College for the Home-Schooled Is Shaping Leaders for the Right
 

PURCELLVILLE, Va. — As one of 12 siblings taught at home by their parents in St. Croix Falls, Wis., Abram Olmstead knew he would fit right in at Patrick Henry College, the first college primarily for evangelical Christian home-schoolers. But what really sold him was the school's pipeline into conservative politics.

Of the nearly 100 interns working in the White House this semester, 7 are from the roughly 240 students enrolled in the four-year-old Patrick Henry College, in Purcellville. An eighth intern works for the president's re-election campaign. A former Patrick Henry intern now works on the paid staff of the president's top political adviser, Karl Rove. Over the last four years, 22 conservative members of Congress have employed one or more Patrick Henry interns in their offices or on their campaigns, according to the school's records.

"I would definitely like to be active in the government of our country and stuff," Mr. Olmstead, 19, said as he sat in a Christian coffeehouse near the campus, looking up from a copy of Plato's "Republic." "I would love to be able to be a foreign ambassador, and I would really like to move into the Senate later in my career."

The college's knack for political job placement testifies to the increasing influence that Christian home-schooling families are building within the conservative movement. Only about half a million families around the country home-school their children and only about two-thirds identify themselves as evangelical Christians, home-schooling advocates say. But they have passionate political views, a close-knit grass-roots network and the financial support of a handful of wealthy patrons. For all those reasons, home-schoolers have captured the attention of a wide swath of conservative politicians, many of whom are eager to hire Patrick Henry students.

When President Bush signed legislation last fall banning the procedure it calls partial-birth abortion, Michael Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and the president of Patrick Henry, was one of just five prominent Christian conservatives invited to the Oval Office for the occasion.

Patrick Henry College is the centerpiece of an effort to extend the home-schooling movement's influence beyond education to a broad range of conservative Christian issues like opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and obscenity in the media. The legal defense association, located on the Patrick Henry campus, established the college as a forward base camp in the culture war, with the stated goal of training home-schooled Christian men and women "who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values."

"We are not home-schooling our kids just so they can read," Mr. Farris said. "The most common thing I hear is parents telling me they want their kids to be on the Supreme Court. And if we put enough kids in the farm system, some may get to the major leagues."

That is an alarming prospect to some on the left.

"Mike Farris is trying to train young people to get on a very right-wing political agenda," said Nancy Keenan, the education policy director at People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, and a former Montana state superintendent of public education. The number of Patrick Henry interns in the White House "scares me to death," she said. "It tells us a little bit more about the White House than it does about the kids."

Mingling in the corridors of the White House and Congress is also a long way from the sense of retreat at the heart of the Christian home-schooling movement. It began in the early 1980's as a few thousand evangelical Christians began teaching their children at home in disgust at what they considered the increasingly secular, relativistic and irreligious culture ascendant around them — exemplified by the ban on prayer, the teaching of evolution and the promotion of contraception in the public schools.

The Home School Legal Defense Association, which now counts 81,000 families each paying about $100 a year in dues, was founded in 1983 by Mr. Farris, a lawyer who had been a protégé of Tim LaHaye, the conservative Christian political organizer and best-selling author. Mr. Farris and his wife home-schooled their own 10 children. Like Mr. LaHaye, Mr. Farris is a novelist. He has written three legal thrillers involving conservative Christian issues. His latest, "Forbid Them Not," begins with a Democratic landslide in the 2004 elections that leads to a nightmare of laws blocking parents from spanking their children, teaching their children fundamental Christianity or schooling them at home.

Membership in the home-school association grew by more than 50 percent a year for most of its first decade, association officials said. From the outset, the association fought state regulations requiring home-schooling parents to have college or high school diplomas, to pass certification tests, or to submit to visits by professional educators or social workers. It won a long series of legislative and court victories culminating in a 1993 decision by the Michigan Supreme Court, which eliminated the final major obstacle to home schooling in any of the 50 states.

By 1994, Mr. Farris was ready to flex the association's muscles. When Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, introduced a bill requiring teachers to have certain credentials, Mr. Farris warned the association's members that home-schooling parents might face the same tests (something Mr. Miller denied). Thousands of angry home-school parents and their allies deluged Congress with so many faxes and telephone calls that it temporarily shut down the Capitol Hill telephone system.

The House ultimately voted overwhelmingly to delete the provision. "They made a big impact on people's minds that fateful day," said former Representative Dick Armey, Republican of Texas, a longtime champion of home schooling who proposed the deletion. "They got a taste of the game and found out they could be a major player."

By 1997, however, most of the association's state battles had been won and its membership growth had slowed to about 12 percent a year. Mr. Farris began looking for a new frontier. "I try to figure out how we can fix systems, so I started focusing on a bigger system," he said in an interview in February.

His answer was a college just for home-schoolers.

"Parents would ask me, `Is there a school that has the Christian character I am looking for?' " Mr. Farris said. "And congressmen would ask, `Mike, do you have a sharp home-schooler who can come and work for me?' "

One of the first and most significant contributors to sign on was Dr. James Leininger, a Texas physician, home-schooling parent and part-owner of the San Antonio Spurs. Dr. Leininger had made a fortune as controlling shareholder of the medical-bed manufacturer Kinetic Concepts Inc. He also owned a conservative political consulting and direct-mail business, and he had already become one of the biggest political contributors in Texas. He became known for backing Christian conservative candidates to the state's influential school board. And, as a board member of Children First America, he was also a major patron of the push for school tuition vouchers.

At a 1999 dinner in honor of George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, held by one of Dr. Leininger's several foundations, Mr. Bush called his host "a good man and a great Texan," The Dallas Morning News reported.

Dr. Leininger did not respond to calls for comment.

"Jim has been a very good and very faithful friend to the college," said Jack W. Haye, chairman of its board and a Texas executive of the Wells Fargo Bank. Other trustees include Janet Ashcroft, wife of Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The board helped establish a 106-acre campus with six red brick buildings on rolling green hills.

Thanks to the generosity of its donors, Patrick Henry operates with no debt, eschews federal financial support and charges about $15,000 per student a year for tuition, about $10,000 less than some comparable small colleges. The average SAT score is about 1320, roughly comparable to Notre Dame or the University of Virginia.

About two-thirds of the students major in government. It is one of the few schools that offer a special program in intelligence and foreign affairs.

Now Mr. Farris is trying to enlist even younger students in Christian conservative politics. He estimates that there are more than two million home-schooling children in the country, or more than the number of children attending New Jersey public schools, and in February he sent a letter encouraging home-schooling families to enroll their children in Generation Joshua, a new hands-on civics program for home-schooled teenagers. Participants will learn about government by helping conservative churches get voters to the polls and by volunteering for the campaigns of like-minded conservative politicians, he said.

"Home-school teens could become one of the most powerful forces in American politics, rivaling the labor unions in effectiveness," Mr. Farris wrote, adding, "The best way to train the leaders of tomorrow is to have our young people help to elect the leaders of today."

- DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/ed...08HOME.html?hp

hahaha a liberal rag like the NYT complaining about right wing home schooling is hilarious, liberals must be outraged that they won't get a chance to brainwash them at one of their fine schools dominated by liberal professors.

[obligatory complementary exercise in polarized futility]

That's right, keep 'em home, safe from 'liberal brainwashing,' teach 'em they're too precious even to go to a private school with all the riff-raff, shelter 'em from the real world so they lack all empathy for real people, drill 'em full of fairy tale religious morality to curtail any ability to rationalize real moral issues for themselves, put 'em in a mommy-and-daddy insured Porsche at 16 and make sure they never have to get their hands dirty at a real job...

...and they turn into, surprise surprise, over-privileged ass-kissing robot lap dogs of the "conservative right."

[/obligatory complementary exercise in polarized futility]

:tu:

heh, Dennis Prager was all over this earlier, the ultra liberal Times put this on the front page in hopes to ignite some kind of hysteria

OMG EVIL "RIGHTIES" LOOK THEY ARE EVIL TEACHING KIDS THEMSELVES!! PUT THEM IN FEDERALLY FUNDED UNIVERSITIES SO WE CAN BRAINWASH THEM!!!!!!!! OMG SO EVIL!!

i can only imagine the outrage if the Post put out an article called "College Universities are Shaping Leaders for the Left" there'd be chaos in the streets.

ha, that's such a rightwing canard. anything that doesn't lean towards advocating capital punishment for practicing familly planning is "ultra liberal" for you guys.

now the daily worker, that's ultra liberal. the times is pure power establishment.

in any event it skirts the issue. having religious fundementalists running this country is not a good idea.

it doesn't work anywhere else, it definitley won't work here.

- js.

ha, "religious fundamentalists", thats such a left wing canard...looks like someones been sipping the Kerry juice.

the only people that don't think the NYT isn't an ultra liberal gossip rag are the insane lefties themselves. i mean honestly, when they run a FRONT PAGE article that is basically about right leaning parents innocently homeschooling their kids like millions do everyday and they try to spin it into a scare piece for their leftie editor you have to see an agenda, if you don't then you also are the type of person that would lick Michael Moore's asscrack for an advance copy of his newest book.

you're missing the boat here, Spannie...the issue isn't home schooling - the issue is fundamentalists in postions of political power and influence. this is the world of Patrick Henry college students:

you can dress these guys up in bathrobes,wrap towels around their heads, and ship them off to Sandland - they'll fit right in. there is zero difference between them and the Taliban. do you really want people like this in positions of political power and influence in your government?

in other words, life was better when women couldn't work or vote:uu: so these are your kinda people, eh? here's a newsflash for you - the kind of Amerika these guys would like to see doesn't include people like you or me:no:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/education/07RULE.html

hahaha so you're equating christian "fundamentalists"(meaning they aren't as passionately progressive as you, right? lol, elitism at it's finest) with the Taliban? i don't think anyone at Patrick Henry will be killing cheating wives in packed stadiums.

i shudder to imagine what you think of the poor Amish folk. they must be Bin Laden's American cousins to you.

why is it the mainstream media would never label a "liberal" university. how about the myriad of colleges with liberal professors that shape leaders for the "left"..but are never labled as such.

liberals try to make all home-schooling parents look worse than carrie's mother. the last thing they want to see is a return to the roots of our nation..they prefer a new world order which is characterized by less liberty, freedom, and democracy.

their thinking is "we know better than you how you should live, and we'll force you to live as we believe you should. through a benevolent dictatorial government, the liberals would decide how we should live, and the government would take care of each of us from cradle to grave, whether we like it or not.

they have had a stranglehold on nearly every institute of "higher" education in our nation, and so to have a college that is firmly led by conservative christians is seen as a huge threat to the liberal establishment. it throws a big threatening wrench into their mission to control every citizen of the country.

this shows that the current occupants of the white house have exponentially more class than the prior ones.

these folks would like to see women like you at home in the kitchen, scoob - without a vote or a voice or an opinion.


on second thought, maybe they're onto something....

opinion= FACT!

i'd like to see where you got that bit of info Knifey, i didn't see it in that article.

You never see this label because it's absurd to think that universities in the real world have an agenda to "shape leaders for the left," when it's quite obvious (if you've ever been to a real college) that both liberals and conservatives emerge from such real world environments. Your insistence on stereotyping good teachers who allow people to develop their own ideas and think for themselves as "liberal" as if this were something dark and dirty simply screams of the irony of your own fears that people should be allowed to develop their own opinions.

Now that made me laugh out loud. In the midst of a thread about an over-privilged nepotistic Christianized pipeline into favoritism, you have the audacity to use words like "less liberty and democracy" and "dictatorial government" as if these were the agendas of liberals? Get a clue.

And you're wrong, I know many "liberals" who home school their kids, and more who believe in it strongly. The issue here isn't even about home schooling per se, it's about a post-home-schooling institution with a clear agenda of churning out and preferentially placing subservient drones. And I'm not even against this, I believe they have every right in the world to preferentially progam their children in any way they see fit, but let's not pretend it isn't programming. The funniest thing is if this were a Buddhist or an Islamic institution you'd be the one calling it a "cult" and crying for blood.

I personally think it's hilarious ...and hardly threatening or "scary." As far as I'm concerned the more inbred and self-serving the elitist good 'ol frat boys of the ultraright become, the more transparent they get. Only a matter of time before they're taken about as seriously as the flat-earthers.

And THEY, the great liberal conspiracy you see around every corner and under every carpet, don't have a stranglehold on anything, nor do they wish it. Having strangleholds on things is the clear drive and domain of the right wing.

Your use of the word "class" there is interesting. If you mean an elitist indifference to classes of society, I'd have to agree with you wholeheartedly. But if you see this as "a return to the roots of our nation," I'd say perhaps you need to have a home school refresher course in basic American history.

ramona, your repeated pattern is so typical…first deny that the problem exists, then mock those who claim that it does.

it’s obvious that you see yourself as the poster man/woman for the elite liberal intelligentsia, but in my opinion you are a closed-minded pseudo-intellectual metaphysical nutcase. i don’t usually bother reading your posts anymore, and resent the time out of my life that’s been wasted having to scroll past them.

most of your comments are judgmental to the extreme, and hysterical (in both senses of the word). your example of dealing with someone who disagrees with you is to use words such as lobotomized carp, or anencephalic. you do not debate issues, you choose to insult and mock instead. you readily dismiss any opposing view as motivated by ignorance, and you have zero tolerance for any views other than your own. by doing that, you only manage to expose your own intellectual and human deficiencies.

that said, i’ll leave you with this link regarding academic liberal-bias…not that I expect you to bother reading it.

http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/

Scoobie, your tone, and span's, is consistently one of mocking derision, but you're both so convinced you're right that you seemingly excuse yourselves from doing the exact things of which you accuse me.

Personally, I think anyone so commitedly polarized is absurd, myself included, but the fact is I'm openly aware of the cartoonish futility of such caricatures and I've acknowledged and insinuated a thousand times and a thousand different ways (re: "obligatory complementary exercise in polarized futility") that anyone who believes that individuals can be so black or white is in denial of human nature and reality, but this is simply derided as more liberal propaganda and you never seem to get the punchline.

You, span and sinner et al, are so enamored of your own instantaneous contradictions in the form of mocking derision of any and all ideas at odds with your great "conservative omniscience" (spoken in reverent quavering tones) that my whole approach to you has simply become to reverse whatever you say and reflect it back on you as much as possible; to say "look, here's what it feels like when you're arbitrarily placed in an ideological group and continuously fired upon with offhand negations."

Anyone engaged in such a categorical and inherently mythic battle, on either side, cannnot be taken seriously by their opponents, and, I can scarcely believe, by themselves.

I certainly have no need or desire to 'prove' anything to someone so seemingly utterly entrenched in the inability to take other people seriously, nor even a belief that such a feat would even be possible, but I can amuse myself with the exercise of playing your little game as well as I can. I assume that's the only possiblity there could be of interacting with you, and since you seem to prefer the dialogue to hover there I'm happy to play along as long as you seem as frustrated by it as you seem to intend for me to be.

Maybe I've misunderstood your game, I admit it is a little fuzzy but it seems about as simple and basic as chess to me, and has about as much to do with actual people, real issues and vital dialogue as that game.

Since you and span seem to not mind being the poster children for your agendas, and have worked so damned diligently to create this environment wherein seemingly anything outside the lines of your party's doctrines will be summarily, automatically and swiftly dismissed as 'typical hysterical liberal blather'--always looking for that 'checkmate in one move,' (in your dreams)--I haven't minded a bit being the 'poster child for the liberal intelligentsia,' if that's what you see my responses to you as. The possible difference here is that I see it for the humorous (and sad) exercise in misguided futility that it is. To make a caricature of it seems more than enough, since you seem unwilling, unable or do not care to do more.

You're constantly crying that no one is 'equipped' to debate you, yet you refuse to take responsibility for reaping what you have sown. Perhaps you feel that calling people moonbats and nutcases is a valid form of debate, but if this is the case it seems remarkable that you're happy to dish it out but not so happy to take it.

You simply refuse to treat people as real when you assume, as you seem to, that we sit down and figure out what's on the official liberal agenda before we decide what we think and what opinions we're going to have about an issue. Yet even as you complain constantly about this in others, it seems eerily as though you are doing the exact same thing you complain of.

Listen to yourself:

"your comments are judgmental to the extreme -- your example of dealing with someone who disagrees with you is to use words such as lobotomized carp, or anencephalic -- you do not debate issues, you choose to insult and mock instead -- you readily dismiss any opposing view as motivated by ignorance..."

Then in the same post you call me "a closed-minded pseudo-intellectual metaphysical nutcase -- you claim that I am intellectually and humanly deficient -- that I am a waste of your time and you resent me" and that basically everything I say is beneath contempt and consideration and should simply be ignored.

Pot, kettle, black, I mean really, wouldn't you honestly admit?

In other posts you're seen to call jack a "moonbat," to tell him he's the victim of leftist-commie propaganda and wears a tinfoil turban, ad nauseum.

In truth though scoobie, since I'd say about 85% of what you post aren't your own opinions, but articles by your favorite liberal-haters (I don't qualify liberal-hating as conservative as naturally and easily as you do, I have more respect for true conservatives so I wouldn't lump them into the same ball of wax), in my opinion you're not quite as guilty personally of derogatory coinage and dismissive derision as your comrade span, though most of the articles you do post are people doing exactly that, albeit usually with slightly more finesse. I won't even bother to list examples since anyone who frequents these forums can pretty much predict span's comments on any given issue, being as they are, the equivalent of snarling answering machine messages, the brief wording changing every day but the message always basically the same: "no one home, fuck off."

The constant attempts to discredit everything you disagree with are so relentless that I fail to believe it could have any intent at all beyond sarcasm and parody, so sue me for playing by your rules.

Since the onset of the war with Iraq the 'supposed conservatives' at this forum have consistently labeled anyone who was anti-war as tree-hugging, "Saddam loving" imbeciles, and the tradition carries on to the point that anyone who has the slightest quibble with the godlike party line regarding any and every issue receives the same epithets. You seem to love this easy exercise of taking fuzzy distorted snapshots of others, but you hate it when others take them of you.

Liberals label conservatives as greedy, bigoted, warmongering corporate megalomaniacs preciously doling out the reward of granting basic human dignity only to those already like themselves, and conservatives label liberals as tree hugging commie moonbats hellbent on dissolving every sacred moral value, from being overt traitors to our country to destroying the very nuclear family.

Yes, I am guilty of repeatedly jamming this ridiculously small shoe on your foot, repeatedly because you consistently seem to fail to grasp the principle of how ineffective your own tactics are when they are applied back to you while going on and on using them on others as if they were the height of efficacy.

One thing seems certain to me, everyone and everything cannot possibly fit in those two little Polaroids. Yet these are the only materials you provide.


Beyond all this there is something I feel I've learned, or come to believe from playing this game, and it's a shame you'll have been unable to read my liberal metaphsyical nutcase blather up to now, scrolling past it as you are, because this is the only really good part. Beyond and between these parodies, these abstract polarities that you and I seem so willing to mask our identities with across cyberspace, there does seem to be a basic qualitative difference and that is, stated as simply as possible:

The ideal of pure conservatism is less inclusive than the ideal of pure liberalism.

Even though the very names liberal and conservative have become equivalent to dirty words because they are so often bestowed us and so completely defined by the "opposition," and the very concept of their relative purity is entirely mythic, if this simple statement above is true, and can be conceded by both camps, and I think it obviously can be, then another interesting truism seems to obviously follow:

Liberalism is therefor more suited to the pursuit of the ideal of pure Democracy than conservatism.

Democracy is by definition an inclusive state of the people by which it is formed, and in fact the more inclusive it can be, the more ideal it becomes. Of course again the purity of this ideal is mythic.

True liberals seem to be the force in a Democracy that decentralizes, works outward toward recognizing, integrating and including diversity, even encouraging it, while true conservatives seem to work toward a more Mosaic fixedness and intensely centralized models of uniform behavior.

Clearly both are necessary goals, and in some sense a Democracy is equally dependent on the presence of both kinds of focus, but beyond the critical mass of either is certain and clear disaster. The true negatives of liberalism are entropy and social dissolution. The true negatives of conservatism are oligarchical and in the extreme much much worse.

The most important observation is perhaps that they are not the negatives of each other but have a common goal of change. It's just a silly irony of human nature that both will swear that their way will be better for everyone.

Of course all this is merely philosphical, there are no "true, pure, abstract" liberal or conservative intentions. People with NUKE IRAQ T-shirts or building little shrine-threads to war toys don't qualify as true conservatives and those with MEAT IS MURDER T-shirts or throwing red paint on fur-bearing models don't qualify as true liberals--in fact for these extremes you could just as well switch labels and make just as much sense of an argument. On the less extreme side most people are disqualified simply because of a personal balance that is an indeterminate mixture of approaches to each issue. There are lesbian Christians who carry guns and have confederate flag bumper stickers and atheist republican closet transvestites who attend Save The Whale rallies in this world.

[exercise in irony]
[/exercise in irony]

Though the use of the words "we" and "you"--of the concepts of "us and them"--in both equations are the too often unexamined factors, and both are so fraught with contradictions it's difficult to find a qualitative difference, I still submit, again, that there is one.

While "conservatives" are arguing that liberals want to control everything they seem to simultaneously be saying: "we don't mind at all that the administration can easily overstep the will of the people to go to war or to amend the constitution to outlaw, regulate or predetermine the parameters of certain kinds of relationship based on religious language. As long as it benefits or at least isn't a detriment to us (and in the case of gay marriage for example we have an issue which is neither but is only detrimental to other people--them), and as long as we are secure that we are 'the majority,' (often falsely--polls consitently show that this nation is virtually split down the middle on the issues such as the war with Iraq and gay marriages and even George Bush's very election was characterized by a popular vote with a variance of about one half of one percent) we are proud to champion our government as righteous, if indeed not as infallible, even though you may disagree."

If liberals are moved to question the veracity of such claims it is again only because we are more inclusive in our thinking and mindful of the diversity which is constantly averaged out of your "big pictures."

It seems clear to me that any cultures which have successfully repressed this function of liberality have evolved into something that can no longer be referred to as Democratic, and while I certainly don't see The United States going the way of the Third Reich (or becoming a Utopia, for that matter) in any of our lifetimes, I will remain "polarized" to those who would seem to have it so.


OK one last sally and then I have to stop wasting our collective time.

If we're continuing to play the game that all Democrats are Liberals and all Conservatives are Republicans, then I can't imagine what in the world those statistics would prove other than an incredibly obvious and marked tendency for more liberals than conservatives to become teachers, which certainly makes a great deal of sense since two prerequisites for becoming a teacher would clearly seem to be that you A: "be smart" or at least "intellectual" or very interested in education, and B: "be compassionate" or at least care about other people or society as a whole enough to facilitate educating them for a living.

The implied syllogism that "most teachers are smart, caring Democrats" doesn't surprise or threaten me at all...

...but you seem kind of "hysterical" about it...

A lot of times "smart" and "caring" seem to be more or less the same basic tendency to me, so your point seems very much in line with my experience that the most valuable people happen to have this "liberal tendency." But that's probably just because I'm a gay commie tree hugging nutcase.

Ramona, your post dersives it's own thread, prefferably a sticky, since it perfectly encompasses every single political discussion I have ever read on NU. :AP: But it's fine right here where it is, where it will invitably recieve a little criticism and then the thread will die while new discussions take over the board. It's better than the twelve page flame fest it would provoke if it had it's own thread. And to everyone else here: read the whole thing. It's not at all a waste of time.

I consider myself one of those true conservatives you talk about, and like most true conservatives I don't speak up until it's necessary. Let everyone believe what they want to believe, as long as it doesn't affect me in a negative way. I may disagree with you a lot of the time, but since opposing you in this forum would force me to 'choose sides' I usually just read the discussions and keep my thoughts to myself. Nobody here seems interested in learning from differing opinions. In fact, I don't have a clue what anyone here is trying to accomplish with all the arguing. Most of it is a waste of archive space in the server's hard drive. If I thought my opinions mattered to anyone here I would share them more often.

Anyway, most of the philosophical points you brought up don't belong in this thread, and it's a pity that most threads degrade like this. Someone always has to hijack them. Leave that stuff for the Underground, everyone, this is a topical forum. If you can't stick to the thread's subject then start a new one.

if you read the link, you’ll see that whether a teacher is intellectual or caring is not what the issue is about. it’s about the fact that liberal bias runs rampant on the majority of college campuses, and a good portion of students are getting a biased education.

professors have a responsibility to be fair and objective when doing their jobs, but these professors have no shame about using the classroom podium for political speechmaking..trying to indoctrinate students with a liberal ideology. the radical leftists have re-defined the mission of universities. instead of the pursuit of knowledge and truth, universities today see themselves as agencies for social change..that is not education, that is indoctrination.

political correctness thrives on college campuses, and this is why colleges have a "reputation" as being bastions of liberalism. that, and tenured liberal professors who cannot be removed.


ramona, i don’t feel that what "you have to say" is a waste of time....it’s the derisive and mocking way "you say it." your last post was neither derisive nor mocking. i read it all.


this threads topic is titled “College for the Home-Schooled Is Shaping Leaders for the Right”, pointing criticism at patrick henry college. since then there have been views criticizing colleges that shape people for the left.

imo, it seems we’re still on topic.

lol

pot, this is kettle, kettle meet pot

You only read the first paragraph, didn't you span.

That is a pretty vague statement. So as long is it doesn't affect you personally in a negative way it is ok? Hate groups can hate, hurt, and kill aslong as it is not you? etc etc.....now I really don't think that is what you mean but having a silent voice doesn't help anyone......




I disagree with the choose sides statement, it is also hard to learn differing opinions when you keep your thoughts to yourself. What am I trying to accomplish? Good question, I don't really have an agenda, maybe it is a devil's advocate type of thing, provoke some thought. Just to let you know also, I would like to hear your opinions, I am one who reads your posts, so they matter to me and maybe you should post more....are you afraid of what people may think about you?

Quote:

Anyway, most of the philosophical points you brought up don't belong in this thread, and it's a pity that most threads degrade like this. Someone always has to hijack them. Leave that stuff for the Underground, everyone, this is a topical forum. If you can't stick to the thread's subject then start a new one.

This isn't a perfect world......shit happens.....


Since RAS had to bring up my nick in his/her rant, I will respond to that later.....

i gave it a cursory glance, i only commented on that part because 1) it had my name in it. and 2) the sheer hypocrisy of that statement bowled me over.

mazer, that statement you made to ramona should show you what the tone of this forum is..and where it comes from. if you have an opposing view, you're choosing sides, then mocked. do you honestly feel that ramona's tone is not mocking? do think that calling someone a lobotomized carp, or anencephalic because they have a different view is acceptable? in your post, you appear to be in defense of ramona...that i don't understand, but it is your right to have an opinion.

let's be real here...have you taken note of all the names conservatives have been called? have you read any of multi's posts? before you make a judgement call, check through the all the posts, you'll see that the tone is obviously set..and it was not, and is not, set by the conservatives on this board.

your opinions do matter, don't ever think they don't. i wish you would share them more often mazer. i'm not sure if you are a liberal or a conservative, and it doesn't matter. the point is you matter, and your opinions matter.

if you're wary of being accused of choosing sides...don't be. geez...i don't make a post without expecting spratts, knife or multi..etc. to twist, deflect and spin it into oblivion..in their unbridled condescending way of course. but, that's their way of debating.

Well, I appreciate everything, I'll try to be more vocal if you guys really want to read what I have to say. I'm not afraid of conflict, but I see little profit in it. I was defending Ramona, for his honesty and not necessarily his name calling. He's never called me names before in any of our discussions, I suppose he does it to you guys 'cause you guys do it to him. I don't know where it started, but it's really easy to stop if you try. So I'm not going to make accusations of childish behavior, you all know what needs to change.

The tone of these discussions is wildly organic and lacking in direction. Perhaps that is the cause of my vagaries, and it works to my advantage because I don't want to be associated with a party line, for that leads people to make assumptions about me. My goal, if I have one, is to provoke thought like Sinner, and hopefully change some minds once in a while. That's understandably very hard to do in this group. Yes, multi is a knee-jerk kind of guy, and he knows it too. But sometimes he's very open to new ideas, once you get past his inital reaction. I have observed that he's only stubborn when his intelligence is challenged. None of us here are easy to offend, we've got pretty thick hides, but to insult one's intelligence all you have to do is lump a person into a monolithic group like the political Left or Right and suddenly that person becomes very defensive. It's a failing of the political spectrum, it tries to be all encompassing but it's painfully inadequate when it comes to identifying individuals' beliefs. Basically, the words Liberal and Conservative are four letter words and I try not to see people that way.

Choosing sides? I try to align myself with people who have good ideas, and everyone has good ones and bad ones. I won't agree with everyone all the time, but when I do I hope I'm not attacked by my allies because of past disagreements. It happens all too often, and it makes it impossible to move forward on any new subject. If I disagree with you once I'm not your enemy for life, am I? I tend toward conservativism, but I won't always choose that side because it's not always right. But for some reason I find the so called liberals on this board easier to identify with, but maybe that's just 'cause they're as nerdy as I am. On the other forums I think more like Jack, multi, and Ramona, but on this one I think more like Sinner, span, and scoobie. This has a lot more to do with personality than politics.

I'm not gonna spout a lot of BS like 'All you need is love' and 'Can't we all just get along?' because it doesn't work like that. But I think open mindedness is much more fulfilling and entertaining. Hey, that's just me. You guys do what you want.

well, i can't speak for anyone else but my condescending way is actually quite bridled - i only unbridle it for people who feel they need to attack me personally to make their point :a:

and i suspect that if you went back through political threads over the last year or two, you'd find the lion's share of the vitriol comes from the right. scoob's actually a bit of a lightweight in this area - go read some posts by our old friend Albed for some really choice venom.

you’re right, it has a lot more to do with personality than politics. it’s only normal to feel agreement with others when you have an established bond of friendship and/or interests, most especially regarding generalities. but when you step into the realm of politics or religion, it’s an entirely different story.

these are subjects that people feel much more strongly about. that’s why it was a good idea to create a separate political forum.
you’re right about that as well.

lol, i think kerry’s website needs a ‘lil help in that area…..


ELECTION 2004
Kerry's website riddled with obscenities
Official online page for Democrat loaded with F-word, S-word


Posted: March 8, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

As public obscenity becomes a heated issue in the wake of this year's Super Bowl breast exposure, the leading Democrat in the race for the White House has obscenities laced throughout his official website.

According to the Drudge Report, Kerry's homepage of JohnKerry.com is filled with expletives, "setting the standard for a new wave of 21st Century campaigning."

Drudge typed in the F-word and the S-word into the search box on Kerry's site to yield some of the following results:

"Bush f----- up Afghanistan ...
Did I expect George Bush to f--- it up as badly as he did ...
cutting all your f---ing legs off at the knees...
Where the f--- is he?...
scare the living s--- out of me...
He has a pig-in-s--- grin on his face, he wanted to get into the s--- ...
doesn't play s--- in my book ..."

Other words some might find objectionable include "G--damn," "Christ," and "piss."

A campaign source told Drudge the Kerry campaign site contains published material, and that the Massachusetts senator was not aware the expletives were posted on his own server.

I think you'll see the offensive words removed," the source told Drudge.

Similar foul language was not found on the official site to re-elect President Bush.

I agree that 'intellect and compassion' are not cogent to the crux of this particular issue because that crux is your perception, definition and qualifications of the concept of bias, still it seems remarkably true that teachers can so often be characterized by this pair of factors made a trinity by the statistical observation that they are also so often liberal.

It cannot be said that college professors are never 'plucked out of the air' because many are; the average university is an oligarchical and fairly self governing body and can certainly preferentially matriculate its staff, so the presence of this trinity of characteristics is certainly not absolute. Nonetheless this Democratic label fairly glares from these stats, which you yourself provided.

I would never argue that the majority of campuses in this country--and in fact, the world at large--are liberal environments. I would not argue that the placement of intent lies anywhere but squarely upon the faculties. I will also grant you that the form this liberalism takes is most often of a demeanor that could be called antiestablishment, and can even verge on pure personal spite for power and authority.

The spoor of this species is also quite obvious, I'd wager it's a good bet that a high percentage were themselves in fraternities during or very near the disillusioned zeitgeist of Kent State and Vietnam.

These, it would seem, are more subtle factors; eccentricities and generalities we can also add to the syllogism of "most teachers": most are intellectual, compassionate and liberal most often, and may have tendencies or agendas toward engendering social revolutions and political restructure much of the time. lol. Given.

...at least that certainly stands as a highly acceptable description of all the 'good teachers' I've known and been influenced by.

"Influence. I'll have to examine my own word before I go on to examine your words of bias and indoctrination, which may be names for the same effect.

I'd define the best infuential qualities to belong to the teachers I've known who have not only tolerated, but embraced, invigorated, nurtured, celebrated and even sanctified the individual idiosyncrasies of their student bodies--and have considered it all the more fortunate for this body when it is the more diverse.

Any good teacher knows that higher learning is not spoonfed to the uninvested, and that the best investment is to engage the student as much as possible in participatory dialogue as pitted against as many views as possible--it's only then that a student takes responsibility for his own critical thinking while maintaining his individuality, a formula too integral to the very fabric of sanity to be undervalued.

Now, frankly, to call this method of teaching bias is fine... perfectly acceptable...

...Until we're offered Patrick Henry College as some supposed example, in contrast, of an unbiased institution! PHC has every conceivable right to be exactly what it is in my opinion, but one cannot possible argue that it's unbiased while maintaining a straight face.

So when I come to your conclusion that all these listed colleges have a liberal bias--and we'd have to agree that PHC has it's own kind of bias --it seems we can only proceed by asking what are the things each is biased against?

I doubt if it's as clear cut as we might like to make it. Liberal colleges have courses on Evolution and Christianity and I doubt that PHC can entirely avoid the subject of Evolution in its curriculum just because it can be construed as contrary to Christianity. But we don't have to be screenwriters to visualize a significant difference in debating Christianity or Evolution among a group composed exclusively of young Republican WASPS with political aspirations (yes, I am picturing a room full of multiples of Micheal J. Fox as Alex, from Family Ties) and those same debates occuring in a group of mixed races, gays and straights, Christians and atheists, Democrats and Republicans... even if it is under the auspices of a liberal professor.

These are exactly the kind of environments one finds in "liberal colleges," and again it's clear that they can be defined as more inclusive.

This is all well and good. I'm not being critical of the existence PHC at all. I am critical of it from a personal standpoint, this is not I college in which I would like to matricualte personally. But there it is. Some people who want to go there can, and in the long run, so they have good ol' buddy ties--or at least have created a small demand for their students to get foot-in-the-door quasi-political government appointments or what-not--so what? Not terribly significant in the scheme of things. And certainly not the biggest fish in the pond, there are supergiant "conservative" universities in the sky of education that dwarf PHC. My own medium-sized hometown is host to a number of fairly prestigious Christian academies, not the least of which is Oral Roberts University. If you want to get crazy conservative, you can go all out and pick a military school, you'll even get to wear a uniform.

It would be hysterical to find an embodiment of some great evil conspiritorial trend of the right in PHC, but I don't think anyone does. It's just noted that some of its intent is a bias toward exclusivity, just as some of the intent of the more common liberal college is bias toward inclusion.

You are arguing for the right of an exclusive college to exist, and no one is arguing against them because there are and always have been exclusive schools.

At bottom, it's all a question of supply and demand, as long as you can afford the education you desire I don't feel the need to stop anyone.

Do you?

The "favoritism" shown the students of PHC by those in certain circles of power, as insinuated by the original article, is another matter--yet still a question of supply and demand.

What troubles some of us, I think, lol, is that the demand in those circles of official power should be what it is: the internal demand for a certain kind of predetermined religious morality in the halls of our government, the infrastructure of which is supposed to be philosophically as void as possible of the possibility of exerting that kind of influence outward.

I'm not sure I would go so far as to even call it a "part of a disturbing trend" because no doubt mechanisms like it have probably been in place all along. But it's certainly not crazy to merely raise an eyebrow to it under this present administration which so clearly has its own religious agenda.

The greater question is why anyone would be disturbed by religious influences since they are supposed to be inherently "good"--but many people have cast a wary eye on the historical record of this supposition--not the least of which were our founding fathers, themselves religious men, who came to this continent to escape the religious oppression and corruption that was inherent in a government that had no mechanisms for the separation of Church and State. I see no need to start rethinking the value of that observation. There's plenty of evidence where it leads.

The truth must be very painful for you to view it as venom.

Perhaps it's an allergic reaction.

Smoke some more pot and escape the pain knife. :kiss:

i missed you, sweetie - where ya been?:kiss:

you don't call, you don't write:no:

as a rule i have never come out with an expletive laced discription of any conservative here...until they try and turn the subject of the thread into a slagging match..witch is often more than 95% of the political threads here
if you can find a thread i have posted that is designed to bait the consevatives here into responding..and then throw insults at them for sharing their opinion
i would be very suprised..

scoobie complains that left thinking people are condacending..LOL
now that is a joke..

left thinking people want equality for others that is obvious

and are always put in the light of whinging complainers..when ever they make a point to do with a question of unequality

the right always justifies the unequality in those repetitive degrading and condacending arguments we hear so often around here..

whites over blacks
straights over gays
jews over arabs
rich over poor
coporations over small business

anyway the insults are water off a ducks back thesedays..i dont see reall much point for them..but insult away..then when i snap back with something you can make out i only ever insult you..:RE:

then please explain Affirmative Action.

dont know much about them..here is what i could find
i guess its got to be something more sinister than this or you wouldnt of mentioned it..
:PO:

AA isn't a "them" it's a law, and it's a law that grants preferential treatment for one section of society at the expense of others....and the left defends it no matter how dated and discriminatory it is.

multi it's like when bush got to go to yale ahead of better students, and he got to cut to the head of the queue for the national guard, and all the other legacy stuff he was given - because he's a white guy. except this tries to give poor non-whites a little chance too.

- js.

yeah, thats why it was enacted:RE:

it's funny even many of those "poor non-whites" think it's a crap law that forces people to judge them not on their skills but on the color of their skin, last i heard that was discrimination.