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

[JackSpratts]

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

[span]

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.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

[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]

[span]

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.

[JackSpratts]

Originally posted by span
ultra liberal Times

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.

[span]

Originally posted by JackSpratts
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.

[theknife]

Originally posted by span
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:

The college enforces a strict moral code. Drinking without parental supervision is forbidden. Students live in single-sex dormitories. Male students are required to wear their hair neatly and women must dress "modestly."

Campus televisions block transmission of MTV and VH1 because the college considers the cable music channels' programming to be racy. Students' computers come equipped with a software program called "Covenant Eyes" that monitors the Web sites they visit.

But the most popular rule among parents, administrators say, is also the most controversial among the students: the Patrick Henry "courtship policy."

Before spending much time alone with a female student, a male student is required to call her father or guardian and ask permission to court. Even with parental permission, displays of affection on campus are limited to holding hands while walking. If they stop moving, they must let go of each other's hands.

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?

Every student takes a course called "Foundations of Liberty," which teaches that democracy rests on biblical principles, traditional sex roles, limited government and private property rights.

Aside from the issue of slavery, the course suggests, that the early America was nearly ideal.

in other words, life was better when women couldn't work or vote 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

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

[span]

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.

[scooobiedooobie]

Originally posted by JackSpratts
College for the Home-Schooled Is Shaping Leaders for the Right

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.

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.

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

[theknife]

Originally posted by scooobiedooobie
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.

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....

[span]

opinion= FACT!

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

[Ramona_A_Stone]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

[scooobiedooobie]

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/

Summary of Results

In our examinations of over 150 departments and upper-level administrations at 32 elite colleges and universities, the Center found the following:

The overall ratio of Democrats to Republicans we were able to identify at the 32 schools was more than 10 to 1 (1397 Democrats, 134 Republicans).

Although in the nation at large registered Democrats and Republicans are roughly equal in number, not a single department at a single one of the 32 schools managed to achieve a reasonable parity between the two. The closest any school came to parity was Northwestern University where 80% of the faculty members we identified were registered Democrats who outnumbered registered Republicans by a ratio of 4-1.

At other schools we found these representations of registered faculty Democrats to Republicans:

Brown 30-1
Bowdoin, Wellesley 23-1
Swarthmore 21-1
Amherst, Bates 18-1
Columbia, Yale 14-1
Pennsylvania, Tufts, UCLA and Berkeley 12-1
Smith 11-1

At no less than four elite schools we could not identify a single Republican on the faculty:

Williams 51 Democrats, 0 Republicans
Oberlin 19 Democrats, 0 Republicans
MIT 17 Democrats, 0 Republicans
Haverford 15 Democrats, 0 Republicans

Faculty registration is just as unbalanced at major research universities as it is at small colleges. At Columbia University, the Center could identify only 6 faculty Republicans. The Center could not locate a single Republican in the history, political science, and sociology departments. Cornell University was just as left-leaning: the departments of English and history were entirely devoid of registered Republicans.

Administrators lean just as far to the left: at schools like the University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Melon, and Cornell, we could not identify a single Republican administrator. In the entire Ivy League, we identified only 3 Republican administrators.

Conclusion:

These figures suggest that most students probably graduate without ever having a class taught by a professor with a conservative viewpoint. The ratios themselves are impossible to understand in the absence of a political bias in the training and hiring of college instructors. They strongly suggest that the governance of American universities has fallen into the hands of a self-perpetuating political and cultural subset of the general population, which seems intent on perpetuating its control. This is an unhealthy development for the both the educational enterprise and the democracy itself.

Without further investigation it is not possible to establish with any degree of certainty why this state of affairs has come into existence, but there are many obvious factors that may be said to have contributed to it. Among them is the very exclusion of conservatives from faculty and administrative positions itself. This in itself creates a hostile environment for conservative students contemplating an academic career. This core hostility is amplified by practices that have been incorporated into academic life in the last several decades, including campus speech codes and politicized classrooms – both which represent radical departures from the pre-Sixties academic environment.

A comprehensive study by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (available at www.speechcodes.org ) found that over 90 percent of well-known college campuses have speech codes intended to ban and punish politically incorrect, almost always conservative, speech. (Cases available at www.thefire.org.) Student testimonies about in-classroom political indoctrination are available at www.noindoctrination.org.

The impression that conservative values and ideas aren’t welcome on campus is driven home daily to students until it becomes second nature. Professors generally do not grade politically, but a large enough percentage do that students – and not just conservative students – will take the prudent course of concealing what they actually think in order to protect their academic standing. This is obviously at odds with the educational mission of the university but academic authorities have done little to address the abuse.

All these factors exert a negative influence on the choices a conservative student might make about pursuing an intellectual career. But of all these factors the lack of conservative professors is the most significant. It serves to reduce the ability of the best and brightest conservative students to pursue graduate study even when they want to. Nearly all distinguished doctoral programs rely on matching students with professors who have compatible interests.

A student interested in pursuing a Ph.D. based on his or her interest in Austrian school economics, traditionalist literary criticism, conservative historiography or religious poetry will have a difficult time finding a professor who wants to take her on. In the social sciences, Marxists have an infinitely easier time finding good mentors than Hayekians or Straussians. The lack of conservative professors provides a ready-made excuse (professors don’t even think of it that way) for rejecting doctoral program applications for conservative students with stellar grades, recommendations, and standardized test scores.

For those conservatives who earn the doctoral “union card” necessary to teach at a major research university, a second obstacle awaits: hiring and tenure committees, which are stacked with their ideological and political adversaries. A number of high profile cases have occurred recently in which conservative scholars with significant records of publishing have performed according to the book and still ended up out of work.

The entire process of training graduate students, qualifying Ph.D. recipients, hiring junior faculty and granting tenure is hierarchical, arbitrary, closed to public scrutiny and designed to produce intellectual conformity in the best circumstances. Therefore special concern would be required to ensure that there are protections for students’ academic freedom and for intellectual diversity. Unfortunately, in the present institutional framework no such protections exist.

We believe a remedy for this problematic situation would be for universities and state legislatures to adopt an Academic Bill of Rights stressing the importance of intellectual diversity to the goal of academic freedom, and making this goal an integral part of educational policy. We are attaching a copy of our suggested draft for such a Bill of Rights to this report.

When Ezra Cornell founded the institution that bears his name he said: “I would found an institution, where any person can find instruction in any study.” American universities do not fulfill that promise when they cater to only half the population and fail to provide protections and adequate representation for the other. Presently, conservative viewpoints and values are under-represented in the academic curriculum, and conservatives themselves are relegated to second-class citizenship.

While nearly all university administrations devote extraordinary resources to defend the principle of diversity in regard to race and gender, none can be said to have shown interest in the diversity of ideas. This bias has created a situation that is unworthy of the academic enterprise and unhealthy for the democracy that supports it, and in serious need of reform.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

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]

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.

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 conservatives would decide who we should sleep with, marry, go to war with, and the government would regulate every aspect of our lives from cradle to grave, whether we like it or not.

[/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.

At other schools we found these representations of registered faculty Democrats to Republicans:

Brown 30-1
Bowdoin, Wellesley 23-1
Swarthmore 21-1
Amherst, Bates 18-1
Columbia, Yale 14-1
Pennsylvania, Tufts, UCLA and Berkeley 12-1
Smith 11-1

At no less than four elite schools we could not identify a single Republican on the faculty:

Williams 51 Democrats, 0 Republicans
Oberlin 19 Democrats, 0 Republicans
MIT 17 Democrats, 0 Republicans
Haverford 15 Democrats, 0 Republicans

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.

[Mazer]

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. 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.

[scooobiedooobie]

Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
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...

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.

If you can't stick to the thread's subject then start a new one

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.

higher education is already dead because conservatives cannot get hired at publically funded universities in other than token numbers. The tokens do not advance, get published or get advanced in any degree comparable to their Liberal counterparts.

Noam Chomsky, for instance, is a brilliant linguist but a political moron. His views are widely known and published. Walter Williams, on the other hand, is absolutety brilliant on the topics where he does the most publishing-- and largely unknown outside the conservative press.

[span]

Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
Scoobie, your tone, and span's, is consistently one of mocking derision,

lol

pot, this is kettle, kettle meet pot

[Mazer]

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

Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
Pot, kettle, black, I mean really, wouldn't you honestly admit?

[Sinner]

Originally posted by Mazer

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.

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 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.

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?

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.....

[span]

Originally posted by Mazer
You only read the first paragraph, didn't you span.

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.