program today. Pick up this program again. Stand in the gap radio.com and on our app, and if you’ve enjoyed this, pass it along to a friend, let them be aware as well. This message, we’ll encourage a lot of people, but a lot of people need to hear it perhaps for the first time.