It comes up because holidays traditionally are times when family and friends gather.  And this year, for many reasons, I received a lot of criticism from many people for my family-first approach.  And to be blunt about it, which I usually let slide because we only see some of these people for a few hours each year, this year a lot of vacant people were very critical of me.  But, as I mentioned regarding the new baby in my family, who is my fourth grandchild, there are many people who see happy and successful individuals and, by nature, want to associate with them by default.  However, I don’t like to see my immediate family exploited by people who invest a lot less in building good families. For me and the people in my immediate family, we put a lot of work into it every day.  Much more work than most typical families do.  My wife, for instance, will do anything for her family, or, to put it another way, for her immediate family, including her kids and grandkids, and even the spouses who come with them.  And I work like a madman to make sure that my wife can dedicate more than 100% of her life to that kind of endeavor because I think that is the most critical job in the world, being a loving, and dedicated mother and a patrilocal leader that the next generation can look up to, and emulate while nurturing their traits.  It’s pretty hilarious when people who don’t put in nearly the amount of work that we do insist on sharing my family with a bunch of derelicts who want pictures of everyone with them standing next to them for their Facebook profiles.  They want the looks of a happy family without doing the work.  Given our busy schedule, we often make decisions about this or that, and those who were left out of the process were upset and critical of me, which doesn’t fly.  This year, because we were so busy, we skipped one of the holiday events that had at the center of it a crazy lunatic who is on her fourth husband, has been getting and encouraging her kids to get tattoos, she smokes dope, and her husband is in jail for at least decades over sexual molestation.  And that idiot wants to be in a picture with my wife and kids just to call it a happy family?  I don’t think so.  We don’t waste our time on people like that for a good reason. 

I wouldn’t say I am not compassionate to people who have spent over 50 years making terrible decisions, and that they have to live in that bag of bones they call a body for the rest of their lives, I might feel a little sorry for them.  However, as the leader of my family, I put in the work at a level that I don’t see anybody else doing, and it shows.  For a good example, even though it’s something I consider private, I am posting a video of a recent ghost hunt my family did at Old Man’s Cave in Hocking Hills, Ohio.  I share it because I think of it as the perfect family environment for everyone involved, and we do things like this all the time.  Most people, like the person I described, and those around her, do not come close to building good families.  That train wreck of a person, my wife and I tried to help when she was younger.  She was always a mess, and she would take it out on her kids.  We’d tell her not to hit them in the head as a way to demean them when punishing them.  She took it personally and would be upset with our criticism, especially since it came from me.  And she has always tried to do the opposite of whatever I told her, purely out of spite.  So it’s no wonder now her life is such a disaster. 

However, choices have consequences in life, and many people no longer know what a good family is supposed to look like.  They don’t know what a good person is supposed to be, let alone a family full of them.  However, in my family, I would say that my wife and I put in significantly more effort to create a good family, and it shows.  And a lot of people who don’t put in all that work grab on to them like life rafts in a raging sea for their own benefit.  It might help them out, but it pulls down my kids, and I don’t like it, and I let people know about it.  So if they get upset, that’s fine.  I might write an article like this to explain it.  I wouldn’t say I don’t care at all, I at least care that much.  But you can’t bring people into a family setting like that broken person, with all the connections to her broken life, and expect everything to be okay.  You can have compassion for those who are broken.  But you can’t let their bad decisions cascade into the lives of people who still have a chance.  My policy is that if we are swamped, we prioritize social engagements where all the participants are genuinely engaged and have something to give back, rather than taking from us and leaving us feeling depleted for weeks afterward.  We avoid looters who only care about the pictures so they don’t feel like such failures in life.  But for my family, it’s like crawling through the mud only to find that there isn’t a shower at the end of it, and it’s hard to get clean.  We get nothing out of it but getting dirty.  And we don’t like getting dirty.

It’s not usually a problem worth talking about.  But this year, because we have a new baby in the family, and because of the holidays where people invite us to come, but we don’t, and they get mad about it, I get the blame for having standards that are too high for them to live up to.  They say that I am a super controller and that I keep my family hidden away on an island.  We don’t send our kids to public schools to interact with other delinquents, and since I’m the leader of the family, I get the blame.  But I say to them, don’t live bad lives and be a bad example to my kids and grandkids.  Yes, my kids are adults now and can make their own decisions about things.  But they care what Dad thinks, and I let them know the truth and the whole truth to help them make decisions.  And they usually make the right choices.  However, those who make a poor choice often become upset that I point out what a loser they are, and that I judge them, which, according to them, I shouldn’t.  And as said to me over the Memorial Day weekend of 2025, “Jesus said not to judge.”  And my comment was, “Well, that’s fine for Jesus.  But look what happened to him, they hung him on a cross and killed him.  That’s not going to happen to me.”  And ultimately, if you are leading a family, they count on you to be there for them at all times.  Not just to send text messages a few times a year and to show up for family pictures on holidays.  You can’t just appear to be a good person; you have to be one.  And you can’t use money to hide what garbage you are as a person, and expect people not to see it.  I see everything.  And I offer advice to help people have better lives.  And if they don’t listen, that’s on them.  But don’t expect me to open my doors to the wolves of the world.  My policy is to shoot them on site, because if left alone, they will eat all your children.  And that doesn’t make an outstanding leader in a family.  Some of the people who are most critical of me at this point in their lives let the wolves into their house.  And the consequences are obvious and can’t be undone now.  I can feel sorry for them.  But that doesn’t mean I have time to waste on them, especially if they showed me in the past that they won’t listen anyway.

To put to rest a popular misconception advocated by Hillary Clinton and other progressive, anti-family global communists, it doesn’t take a village to raise a family. It takes two parents, a man and a woman, who are long-married and keep as many corrosive elements from social decay away from the growing minds of children. And encourages the adults to live happy, and healthy lives. And the village can’t do that. Only strong parents and great examples can. If left to society as a whole, it will destroy all in its path, 100% of the time. In nature, life consumes life, and society will sacrifice your children to the chaos of the universe. Stopping that process is an intellectual decision, that only humans seem capable of performing. Which allows a person to grow in ways that otherwise, would never be possible.

Rich Hoffman

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