The Heritage Foundation states: “Heritage’s mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”

Those words may sound nice, but talk is cheap. What happens when it comes time to act?

From Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation and his podcast cohost:

After years of rigorous research, I am proud to announce the release of The Heritage Foundation’s newest paper, “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.”

In creating this pivotal paper, our scholars challenged outdated assumptions, studied other nation’s attempts to reverse declining families (both successful and unsuccessful), and put our best minds to work to create actionable solutions.

The result is a set of bold, practical reforms designed to help American families live the good life

I’m writing this post based on what looks to me like a person and an institution doing what they condemn others for, in the process violating their own values, apparently knowingly. I mostly collected quotes. I hope you don’t mind my text between the quotes being brief. To clarify: I’m not trying to impose my values on them; I’m juxtaposing their actions and their words.

Two steps that will sound nice to his constituents, before the big socialist, big government redistribution of resources:

Third, the federal government should supply tangible benefits to married families. This could include deposits in marriage investment accounts, extending the adoption tax credit to newborn children, and applying federal tax benefits for paid childcare to parents who choose to raise their children at home.

This plan could have come right out of the New Deal. It’s based on experts insiders in Washington DC figuring out how to run the country better than you can.

It redistributes resources from taxpayers to those whom Mr. Roberts and his genius beltway insiders feel deserve it. Sure, I value family, but it’s my choice how to spend my money. You’re using the government’s power to coerce money from me.

Of course, like all socialist programs, it’s in the name of something we all value. That’s how they all begin. Is there any big-government program that didn’t start with the best intentions? Heritage’s usual talking points apply: Sure, you like it now, but say it achieves its goals. Do you think the bureaucrats you hired will just pack up and go home and forego their cushy, powerful jobs?

Do you think free money for having kids might end up with unintended side effects?

Do you think taking money from people just for not having kids will have other unintended side effects?

Do you think he realized that using the state to promote making babies put him in the company of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Putin as I posted in Are more people always better?

Does he think he and his experts can guide markets centrally better than people responding to price signals?

He said on his podcast, “if you look at good social science analysis, is that at least per capita there is less consumption by large families because it’s so doggone expensive.” Okay, it’s expensive to have kids. Making me pay for others doesn’t make it cheaper. It just coerces me.

He does what everyone does when they try to take your money. He implies that everything will fall apart otherwise, or at least the nation will:

if you want an America, and you want an America that is a beacon of freedom, economic freedom, freedom in every other respect, then you have to have an America that is built not on sort of atomized people or communities, but communities, people that are really connected, not just as families, but very healthy local communities and governments. You’ve got to have a healthy critical mass of population in order for this to happen.

Stop threatening me!

He touts his experts who must know how to run an economy better than any of us: “my scholars colleagues at Heritage have to think long-range to be introducing those ideas and those policies into the mix. That’s why it’s important for us to be so bold at Heritage in talking about family policy.“

He continues, “in our last episode, we talked about China and their one-child policy and how it may just be irreversible really at this point. We’re in chaos right now because of that.“

So your answer to the government intruding into family decisions is to have the government intrude into family decisions?

He continues, “one of the things that I think my colleagues at Heritage do well is connect policy solutions with also helping to persuade the popular opinion.” You mean propaganda?

More New Deal-like experts telling people what to do: “We went into the study thinking, we’re going to find out at Heritage what the government should offer as incentives to get the marriage rate and maybe the birth rate up to a certain number and a certain level.“

More redistribution of wealth plans by his chosen experts: “In Heritage, we will want to pay for that money by having commensurate, corresponding budget cuts elsewhere. That’s always our ideal.“

He criticizes Mamdani, saying, “Last I checked government can’t make things more affordable. Haven’t seen that yet,” yet he’s trying to make having kids more affordable. Does he believe government messing with markets is okay when it’s what he wants but not when it’s what other people want?

He knows he’s starting on a slippery slope: “we don’t even have a replacement birth rate. And so, how do we fix that? Maybe automation can help with that. But if we were to spend a little bit of money, especially with tax incentives, whereas conservatives, we’ve largely made peace with most of those, you know, not all of those. And if we would be willing for a half decade to see if some of those on sort of a pilot basis would work, is that worth the experiment? We’ve said at Heritage, yes, because we’ve tried everything else and it isn’t working.” Stop fiddling with people’s private choices and redistributing wealth.

Does the following sound more like it’s coming from the New Deal or Mussolini’s award for mothers who have many kids: “having a couple of tax incentives, as we’ve written about in this family policy paper, toward marriage, to encourage marriage, the law can, beyond just the material incentive for marriage and that policy, the law can actually encourage people maybe to get married sooner.

Here’s his clear statement of government paying people to have babies with my money: “The second bucket is a new idea. And it’s something that expands the so-called Trump accounts, which is a thousand bucks for children born after a certain day. We want to expand that to a $5,000 tax credit for each man and woman who gets married by the age of 30. The idea being that you’ve got $10,000 that helps you perhaps with a down payment, or perhaps it helps you eliminate some other debt that’s standing in the way of qualifying for even a low down payment home. We’re also theorizing, we’ll write more about this later in 2026 and 2027, that we might be able to do a lifetime account that’s sort of paired with Social Security,“

Charlie Kirk promoted socialism too

Charlie Kirk advised men to “have more kids than you can afford.”

Sounds cute until you think about what it means, which is socialism. That is, when parents have more kids than they can afford, someone else has to pay. Often family, friends, neighbors, churches, and others will provide voluntary support. That’s their business, but everyone knows that being unable to afford kids is different than being unable to afford nearly anything else you might have more than you can afford of.

The government will always help people keep their kids. Kirk knows his advice will lead to some people receiving money from the government, forcing me to pay for other people’s kids. Why not just be clear you want to tax people for your values as much as those you disagree with want to tax people for their reasons.

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