Tuesday, December 14, 2004 4:01:27 AM
Power center driven by religion to reshape nation
By Doug Oplinger and Dennis J. Willard
Beacon Journal staff writers
Posted on Fri, Nov. 19, 2004
PURCELLVILLE, VA. - A little more than an hour from Washington, D.C., on rolling state Route 7 in Virginia, is the off-ramp to Purcellville, a small town in the heart of some of America's most historic battlegrounds.
Farmland is on one side of the highway.
On the other side is residential sprawl from the nation's capital and a giant, Colonial-style building reminiscent of the Revolutionary War.
``Revolutionary'' is the operative word.
This is headquarters for the Home School Legal Defense Association and one of its many affiliates, Patrick Henry College, named for the Colonial firebrand who coined the phrase, ``Give me liberty or give me death.''
Founded in 1983 as a legal-aid society for home-schooling parents, HSLDA has become much more. It has taken on the appearance of a political party in its own right, with an evangelical Christian mission to shape the American culture and change the face of government, the news media and international affairs.
While many Americans know little or nothing about home schooling and HSLDA, the resources of this new army of northern Virginia played an important role in the moral-values campaign that ushered George W. Bush into a second term and elected conservative Republicans to Congress.
The Home School Legal Defense Association has its own political leadership, its own fund-raising structure, a carefully screened battalion of college students and thousands of volunteers across the country who share a conservative vision of saving America from its sinful ways.
Charitable donations from some of America's wealthiest conservatives and dues from the organization's 81,000 member families are the financial backbone.
HSLDA leaders control a political action committee.
Families who buy memberships for the legal protection also are buying into an organization that takes positions on behalf of states' and individual rights. It works against liberal judges and politicians, homosexual rights and abortion.
The organization believes the United States was intended to be a Christian nation. Men are in charge at home.
A tour of the Patrick Henry campus offers an impression of little or no racial diversity. School officials say they track students' home states but not their heritage.
College is training camp
Patrick Henry College is the training camp of the home-schooled fundamentalist Christian movement.
The school requires its students to commit nearly half of their junior and senior years to fieldwork for political interests. Because charitable contributions support the four-year-old college, the political involvement pushes the legal limits for a nonprofit organization.
In the school's short history, Patrick Henry students already have worn a path down Route 7 to the nation's capital. Last spring, they claimed seven of the 100 college internships at the White House, the Bush administration confirmed. They also worked with U.S. intelligence agencies and such conservative think tanks as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.
Patrick Henry's students permeate all levels of government, writing e-mail alerts to members of Congress on behalf of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum or handling questions from citizens back home for U.S. senators. On weekends, it's not unusual for the Republican National Committee to transport students to distant locations to help with targeted campaigns.
Prominent leader
Michael Farris is president of Patrick Henry College and chairman and chief counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association.
Education Week magazine has named him one of the 100 most important faces in education in the 20th century.
Farris was a leader in Pat Buchanan's 1992 effort to be a viable third-party presidential candidate. The ordained minister and lawyer has argued -- and won -- pivotal cases before the U.S. and state supreme courts regarding religious freedom and individual rights.
``We're the balance'' in higher education, Farris said in an interview with the Akron Beacon Journal. ``You won't find people here who are advocating socialism or Marxism. That's not the case in most colleges. You will find people there that are socialists.
``We are unashamedly Christians, trying to train high-level, academically qualified students who have a deep Christian conviction who will go out and do good things for this world,'' Farris said. ``You will not find political correctness here in any way, shape or form.''
Information center
The Home School Legal Defense Association sits at the center of an intricately woven group of organizations that inform and train home-schooled children and their parents.
When 17-year-old Derek Archer heard Farris speak at a Patrick Henry summer camp for young teens a few summers ago, he was sold on politics and the school.
Archer went to the camp again last year and put his name on a sign-up sheet for ``Generation Joshua,'' a new HSLDA program for home-schooled teens.
When Archer returned to his home in Barberton, he became part of HSLDA's young army in the heartland. His team was in a national contest to register church members to vote.
Motivated by the moral issues that resonated in the 2004 election, 100 Generation Joshua campaigners participated in the marathon effort in Ohio to keep President Bush in the White House.
Generation Joshua is one piece of HSLDA, which now is an international organization. There is a Canadian affiliate, and the HSLDA sends financial support to home-school groups in South Africa and Germany.
HSLDA has a daily radio show, lobbying arm, periodical magazine, speakers bureau and sophisticated network of Internet communications.
Its leadership maintains a high profile.
Chairman Michael Farris has testified before Congress on parental rights issues and in support of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prohibit the government from recognizing same-sex marriages.
President Michael Smith is a guest columnist in the conservative Washington Times newspaper about twice a month.
Opposition to Clintons
The lobbying arm in downtown Washington -- the National Center for Home Education -- cited Bill and Hillary Clinton as threats to the nation in 1992. So the center initiated annual training sessions in the nation's capital attended by thousands of home-schooling parents. They were told how to make effective, periodic visits -- with their families -- to their local congressional offices to stress conservative issues and to oppose Clinton policies.
In one example, they actively campaigned against a Clinton initiative to immunize all children, saying that immunization is a matter of parental choice, and they helped to disseminate information about children who had been harmed by vaccinations.
More than 1,000 home-schooled teens from all over the country have traveled to Purcellville to attend camps in the last three summers. This year, they could take espionage classes and pretend to beintelligence officers or be news reporters with a Christian perspective.
To train teens in skills of argumentation, a high school debate association -- originally run by Farris' daughter -- was spun off by HSLDA into a separate organization that brings together home schoolers. They tackle such topics as abandoning the national income tax.
No branch of government is left untouched. At Patrick Henry College, Farris created the Center for the Original Intent of the Constitution. Students learn to conduct constitutional law research and help him write legal briefs that are submitted in cases he believes need a conservative voice.
His organization believes the federal judiciary has run amok and America has gone ``reeling off her moral foundations'' because of bad U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
``The Supreme Court created a `woman's right to choose' out of thin air,'' HSLDA says in its periodical, Court Report. ``The Constitution is absolutely silent regarding the right to an abortion, but the right to life is explicit in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.''
Farris is urging home schoolers to call the U.S. Senate's Republican leadership and lobby against the selection of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Farris said Specter ``opposed judicial nominees who stand for the original meaning of the Constitution.''
The nation needs a different person in charge of judicial confirmations, Farris said in an e-mail to HSLDA subscribers last week. ``To stop judicial tyranny and defend our fundamental freedoms, we need judges who will be faithful to the U.S. Constitution.''
Summit teen energized
Generation Joshua's role is to mobilize home-schooled children who have been ``equipped for a very important mission, namely to reclaim our land for righteousness,''Farris and Smith said in a letter to HSLDA membership.
The organization is named for the Old Testament figure who assumed leadership of the Israelite exodus from Egyptian bondage after the death of Moses. Joshua conquered towns in the region of present-day Israel so that the chosen people could inhabit the Promised Land.
Likewise, the leaders' letter stated: ``Many battles have been won on the home-schooling front, but there are many battles left to fight because the giants of abortion, homosexuality and moral relativism remain in our land. We can play a more vital role in raising up and electing more godly, righteous and constitutionally sound men and women who will enact pro-family, pro-life legislation, who seek to limit gambling and pornography, who will protect our religious freedoms and reject judicial activism.''
Derek Archer is energized and loves being involved in Generation Joshua. ``The purpose is real hands-on involvement,'' he said.
In the national Generation Joshua contest to register voters and mobilize more youth, five Ohio members -- Archer among them -- often dominated the rankings. An Ohioan placed second in the final count.
On his own, Archer checked with the Summit County Republican Party to find out when its phone banks would be operating so he could call and encourage voters to support Bush.
As the election neared, he was one of 20 Generation Joshua members to work out of Tuscarawas County, where they knocked on doors and made phone calls to encourage Republican turnout, he said. A team of 80 worked out of Columbus.
He was excited that another team in South Dakota aided in the defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.
The HSLDA political action committee helped pay their expenses,he said.
``Over the past few months, they took a bunch of students who knew nothing about campaigning or the political process. We worked through an intensive few months, and they brought us out with memories we'll never forget,'' Archer said. ``It was awesome.''
Archer hopes to attend Patrick Henry when he finishes his home education next year. He wants to go to Washington to help manage campaigns and someday run for state and federal office.
``It's awesome the way the Lord is working,'' he said.
Claim of persecution
HSLDA has captured the role as the most-quoted advocate of and expert on home education. This, despite a membership of about 81,000 that -- using the Department of Education's estimate of about 1.1 million home-schooled children and three or four children per household --represents about 29 percent of the home-school families in the country.
Suggestions that home schooling is a white, middle-class, evangelical Christian movement come from studies done by HSLDA and evangelical Christian researcher Brian Ray of Oregon -- himself a home-schooling father who often works with the Virginia-based organization. They most often poll evangelical Christians for their studies, which critics say can skew the results.
And Ray draws a tight circle around his definition of Christian.
As Ray collected information in a recent survey of Ohio home schoolers, he asked them to identify their religious beliefs by selecting one definition from a list of choices. There was a box for ``Catholic'' and a box for ``Christian.''
HSLDA often paints home-schooling families as persecuted -- especially those who share the Christian faith.
``Frankly, I want to thank the education establishment and the NEA (National Education Association) for the creation of Patrick Henry College,'' Farris said last fall as he talked about the college. ``Because of their attacks on the home-schooling movement, they created a generation of kids who are interested in making a contribution.
``That's why we're here. This is a response to the pressures of persecution,'' Farris said.
The suggestion of persecution angers Michael Apple, a University of Wisconsin professor, researcher and outspoken critic of home schooling.
``They've stolen the civil rights movement rhetoric and said that, `We are now the oppressed,' '' Apple said. ``They see themselves as struggling for freedom and liberty because they see themselves, literally, as those who are denied their freedom to speak and to be listened to.
``That's a fiction,'' he said.
Farris' segment of the home-schooling movement has money and organization and access to the White House, Apple said.
``These are awfully smart and dedicated people who believe that God is on their side and they will stop at very little to make certain that God is brought not just to the home but to the school and the government,'' Apple said. The nation should be ``very, very concerned.''
A voice on moral issues
The combined budget of the Home School Legal Defense Association and Patrick Henry College was about $15 million in 2002 -- the most recent year for which information is available.
Association members pay between $95 and $115 a year for membership, although many receive a small discount if they are members of local home-school groups. The dues support the staff -- which includes several lawyers -- Internet operations, lobbying operations and publications.
But the HSLDA doesn't speak for all home schoolers, including some who join primarily for the legal protection.
The National Home Education Network -- a diverse home-schooling group -- often engages in lively Internet debate about some of the Christian organization's positions and its penchant for speaking for everyone.
The HSLDA is among the most vocal opponents of homosexual rights and same-sex marriages. It also is behind legislation that would provide federal grants to home-schooled youths who go to college, and would exempt home schoolers from federal oversight.
Many in the National Home Education Network oppose the bill, which is stalled. They don't want the federal government attempting to define or cut deals with home schoolers.
Deborah Stevenson, executive director of National Home Education Legal Defense, based in Connecticut, said inclusives are worried that if they accept anything from government -- such as the college aid -- there will be strings attached.
She believes in a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution -- as does Farris -- but they have very different opinions on the congressional bill.
Stevenson said the HSLDA is moving in a dangerous direction.
``To have another organization -- even though the organization may want to help home schoolers -- propose to Congress:... `Please adopt a bill that looks like this to solve this problem for home schoolers' is just to us anathema,'' Stevenson said. ``It's just totally in violation of the Constitution.''
Views on sex offenders
HSLDA can be found in many other places.
In Washington state, the organization supports a bill that would prohibit the opening of a halfway house for convicted sex offenders that would be near a home-schooling household.
On the other hand, if a convicted sex offender wants to home-school, the group takes a different position. Arguing that ``parents have the fundamental right under the United States Constitution to direct the education of their children,'' the group's lawyers opposed recent Arkansas legislation banning home schooling when one of the family members has been convicted of a sex offense.
In its periodic magazine, Court Report, HSLDA said it was ``not sympathetic toward sex offenders,'' but if the abuser has served time in prison, the bill ``unreasonably restricts the educational choices of parents desiring to teach their children at home.''
In Ohio, the organization has mounted an offensive against legislation that would require the clergy to report suspected cases of abuse to child protection agencies. A message to Ohio members says: ``Parents who sin against their children need to be able to confess those sins to their own pastors. Making pastors mandatory reporters of child abuse will keep people from seeking pastoral help.''
Women's role
The Home School Legal Defense Association projects a hard line in favor of women taking the subservient role in the household.
In an April radio show discussion between Farris and his pastor -- a father of 10 -- the pastor said that when the man comes home from work tired and the wife wants him to help, the mother is to be understanding -- as his wife is.
They also said that if a woman wants to home-school her children and her husband doesn't, she has to abide by the husband's wishes. God placed the man as head of the house, so home schooling must have his approval, they said.
HSLDA has opposed U.N. resolutions on the rights of women and children, saying they force countries to adopt policies that violate the proper role of women in traditional families.
Important friends
HSLDA's beliefs and its ability to deliver political support have won the organization friends in high places -- no less than President Bush and his first-term attorney general, John Ashcroft.
In 1998, Farris expressed interest in Ashcroft as a presidential candidate. In early 2001, Farris was quoted widely as a strong supporter of Ashcroft as Bush's pick for attorney general. About a dozen e-mail alerts were dispatched to members urging them to write to newspapers and to U.S. senators in support of the nomination.
Four months later, Ashcroft spoke at a Washington celebration for 100 of Patrick Henry College's biggest contributors. His wife, Janet, is on the school's board of trustees.
There is a two-way street with the Bush administration. In addition to the large number of student internships at the White House, a Patrick Henry graduate landed a full-time job there. A former HSLDA lobbyist was appointed White House liaison to the Department of the Interior.
The director of Generation Joshua is Ned Ryun, a former Bush speechwriter. Ned and his brother Drew, director of grass-roots development for the Republican National Committee, are the home-schooled sons of Olympic track medalist Jim Ryun, now a Republican congressman from Kansas.
Paul J. Bonicelli, Patrick Henry's dean of academic affairs, was appointed by the Bush administration in 2002 to participate on a team negotiating a U.N. document regarding the rights of children. Bonicelli said at the time that Bush wanted the delegation to reflect an anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality position.
Farris at White House
But it is Farris who has the highest profile.
He was a guest at the White House twice last year.
The first time was for the signing of the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act in June 2003, which requires social workers to be trained in Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful searches.
HSLDA long has argued that social workers often violate the rights of home-schooling families by forcing entry into their homes to interview children.
The second visit was months later, when Farris and representatives of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian broadcasting and publishing organization, met privately with Bush, then followed his limousine to the Reagan Building for the signing of the ban on partial-birth abortions.
Even before Bush became president, Farris was making contact. In 1999, Farris led a group of Christian conservatives who polled all the Republican presidential hopefuls, asking them questions on such issues as abortion, homosexuality, international policy and whether ``In God We Trust'' should stay on U.S. currency.
Bush didn't respond to the survey, so Farris arranged a privatemeeting in Washington, D.C., in September 1999 between Bush and a group of conservatives. After the meeting, the group endorsed Bush.
National reach
The Washington connection is only one piece of HSLDA's influence. Each of the organization's lawyers is assigned to several states to monitor legislation, departments of education, school boards and protective service agencies. They interpret law, send e-mails to subscribers and sometimes visit organizations and state legislatures.
Home-schooling parents, equipped with HSLDA's research and scripted talking points, descend on city councils and legislatures in almost every state every year.
Virginia House member James Dillard, a moderate Republican, saw the effectiveness of the organization and its affiliates this year when home-schoolers wanted his state to relax laws on parent qualifications for home education.
``They beat me. In light of what is clearly, I think, logical law, they beat me to a pulp,'' he said.
Dillard headed a committee 20 years ago that wrote the laws legalizing home schooling in Virginia. Parents had to have a college degree to qualify. Otherwise, they had to submit their curriculum to local school officials and agree to a low level of monitoring.
Home schoolers wanted to eliminate the college-education requirement and allow all parents with at least a high school diploma to home-school with no oversight.
'Intimidating'
HSLDA posted regular updates on its Web site regarding the legislation and Dillard's opposition. He was deluged with e-mails and phone calls from supporters of the change.
Dillard complained that home schoolers misrepresented the results of an HSLDA study to convince other legislators that home-school children are better educated and that regulation is unnecessary. He said they disregarded parts of the same study, by Lawrence M. Rudner, that showed that if home-schooling parents have a college education, their children score far higher on standardized tests than other home-schooled children.
The home schoolers were intimidating, Dillard said.
When members of the Virginia House of Delegates took an unofficial tally to see whether home schoolers would win, the measure had a two-vote majority. When they voted on the record, the tally was 60-40 in favor of relaxing home-school law.
Dillard said one colleague who changed his vote joked that he would vote against the speaker of the House, ``but I'm not willing to go against the home schoolers.''
The Senate also passed the bill, but Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, vetoed it.
Thin gray line
Patrick Henry College is a vital cog in the HSLDA political machine, and their combined practices raise questions about whether the college is a charitable educational institution, as defined by the Internal Revenue Service, or an arm of a conservative political organization.
Charitable organizations are barred by federal law from taking sides in partisan campaigns.
Patrick Henry students have been screened for their beliefs and ambitions, they must sign a pledge to follow the college's mission, and they must earn college credit through political activity that the faculty has approved.
There is a Republican Club at the college, but no Democratic Club.
Tuition is about $15,000, and room and board is another $5,000. Because of aggressive fund raising through HSLDA, Generation Joshua and the college, the school will raise nearly $3 million in charitable contributions to subsidize the cost so that, on average, students pay less than two-thirds of full tuition, said Bonicelli, the dean of academic affairs.
The ability to use charitable contributions to subsidize students who work on conservative political campaigns ``strikes one as an interesting way to get around campaign finance regulations,'' said David Redlawsk, a University of Iowa political psychology professor.
Redlawsk teaches a political campaigning class in which students must participate in a local, state or national campaign. An avowed Democrat, he said he provides the students with contacts for all political parties and campaigns.
He acknowledged that rules are less stringent for private universities. Patrick Henry's students are prescreened for beliefs prior to admission, something that cannot take place at the University of Iowa, Redlawsk said.
Federal courts have ruled that as long as students have the freedom to choose the campaign they want to assist, there is no problem, said Bruce Hopkins, a tax attorney who has written several books on laws regarding nonprofit organizations.
Thoroughly screening the students for their beliefs -- as Patrick Henry does -- is an untested nuance, he said.
HSLDA's response
Farris and Bonicelli said no students are made to do anything they don't want to do. Students make the proposals, and to Bonicelli's knowledge, no student proposal has been denied, he said.
``Just so I'm clear: If Ted Kennedy's office or the DNC (Democratic National Committee) called and asked for our students to participate, we would pass that along. So far, they haven't called,'' Bonicelli said.
``Nobody is ever assigned to anything,'' Farris said. ``Students are made aware of what opportunities are out there, and if somebody wants to go do it, they go do it.''
Hopkins, the tax lawyer, said Patrick Henry is probably very careful to protect its tax status.
``You would think this would be a violation of the rules,'' said Hopkins. ``It sounds like the university is directing students to go out and work on particular campaigns. But based on what I'm hearing, I'm fairly confident they've structured this so that they're staying just to the right side of the line.''
Patrick Henry also accepted $5.2 million in 2000-02 from the charitable Covenant Foundation, funded by James Leininger, a politically active San Antonio businessman who sits on the college's board of trustees.
In 2002, nine Patrick Henry students went to Texas to work for six weeks -- nearly half the spring semester -- for a conservative political action committee that Leininger founded: Texans for Governmental Integrity.
Bonicelli said there is no connection between the contributions and the campaign work by students -- it was purely voluntary.
Phone calls to Leininger's office seeking comment were not returned.
``Again, this is going to the edge,'' Hopkins said. ``Some judges would look at it very myopically; other judges could say they're not going to get tricked into looking at this in intricate steps: This was prearranged.''
Grooming leaders
Kristen Sabelle, a Patrick Henry senior last fall, said, ``I like the vision of the college -- to change the culture.'' Sabelle was home-schooled beginning in middle school and attended a public and an independent private college in her home state, Connecticut, before transferring to Patrick Henry.
Her parents heard about it through their home-school support group. It was different -- even from other Christian colleges, she said.
``They want to change the nation. They impart that passion.''
Sabelle was among the nine students who worked for Leininger's PAC in San Antonio. She also has worked on several other campaigns and has written position papers for special interests.
``I'm working on things that actually apply, and I like the proximity to Washington, D.C.,'' she said.
Jane Grisham, another senior last fall, wants to be a lobbyist in Washington -- or teach the next generation of home schoolers.
She managed the campaign of Lori Waters, executive director of the Eagle Forum, who was elected to the Loudoun County, Va., Board of Supervisors. Eagle Forum is a conservative lobbying organization in Washington founded by Phyllis Schlafly. About 50 Patrick Henry students helped Grisham.
Grisham said there is too much complacency in America. The danger, she said, is: ``You wake one morning and say, `Where's America? What happened?' ''
Selection of students
Dedicated and focused Patrick Henry students come as no accident.
Although HSLDA actively opposes testing for home schoolers as an unnecessary burden, Patrick Henry wants to see their SAT scores.
The school selects the cream, making it among the nation's most selective colleges, Farris said.
Prospective students must supply three essays addressing their walk with Jesus Christ, their college aspirations and a current political or cultural issue. The screening process includes an interview and the involvement of the parents.
From the beginning, the majors and curriculum at Patrick Henry were designed to influence national, and possibly world, opinion by training students for leadership roles in government, the media, the courts and the arts.
Journalism, computer science and government participation -- or public policy -- were Farris' primary objectives and the three options for obtaining a bachelor's degree in government. Computer science never came into fruition. Instead, in the 2003-04 school year, Patrick Henry added a ``strategic intelligence'' track for students majoring in government.
Strategic intelligence includes espionage, foreign affairs, law enforcement and the information gathered about potential threats to the nation. The school's Web site says students have visited high-security areas that cannot be discussed publicly.
Lack of racial diversity
On the college's apparent lack of racial diversity, Bonicelli said that's not important to the organization. The only African-American visible on a busy day early in the 2003-04 school year was a kitchen worker.
``We believe in some ways we are a very diverse campus,'' Bonicelli said. ``We have students from 40 states, we have all denominations represented, we have all kinds of viewpoints -- within certain parameters, obviously. They're all Christian; they're all committed to a conservative view of their Christian faith.
``But as to skin color and ethnicity, we do not count, we do not ask,'' he said. ``We have no official way of knowing anything about that. That's by design because we don't think that is a reason... for admission of anyone.''
Farris' vision
Farris isn't timid about Patrick Henry being different.
``It is different from most colleges. When you put all the package parts together, I think we're actually unique in the country,'' Farris told the Akron Beacon Journal.
``I hope our graduates are in Congress, are governors, judges someplace, great lawyers, writing great books, making television shows, great films, making great movies,'' Farris said.
``My pipe dream is 20 years from now at the Academy Awards, a guy walks onstage to accept the Oscar for directing the best movie of the year, and his cell phone rings while he is onstage. It is the president of the United States congratulating him, and they were roommates here at Patrick Henry College. The only part of that scenario that is a pipe dream is that the cell phone works.''
Farris has plans for the future: More students, more dorms, more classrooms and, someday, a law school.
``It's going great, although nothing ever goes as fast as I want it to. I'm a person given to do things quickly,'' he said.
Farris says he is realistic about what can be accomplished. He's not building a new world.
``My vision is better, not utopia,'' he said.
Comments about this story may be e-mailed to homeschool@thebeaconjournal.com.
Copyright 2004 Knight Ridder
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/education/10221547.htm
By Doug Oplinger and Dennis J. Willard
Beacon Journal staff writers
Posted on Fri, Nov. 19, 2004
PURCELLVILLE, VA. - A little more than an hour from Washington, D.C., on rolling state Route 7 in Virginia, is the off-ramp to Purcellville, a small town in the heart of some of America's most historic battlegrounds.
Farmland is on one side of the highway.
On the other side is residential sprawl from the nation's capital and a giant, Colonial-style building reminiscent of the Revolutionary War.
``Revolutionary'' is the operative word.
This is headquarters for the Home School Legal Defense Association and one of its many affiliates, Patrick Henry College, named for the Colonial firebrand who coined the phrase, ``Give me liberty or give me death.''
Founded in 1983 as a legal-aid society for home-schooling parents, HSLDA has become much more. It has taken on the appearance of a political party in its own right, with an evangelical Christian mission to shape the American culture and change the face of government, the news media and international affairs.
While many Americans know little or nothing about home schooling and HSLDA, the resources of this new army of northern Virginia played an important role in the moral-values campaign that ushered George W. Bush into a second term and elected conservative Republicans to Congress.
The Home School Legal Defense Association has its own political leadership, its own fund-raising structure, a carefully screened battalion of college students and thousands of volunteers across the country who share a conservative vision of saving America from its sinful ways.
Charitable donations from some of America's wealthiest conservatives and dues from the organization's 81,000 member families are the financial backbone.
HSLDA leaders control a political action committee.
Families who buy memberships for the legal protection also are buying into an organization that takes positions on behalf of states' and individual rights. It works against liberal judges and politicians, homosexual rights and abortion.
The organization believes the United States was intended to be a Christian nation. Men are in charge at home.
A tour of the Patrick Henry campus offers an impression of little or no racial diversity. School officials say they track students' home states but not their heritage.
College is training camp
Patrick Henry College is the training camp of the home-schooled fundamentalist Christian movement.
The school requires its students to commit nearly half of their junior and senior years to fieldwork for political interests. Because charitable contributions support the four-year-old college, the political involvement pushes the legal limits for a nonprofit organization.
In the school's short history, Patrick Henry students already have worn a path down Route 7 to the nation's capital. Last spring, they claimed seven of the 100 college internships at the White House, the Bush administration confirmed. They also worked with U.S. intelligence agencies and such conservative think tanks as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.
Patrick Henry's students permeate all levels of government, writing e-mail alerts to members of Congress on behalf of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum or handling questions from citizens back home for U.S. senators. On weekends, it's not unusual for the Republican National Committee to transport students to distant locations to help with targeted campaigns.
Prominent leader
Michael Farris is president of Patrick Henry College and chairman and chief counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association.
Education Week magazine has named him one of the 100 most important faces in education in the 20th century.
Farris was a leader in Pat Buchanan's 1992 effort to be a viable third-party presidential candidate. The ordained minister and lawyer has argued -- and won -- pivotal cases before the U.S. and state supreme courts regarding religious freedom and individual rights.
``We're the balance'' in higher education, Farris said in an interview with the Akron Beacon Journal. ``You won't find people here who are advocating socialism or Marxism. That's not the case in most colleges. You will find people there that are socialists.
``We are unashamedly Christians, trying to train high-level, academically qualified students who have a deep Christian conviction who will go out and do good things for this world,'' Farris said. ``You will not find political correctness here in any way, shape or form.''
Information center
The Home School Legal Defense Association sits at the center of an intricately woven group of organizations that inform and train home-schooled children and their parents.
When 17-year-old Derek Archer heard Farris speak at a Patrick Henry summer camp for young teens a few summers ago, he was sold on politics and the school.
Archer went to the camp again last year and put his name on a sign-up sheet for ``Generation Joshua,'' a new HSLDA program for home-schooled teens.
When Archer returned to his home in Barberton, he became part of HSLDA's young army in the heartland. His team was in a national contest to register church members to vote.
Motivated by the moral issues that resonated in the 2004 election, 100 Generation Joshua campaigners participated in the marathon effort in Ohio to keep President Bush in the White House.
Generation Joshua is one piece of HSLDA, which now is an international organization. There is a Canadian affiliate, and the HSLDA sends financial support to home-school groups in South Africa and Germany.
HSLDA has a daily radio show, lobbying arm, periodical magazine, speakers bureau and sophisticated network of Internet communications.
Its leadership maintains a high profile.
Chairman Michael Farris has testified before Congress on parental rights issues and in support of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prohibit the government from recognizing same-sex marriages.
President Michael Smith is a guest columnist in the conservative Washington Times newspaper about twice a month.
Opposition to Clintons
The lobbying arm in downtown Washington -- the National Center for Home Education -- cited Bill and Hillary Clinton as threats to the nation in 1992. So the center initiated annual training sessions in the nation's capital attended by thousands of home-schooling parents. They were told how to make effective, periodic visits -- with their families -- to their local congressional offices to stress conservative issues and to oppose Clinton policies.
In one example, they actively campaigned against a Clinton initiative to immunize all children, saying that immunization is a matter of parental choice, and they helped to disseminate information about children who had been harmed by vaccinations.
More than 1,000 home-schooled teens from all over the country have traveled to Purcellville to attend camps in the last three summers. This year, they could take espionage classes and pretend to beintelligence officers or be news reporters with a Christian perspective.
To train teens in skills of argumentation, a high school debate association -- originally run by Farris' daughter -- was spun off by HSLDA into a separate organization that brings together home schoolers. They tackle such topics as abandoning the national income tax.
No branch of government is left untouched. At Patrick Henry College, Farris created the Center for the Original Intent of the Constitution. Students learn to conduct constitutional law research and help him write legal briefs that are submitted in cases he believes need a conservative voice.
His organization believes the federal judiciary has run amok and America has gone ``reeling off her moral foundations'' because of bad U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
``The Supreme Court created a `woman's right to choose' out of thin air,'' HSLDA says in its periodical, Court Report. ``The Constitution is absolutely silent regarding the right to an abortion, but the right to life is explicit in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.''
Farris is urging home schoolers to call the U.S. Senate's Republican leadership and lobby against the selection of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Farris said Specter ``opposed judicial nominees who stand for the original meaning of the Constitution.''
The nation needs a different person in charge of judicial confirmations, Farris said in an e-mail to HSLDA subscribers last week. ``To stop judicial tyranny and defend our fundamental freedoms, we need judges who will be faithful to the U.S. Constitution.''
Summit teen energized
Generation Joshua's role is to mobilize home-schooled children who have been ``equipped for a very important mission, namely to reclaim our land for righteousness,''Farris and Smith said in a letter to HSLDA membership.
The organization is named for the Old Testament figure who assumed leadership of the Israelite exodus from Egyptian bondage after the death of Moses. Joshua conquered towns in the region of present-day Israel so that the chosen people could inhabit the Promised Land.
Likewise, the leaders' letter stated: ``Many battles have been won on the home-schooling front, but there are many battles left to fight because the giants of abortion, homosexuality and moral relativism remain in our land. We can play a more vital role in raising up and electing more godly, righteous and constitutionally sound men and women who will enact pro-family, pro-life legislation, who seek to limit gambling and pornography, who will protect our religious freedoms and reject judicial activism.''
Derek Archer is energized and loves being involved in Generation Joshua. ``The purpose is real hands-on involvement,'' he said.
In the national Generation Joshua contest to register voters and mobilize more youth, five Ohio members -- Archer among them -- often dominated the rankings. An Ohioan placed second in the final count.
On his own, Archer checked with the Summit County Republican Party to find out when its phone banks would be operating so he could call and encourage voters to support Bush.
As the election neared, he was one of 20 Generation Joshua members to work out of Tuscarawas County, where they knocked on doors and made phone calls to encourage Republican turnout, he said. A team of 80 worked out of Columbus.
He was excited that another team in South Dakota aided in the defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.
The HSLDA political action committee helped pay their expenses,he said.
``Over the past few months, they took a bunch of students who knew nothing about campaigning or the political process. We worked through an intensive few months, and they brought us out with memories we'll never forget,'' Archer said. ``It was awesome.''
Archer hopes to attend Patrick Henry when he finishes his home education next year. He wants to go to Washington to help manage campaigns and someday run for state and federal office.
``It's awesome the way the Lord is working,'' he said.
Claim of persecution
HSLDA has captured the role as the most-quoted advocate of and expert on home education. This, despite a membership of about 81,000 that -- using the Department of Education's estimate of about 1.1 million home-schooled children and three or four children per household --represents about 29 percent of the home-school families in the country.
Suggestions that home schooling is a white, middle-class, evangelical Christian movement come from studies done by HSLDA and evangelical Christian researcher Brian Ray of Oregon -- himself a home-schooling father who often works with the Virginia-based organization. They most often poll evangelical Christians for their studies, which critics say can skew the results.
And Ray draws a tight circle around his definition of Christian.
As Ray collected information in a recent survey of Ohio home schoolers, he asked them to identify their religious beliefs by selecting one definition from a list of choices. There was a box for ``Catholic'' and a box for ``Christian.''
HSLDA often paints home-schooling families as persecuted -- especially those who share the Christian faith.
``Frankly, I want to thank the education establishment and the NEA (National Education Association) for the creation of Patrick Henry College,'' Farris said last fall as he talked about the college. ``Because of their attacks on the home-schooling movement, they created a generation of kids who are interested in making a contribution.
``That's why we're here. This is a response to the pressures of persecution,'' Farris said.
The suggestion of persecution angers Michael Apple, a University of Wisconsin professor, researcher and outspoken critic of home schooling.
``They've stolen the civil rights movement rhetoric and said that, `We are now the oppressed,' '' Apple said. ``They see themselves as struggling for freedom and liberty because they see themselves, literally, as those who are denied their freedom to speak and to be listened to.
``That's a fiction,'' he said.
Farris' segment of the home-schooling movement has money and organization and access to the White House, Apple said.
``These are awfully smart and dedicated people who believe that God is on their side and they will stop at very little to make certain that God is brought not just to the home but to the school and the government,'' Apple said. The nation should be ``very, very concerned.''
A voice on moral issues
The combined budget of the Home School Legal Defense Association and Patrick Henry College was about $15 million in 2002 -- the most recent year for which information is available.
Association members pay between $95 and $115 a year for membership, although many receive a small discount if they are members of local home-school groups. The dues support the staff -- which includes several lawyers -- Internet operations, lobbying operations and publications.
But the HSLDA doesn't speak for all home schoolers, including some who join primarily for the legal protection.
The National Home Education Network -- a diverse home-schooling group -- often engages in lively Internet debate about some of the Christian organization's positions and its penchant for speaking for everyone.
The HSLDA is among the most vocal opponents of homosexual rights and same-sex marriages. It also is behind legislation that would provide federal grants to home-schooled youths who go to college, and would exempt home schoolers from federal oversight.
Many in the National Home Education Network oppose the bill, which is stalled. They don't want the federal government attempting to define or cut deals with home schoolers.
Deborah Stevenson, executive director of National Home Education Legal Defense, based in Connecticut, said inclusives are worried that if they accept anything from government -- such as the college aid -- there will be strings attached.
She believes in a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution -- as does Farris -- but they have very different opinions on the congressional bill.
Stevenson said the HSLDA is moving in a dangerous direction.
``To have another organization -- even though the organization may want to help home schoolers -- propose to Congress:... `Please adopt a bill that looks like this to solve this problem for home schoolers' is just to us anathema,'' Stevenson said. ``It's just totally in violation of the Constitution.''
Views on sex offenders
HSLDA can be found in many other places.
In Washington state, the organization supports a bill that would prohibit the opening of a halfway house for convicted sex offenders that would be near a home-schooling household.
On the other hand, if a convicted sex offender wants to home-school, the group takes a different position. Arguing that ``parents have the fundamental right under the United States Constitution to direct the education of their children,'' the group's lawyers opposed recent Arkansas legislation banning home schooling when one of the family members has been convicted of a sex offense.
In its periodic magazine, Court Report, HSLDA said it was ``not sympathetic toward sex offenders,'' but if the abuser has served time in prison, the bill ``unreasonably restricts the educational choices of parents desiring to teach their children at home.''
In Ohio, the organization has mounted an offensive against legislation that would require the clergy to report suspected cases of abuse to child protection agencies. A message to Ohio members says: ``Parents who sin against their children need to be able to confess those sins to their own pastors. Making pastors mandatory reporters of child abuse will keep people from seeking pastoral help.''
Women's role
The Home School Legal Defense Association projects a hard line in favor of women taking the subservient role in the household.
In an April radio show discussion between Farris and his pastor -- a father of 10 -- the pastor said that when the man comes home from work tired and the wife wants him to help, the mother is to be understanding -- as his wife is.
They also said that if a woman wants to home-school her children and her husband doesn't, she has to abide by the husband's wishes. God placed the man as head of the house, so home schooling must have his approval, they said.
HSLDA has opposed U.N. resolutions on the rights of women and children, saying they force countries to adopt policies that violate the proper role of women in traditional families.
Important friends
HSLDA's beliefs and its ability to deliver political support have won the organization friends in high places -- no less than President Bush and his first-term attorney general, John Ashcroft.
In 1998, Farris expressed interest in Ashcroft as a presidential candidate. In early 2001, Farris was quoted widely as a strong supporter of Ashcroft as Bush's pick for attorney general. About a dozen e-mail alerts were dispatched to members urging them to write to newspapers and to U.S. senators in support of the nomination.
Four months later, Ashcroft spoke at a Washington celebration for 100 of Patrick Henry College's biggest contributors. His wife, Janet, is on the school's board of trustees.
There is a two-way street with the Bush administration. In addition to the large number of student internships at the White House, a Patrick Henry graduate landed a full-time job there. A former HSLDA lobbyist was appointed White House liaison to the Department of the Interior.
The director of Generation Joshua is Ned Ryun, a former Bush speechwriter. Ned and his brother Drew, director of grass-roots development for the Republican National Committee, are the home-schooled sons of Olympic track medalist Jim Ryun, now a Republican congressman from Kansas.
Paul J. Bonicelli, Patrick Henry's dean of academic affairs, was appointed by the Bush administration in 2002 to participate on a team negotiating a U.N. document regarding the rights of children. Bonicelli said at the time that Bush wanted the delegation to reflect an anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality position.
Farris at White House
But it is Farris who has the highest profile.
He was a guest at the White House twice last year.
The first time was for the signing of the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act in June 2003, which requires social workers to be trained in Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful searches.
HSLDA long has argued that social workers often violate the rights of home-schooling families by forcing entry into their homes to interview children.
The second visit was months later, when Farris and representatives of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian broadcasting and publishing organization, met privately with Bush, then followed his limousine to the Reagan Building for the signing of the ban on partial-birth abortions.
Even before Bush became president, Farris was making contact. In 1999, Farris led a group of Christian conservatives who polled all the Republican presidential hopefuls, asking them questions on such issues as abortion, homosexuality, international policy and whether ``In God We Trust'' should stay on U.S. currency.
Bush didn't respond to the survey, so Farris arranged a privatemeeting in Washington, D.C., in September 1999 between Bush and a group of conservatives. After the meeting, the group endorsed Bush.
National reach
The Washington connection is only one piece of HSLDA's influence. Each of the organization's lawyers is assigned to several states to monitor legislation, departments of education, school boards and protective service agencies. They interpret law, send e-mails to subscribers and sometimes visit organizations and state legislatures.
Home-schooling parents, equipped with HSLDA's research and scripted talking points, descend on city councils and legislatures in almost every state every year.
Virginia House member James Dillard, a moderate Republican, saw the effectiveness of the organization and its affiliates this year when home-schoolers wanted his state to relax laws on parent qualifications for home education.
``They beat me. In light of what is clearly, I think, logical law, they beat me to a pulp,'' he said.
Dillard headed a committee 20 years ago that wrote the laws legalizing home schooling in Virginia. Parents had to have a college degree to qualify. Otherwise, they had to submit their curriculum to local school officials and agree to a low level of monitoring.
Home schoolers wanted to eliminate the college-education requirement and allow all parents with at least a high school diploma to home-school with no oversight.
'Intimidating'
HSLDA posted regular updates on its Web site regarding the legislation and Dillard's opposition. He was deluged with e-mails and phone calls from supporters of the change.
Dillard complained that home schoolers misrepresented the results of an HSLDA study to convince other legislators that home-school children are better educated and that regulation is unnecessary. He said they disregarded parts of the same study, by Lawrence M. Rudner, that showed that if home-schooling parents have a college education, their children score far higher on standardized tests than other home-schooled children.
The home schoolers were intimidating, Dillard said.
When members of the Virginia House of Delegates took an unofficial tally to see whether home schoolers would win, the measure had a two-vote majority. When they voted on the record, the tally was 60-40 in favor of relaxing home-school law.
Dillard said one colleague who changed his vote joked that he would vote against the speaker of the House, ``but I'm not willing to go against the home schoolers.''
The Senate also passed the bill, but Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, vetoed it.
Thin gray line
Patrick Henry College is a vital cog in the HSLDA political machine, and their combined practices raise questions about whether the college is a charitable educational institution, as defined by the Internal Revenue Service, or an arm of a conservative political organization.
Charitable organizations are barred by federal law from taking sides in partisan campaigns.
Patrick Henry students have been screened for their beliefs and ambitions, they must sign a pledge to follow the college's mission, and they must earn college credit through political activity that the faculty has approved.
There is a Republican Club at the college, but no Democratic Club.
Tuition is about $15,000, and room and board is another $5,000. Because of aggressive fund raising through HSLDA, Generation Joshua and the college, the school will raise nearly $3 million in charitable contributions to subsidize the cost so that, on average, students pay less than two-thirds of full tuition, said Bonicelli, the dean of academic affairs.
The ability to use charitable contributions to subsidize students who work on conservative political campaigns ``strikes one as an interesting way to get around campaign finance regulations,'' said David Redlawsk, a University of Iowa political psychology professor.
Redlawsk teaches a political campaigning class in which students must participate in a local, state or national campaign. An avowed Democrat, he said he provides the students with contacts for all political parties and campaigns.
He acknowledged that rules are less stringent for private universities. Patrick Henry's students are prescreened for beliefs prior to admission, something that cannot take place at the University of Iowa, Redlawsk said.
Federal courts have ruled that as long as students have the freedom to choose the campaign they want to assist, there is no problem, said Bruce Hopkins, a tax attorney who has written several books on laws regarding nonprofit organizations.
Thoroughly screening the students for their beliefs -- as Patrick Henry does -- is an untested nuance, he said.
HSLDA's response
Farris and Bonicelli said no students are made to do anything they don't want to do. Students make the proposals, and to Bonicelli's knowledge, no student proposal has been denied, he said.
``Just so I'm clear: If Ted Kennedy's office or the DNC (Democratic National Committee) called and asked for our students to participate, we would pass that along. So far, they haven't called,'' Bonicelli said.
``Nobody is ever assigned to anything,'' Farris said. ``Students are made aware of what opportunities are out there, and if somebody wants to go do it, they go do it.''
Hopkins, the tax lawyer, said Patrick Henry is probably very careful to protect its tax status.
``You would think this would be a violation of the rules,'' said Hopkins. ``It sounds like the university is directing students to go out and work on particular campaigns. But based on what I'm hearing, I'm fairly confident they've structured this so that they're staying just to the right side of the line.''
Patrick Henry also accepted $5.2 million in 2000-02 from the charitable Covenant Foundation, funded by James Leininger, a politically active San Antonio businessman who sits on the college's board of trustees.
In 2002, nine Patrick Henry students went to Texas to work for six weeks -- nearly half the spring semester -- for a conservative political action committee that Leininger founded: Texans for Governmental Integrity.
Bonicelli said there is no connection between the contributions and the campaign work by students -- it was purely voluntary.
Phone calls to Leininger's office seeking comment were not returned.
``Again, this is going to the edge,'' Hopkins said. ``Some judges would look at it very myopically; other judges could say they're not going to get tricked into looking at this in intricate steps: This was prearranged.''
Grooming leaders
Kristen Sabelle, a Patrick Henry senior last fall, said, ``I like the vision of the college -- to change the culture.'' Sabelle was home-schooled beginning in middle school and attended a public and an independent private college in her home state, Connecticut, before transferring to Patrick Henry.
Her parents heard about it through their home-school support group. It was different -- even from other Christian colleges, she said.
``They want to change the nation. They impart that passion.''
Sabelle was among the nine students who worked for Leininger's PAC in San Antonio. She also has worked on several other campaigns and has written position papers for special interests.
``I'm working on things that actually apply, and I like the proximity to Washington, D.C.,'' she said.
Jane Grisham, another senior last fall, wants to be a lobbyist in Washington -- or teach the next generation of home schoolers.
She managed the campaign of Lori Waters, executive director of the Eagle Forum, who was elected to the Loudoun County, Va., Board of Supervisors. Eagle Forum is a conservative lobbying organization in Washington founded by Phyllis Schlafly. About 50 Patrick Henry students helped Grisham.
Grisham said there is too much complacency in America. The danger, she said, is: ``You wake one morning and say, `Where's America? What happened?' ''
Selection of students
Dedicated and focused Patrick Henry students come as no accident.
Although HSLDA actively opposes testing for home schoolers as an unnecessary burden, Patrick Henry wants to see their SAT scores.
The school selects the cream, making it among the nation's most selective colleges, Farris said.
Prospective students must supply three essays addressing their walk with Jesus Christ, their college aspirations and a current political or cultural issue. The screening process includes an interview and the involvement of the parents.
From the beginning, the majors and curriculum at Patrick Henry were designed to influence national, and possibly world, opinion by training students for leadership roles in government, the media, the courts and the arts.
Journalism, computer science and government participation -- or public policy -- were Farris' primary objectives and the three options for obtaining a bachelor's degree in government. Computer science never came into fruition. Instead, in the 2003-04 school year, Patrick Henry added a ``strategic intelligence'' track for students majoring in government.
Strategic intelligence includes espionage, foreign affairs, law enforcement and the information gathered about potential threats to the nation. The school's Web site says students have visited high-security areas that cannot be discussed publicly.
Lack of racial diversity
On the college's apparent lack of racial diversity, Bonicelli said that's not important to the organization. The only African-American visible on a busy day early in the 2003-04 school year was a kitchen worker.
``We believe in some ways we are a very diverse campus,'' Bonicelli said. ``We have students from 40 states, we have all denominations represented, we have all kinds of viewpoints -- within certain parameters, obviously. They're all Christian; they're all committed to a conservative view of their Christian faith.
``But as to skin color and ethnicity, we do not count, we do not ask,'' he said. ``We have no official way of knowing anything about that. That's by design because we don't think that is a reason... for admission of anyone.''
Farris' vision
Farris isn't timid about Patrick Henry being different.
``It is different from most colleges. When you put all the package parts together, I think we're actually unique in the country,'' Farris told the Akron Beacon Journal.
``I hope our graduates are in Congress, are governors, judges someplace, great lawyers, writing great books, making television shows, great films, making great movies,'' Farris said.
``My pipe dream is 20 years from now at the Academy Awards, a guy walks onstage to accept the Oscar for directing the best movie of the year, and his cell phone rings while he is onstage. It is the president of the United States congratulating him, and they were roommates here at Patrick Henry College. The only part of that scenario that is a pipe dream is that the cell phone works.''
Farris has plans for the future: More students, more dorms, more classrooms and, someday, a law school.
``It's going great, although nothing ever goes as fast as I want it to. I'm a person given to do things quickly,'' he said.
Farris says he is realistic about what can be accomplished. He's not building a new world.
``My vision is better, not utopia,'' he said.
Comments about this story may be e-mailed to homeschool@thebeaconjournal.com.
Copyright 2004 Knight Ridder
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/education/10221547.htm
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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