During the next nine months de Tocqueville and de Beaumont traveled from Rhode Island to New York, as far west as Lake Michigan and as far south as New Orleans. During their travels they talked to farmers, lawyers, merchants, politicans and settlers, gaining insights in the political, cultural and economic character of the United States.
On returning to France, de Tocqueville detailed his observations in the two-volume work, Democracy in America. Among his many insights, de Tocqueville marveled at the propensity of Americans to create all manner of voluntary associations. In Democracy in America, he wrote:
Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations . . . . In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.
In the United States if you manage to graduate from high school and delay having children until your twenties and after you are married, the likelihood of being on welfare once in your life is less than 5%. If any of these three conditions are not met, the likelihood of needing welfare increases dramatically. If you manage to remain married, your odds of welfare are further reduced. A lot of life's outcomes depend upon personal decisions. A lot depends on creating stable and nurturing families.
Imagine a man and wife and their children with a household income of $50,000. If they divorce and form two households, their average household income drops to $25,000. Social statistics will reflect this decline. However, it is not the consequence of either a wise or foolish economic policy. Governments are important, but sometimes social problems require changes in hearts and minds.
The Promise Keepers is a voluntary association like the ones de Tocqueville so marveled at. It is a revival movement intent on helping men ask forgiveness for ignoring their family responsibilities, for neglecting to nurture their children, for expecting wives to serve them when it is they who should serve their wives and for failing to achieve racial reconciliation. The movment aims at changing society one soul at a time.
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