Published on Monday, October 25, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
I was told in Sunday school the word "Christian" means to be Christ-like, but the message I hear daily on the airwaves from the “christian ” media are words of war, violence, and aggression. Throughout this article I will spell Christian with a small c rather than a capital, since the term (as I usually hear it thrown about) does not refer to the teachings of the one I know as the Christ. I hear church goers call in to radio programs and explain that it was a mistake not to kill every living thing in Fallujah. They quote chapter and verse from the old testament about smiting the enemies of Israel. The fear of fighting the terrorists on our soil rather than across the globe causes the voices to be raised as they justify the latest prison scandal or other accounts of the horrors of war . The words they speak are words of destruction, aggression, dominance, revenge, fear and arrogance. The host and the callers echo the belief in the righteousness of our nation's killing. There are reminders to pray for our “Christian” president who is doing the work of the Lord: Right to Life, Second Amendment, sanctity of marriage, welfare reform, war, kill, evil liberals. . . so much to fight, so much to destroy.
Let me tell you about the Christ I know. He was conceived by an unmarried woman. He was not born into a family of privilege. He was a radical. He said, “It was said an eye for and eye and a tooth of a tooth, but now I say love your enemies and bless those who curse you.” He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” (Matthew 5: 3-9) He said, “All those who are called by my name will enter the kingdom of heaven." He said, "People will know true believers if they have the fruit of the spirit--love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self control.“
He knew he would be led like a sheep to the slaughter. He responded with “Father forgive them.“ He explained that in Christ there is neither Jew nor gentile, slave or free male nor female. He explained that even to be angry is akin to murder. He said the temple of God is not a building, but is in the hearts of those are called by his name. He was called "the Prince of Peace." His final days were spent in prayer, so that he could endure what was set before him, not on how he could overpower the evil government of that day. When they came for him he was led away and didn’t resist his death sentence.
This is a stark contrast to the call of the religious Christian right, who vote for war and weapons [ http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1010-02.htm ], and suggest towns and villages be leveled to bring freedom and peace to the people. They proudly boast this country’s superiority, suggesting God has blessed our nation. Today, as I listened to a popular Christian news network, I was reminded that in the last days, even God’s elect will be deceived, (II Timothy 3:13). When the religious media moguls preaching prosperity spout their rhetoric, I am reminded of the difficulty Jesus described of a rich man’s ability to enter the kingdom of God. (Matthew 19: 24) ( http://www.4religious-right.info/rr_economics.htm ) Some who believe they are fighting evil will cry to the Lord, and he will say “I never knew you.“ (Matthew 22). They will have a form or godliness but will deny the power (II Timothy 3:5) to move mountains through prayer. (Matthew 17:20). Jesus explained that he has not given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. (II Timothy 1:17) I wonder if the innocent moms and dads, brothers and sisters, and aunts and uncles, and grandmas and grandpas who were the victims of US military weapons (the never reported collateral damages we are protected from in the “liberal” nightly news) felt the love of Jesus with the shock and awe. I wonder if the surviving family members now understand His radical love and that they no longer have any need for weapons or defense.
The solutions to the social issues used to manipulate good, decent people have no resemblance to how Jesus responded to the social concerns of his time. He never once mentioned the “right to life” the year he was born King Herod ordered the execution of all babies. (Matthew 2:16). He knew that passing laws does not change the heart. As a follower of his teaching I believe in the right to life, including the children in Iraq who stumble onto land mines, cross the street at the wrong time, or who are snugly tucked within the warm bellies of their wounded or grieving mothers as US fighter jets fly overhead. These are living, breathing children. The killing of these little ones are never even reported, and our tax dollars pay for these bombs. I believe in the right to life for those in the United States who are unwanted and impoverished. I believe in the right to life of the naive kid who was promised by the recruiter they could choose a desk job and still get their education paid or could see the world or could accelerate their life or could play a very realistic video game from a cockpit.
I've worked at a shelter, and I know first hand the reality of unwanted children. I know the reality of this right wing rhetoric when week after week I begged and pleaded with people to give up only one night every three months to sit with these unwanted living children for a few hours while the overworked house parents had a night off. Of the few I found, many changed their minds when they discovered that they would need to wear rubber gloves to change the babies diapers. These “believers” stand on the street corners holding right to life signs and then vote against medical assistance for the mothers and their unwanted children creating an impossible existence for them. The few of these abortion activists who might adopt some of these unwanted children generally want the white and the healthy. The ones with hydrocephalous, tracheotomies, emotional/ mental problems and communicable diseases along with their life long medical expenses can be someone else’s problems.
I cringe as many christians vote for policies that deny help to the poor in our own county, who vote to support the war and military strength, assuring the latest weapons are developed and that the heavens will be dominated by the military of the United States. We develop electromagnetic weapons to shatter skulls, split the earth ( http://www.raven1.net/emr13.htm ) and silently destroy a body as a thief in the night. Studies are even now searching for the frequencies to override the freewill. These unbelievable technologies are a reality and DNA specific weapons can or soon will target a specific nationality ( http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/981116/1998111619.html ). I weep as the waters Jesus walked on become contaminated with uranium. ( http://www.greendove.net/resources3.htm ) I grieve as the missiles fly through the atmosphere on the continent where Jesus rose into the sky, defying death and the grave and where the Holy Sprit first descended. I cry out at the horrors of war and the indignity of the prisons so close to where He took captivity captive. So I am no longer a Christian if Christianity has become what is presented to us by our Christian president and Christian media. I cannot support the right of the United States and Israel to develop and use the most heinous weapons ever imagined. I want no part of a temple built on the blood of the innocent. The sheep have been lead astray by the teachings of prosperity and misinterpretation of the final battle between good and evil. Many no longer can recognize the voice of the good Shepherd.
Some “good Christians” even work at weapons facilities. It is not a stretch to say that a woman who tightens a last rivet on a shiny new missile just off the assembly line might be the same woman who licks the gold star on the attendance chart in morning Sunday school. The missile could be launched by the kid in the youth group who reads the invocation and it will find it’s destiny at a “target of interest” which might or might not have been a result of good intelligence. The collection plate circulates children are taught to love their enemies and bless those who curse them.
The statements and lifestyle of Jesus are difficult for me to understand. What would he say to evil dictators? This God would not justify 15,000 or more [ http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ ] deaths. Even the wrathful jealous God of the old testament spared whole cities for a few righteous souls. For Christians, to support mass killings as a way to prevent future deaths is not at all like Christ. He would not say,"When I am talking about war I am really talking about peace," like the self professed Christian President proudly states. Who but God has the right to determine what price a people should pay for their freedom? The religious leaders on the airwaves today respond to the voices of the few brave peacemakers who dare to speak out. They say that pacifism is insane, and that it doesn’t make sense, but what is forgotten is that logic and faith are separate entities. I believe in the example of Jesus and his admonition to love your enemies and bless those who curse you . Do I understand how this works on the global scale? Do I know what Jesus would say to all the world’s leaders? No, nor do I totally understand how the example of Christ’s life and his message of love works in the world today. That’s why I need faith. Am I always correct in my assessments and actions? No, that’s why I need grace. Am I brave and unafraid? No, that’s why I need the perfect love that casts out fear. Some put trust in Chariots and some in horses but I will remember the name of the lord our God--the Prince of Peace. Perhaps politics has no place for imitators of Christ.
Who will show the face of Christ to the world? Who will speak His radical message? I hear from these so called imitators of Christ that the pacifists are a collection of kids, hippies, socialists and communists who haven’t got a clue. Some of us, however, have come to our beliefs as a result of careful and prayerful study of the scriptures and admonishment from our elders. Many are Mennonite, Amish, Quaker and other Anabaptists, whose ancestors did not resist their torturers and were drowned, burnt at the stake and flogged for their pacifist stand. They truly followed the example of Christ, and their resistance against the catastrophic effects of the merging of church and state cost them a great price. Churches today have signed onto the government plan and have agreed to look the other way in exchange for tax free privileges. The true message of Christ still exists to some degree in the quiet of the land to peacemakers, but sadly these good people have been deceived by the angry words from a righteous sounding religious media majority broadcasting in cars and trucks and tractors all over our land ironically preaching the “good news of war for peace“ and convincing 24-7 “liberal“ bashing. I suspect there are many who share my sorrow at the loss of what it means to be Christ-like, but our voice is seldom heard. The blaring rhetoric drowns out the still small voice of the mighty God. Peace used be the opposite of war, Conservative used to mean the tendency to conserve resources. Liberal used to mean kind and generous, and Christian used to mean like Christ.
So I am no longer a Christian but just a person who continues trying to follow the example of Christ. I’ll let him call me what he wants when I see him face to face. Until then, I will pray that someday people like me will be able to reclaim the meaning of Christ’s identity, and the world will see the effects of the radical message of Christ‘s love--the perfect love that casts out fear.
Karen Cobb is a freelance writer and artist in Santa Fe, NM and can be contacted at cairnhcobb@msn.com.
The Red/Blue Map vs. Conspiracy Theories by Gary North
For over three decades, the TV networks have used blue and red maps to mark voting results in Presidential elections. This practice began no later than 1972, when color television had become universal. For the first two decades, red marked the Democrats and blue marked the Republicans. Then, in 1992, the colors were reversed.
I liked it much better in the old days. The Democrats were red, as in "commies." The Republicans were blue, as in "blue bloods." Those colors applied in Franklin Roosevelt's day and Harry Truman's day and Dwight Eisenhower's day. Conservatives were taught this from our youth. The map conformed to these fundamental truths.
Soft-core Republicans called the Democrats "pinkos." Well, every movement has its share of wimps. We right wingers knew better: Democrats north of the Mason-Dixon line and west of Texas were commies, except for Scoop Jackson, who was the Senator from Boeing.
That was why Dan Smoot's 1961 paperback, The Invisible Government, shocked a lot of us. It turned out that the Council on Foreign Relations, a then-obscure organization of the richest and best-connected people in America, had for four decades screened top political candidates and provided the senior Presidential appointees. Locally, the World Affairs Council ran meetings from which CFR members were recruited.
Five years later, in 1966, Georgetown University historian Carroll Quigley had a book published by Macmillan, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, a gargantuan, 1,350-page, unfootnoted survey of twentieth-century world history. Well into the narrative, beginning at the bottom of page 936, a 20-page bombshell appeared, appropriately in the chapter titled "Nuclear Rivalry and the Cold War." Quigley had been discussing what my generation of anti-Communists called "the old China hands," i.e., leftists who had long dominated the State Department's Asian division. These were highly educated, well-placed misinformers who had described Mao as an agrarian reformer. They were all fellow travellers or commies, as far as we were concerned.
At this point in the book, there was a transition. I regard this as the most important transition published by any modern historian. It began with these innocuous words:
Behind this unfortunate situation lies another, more profound, relationship, which influences matters much broader than Far Eastern policy. It involves the organization of tax-exempt fortunes of international financiers into foundations to be used for educational, scientific, "and other public purposes." Sixty or more years ago, public life in the West was dominated by the influence of "Wall Street." . . . This group, which in the United States, was completely dominated by J. P. Morgan and Company from the 1880's to the 1930's was cosmopolitan, Anglophile, internationalist, Ivy League, eastern seaboard, high Episcopalian, and European-culture conscious.
He then went on to describe the take-over of Ivy League universities by Wall Street through control over the flow of endowment money.
Quigley then did what virtually no professional historian ever does. He discussed his own connection to this heretofore secret confederation of power-brokers. As an introduction, he discussed the views of right-wing critics of the China hands: John T. Flynn, Louis Budenz (an ex-Communist), Freda Utley, General Albert Wedemeyer, and others – saints, for my generation of right wingers. He called them purveyors of "a radical right fairy tale." What was this fairy tale? It pictured American foreign and domestic policy "as a well-organized plot by extreme Left-wing elements, operating from the White House itself and controlling all the chief avenues of publicity in the United States, to destroy the American way of life, based on private enterprise, laissez faire, and isolationism, in behalf of alien ideologies of Russian Socialism and British cosmopolitanism (or internationalism)." Then he explained why this view was misguided. This paragraph is one of the most revealing ever written by a certified historian who is employed by a major academic institution.
This myth, like all fables, does in fact have a modicum of truth. There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known (p. 950). He then sketched a history of the Round Table Groups, founded by Cecil Rhodes and carried on by his disciples. He listed American banking interests that still funded its American extensions: J. P. Morgan, Rockefeller, Whitney, Lazard Brothers, and Morgan, Grenfell. The founding organization was the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Its spin-off, beginning in 1921, was the Council on Foreign Relations (p. 952).
This analysis extended Dan Smoot's thesis. Unlike Smoot, Quigley had followed the money.
After his death, his detailed history of the British connections was published, The Anglo-American Establishment (1981). The manuscript had sat in his files since 1949. In his July, 1992 nomination acceptance speech, Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton singled out Quigley as a professor who had shaped his thinking at Georgetown.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Dan Smoot's 1961 book was a watershed document in the popular conservative movement. It sold over a million copies. With that book, we can mark the move from anti-Communism to anti-conspiracy. (The ever-popular International Jewish Banking Conspiracy – IJBC – had for 80 years found a subterranean market for books printed on cheap paper with typography from the 1890s, plus typewritten mimeographed bulletins, but this had always been a fringe position.)
In 1964, Robert Welch published More Stately Mansions, which marked a turning point for the John Birch Society. With that manifesto, Welch moved the JBS from an anti-Communist organization, founded in 1958, to an anti-conspiracy organization. American Opinion shifted its focus from anti-Communism to anti-banking, a move that persuaded Hans Sennholz to resign as a featured writer. The focus shifted from Soviet Russia and its domestic sympathizers to the Illuminati and its domestic orchestrators.
The story of Quigley's welcome by the Right is worth telling. A book as large as Quigley's, which is aimed at an audience of literate history buffs who did not ask the author to provide footnotes, was not something that ardent right-wingers read in 1966 or now. One man did: Don Bell. Bell wrote and published a very well-written but generally unknown weekly newsletter, Don Bell Reports. In retrospect, I regard it as the best newsletter that the non-libertarian Right ever produced. Its material still holds up well and is useful for researchers, four decades later. Copies are exceedingly rare. They deserve to be on the Web.
I interviewed him in the mid-1980's. He told me this story. He was in a bookstore in 1966, and his eye lighted on the book. He picked it up. Somehow – he could not explain this – he had turned to the section that I have just cited, pages 936–956.
Twenty years earlier, he told me, he had been involved in a jointly written newsletter, which I had never heard of. His partner had written an essay on the Council on Foreign Relations. This, Bell told me, was the first exposé of the CFR. It was ignored.
Bell began referring to Quigley's book in his newsletter. From there word spread in the conservative movement. R. J. Rushdoony told me about it in 1966. Soon, the entire print run had sold out. Macmillan then refused to reprint it. I can recall that in 1974, the price of a used copy had soared to $150, which was about $600 in today's money. Then, sometime around 1975, a small publishing company started selling a reprint, paying Quigley a royalty. Macmillan did not fight this, except to prohibit Macmillan's name from appearing on the title page. Later editions dropped this. The book comes in and out of print.
In 1970, W. Cleon Skousen, who had earned his right-wing bona fides in 1958 with The Naked Communist, self-published The Naked Capitalist, which was based on Quigley's 20 pages.
In 1971, None Dare Call It Conspiracy appeared in a hardback by Gary Allen and Larry Abraham. The subsequent paperback version, without Abraham's name, sold by the millions. After 1964, Gary Allen had been a regular contributor to the Birch Society's monthly magazine, American Opinion.
What Smoot had revealed a decade earlier became a well-known phenomenon in the early 1970's. By the time David Rockefeller founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973, Quigley's dream had come true. The Insiders (capital I) had gone public with their existence.
In what was truly a capper, Skousen in 1978 began publishing a series of large paperback books/magazines through his Freemen Institute. These magazines reprinted, without comment, primary source documents from almost a dozen of these organizations. The Council on Foreign Relations was so pleased that it bought several thousand copies of the issue devoted to the CFR in order to put them in libraries in foreign countries – libraries run by the United States Information Agency.
According to what Skousen told me several years later, the series ended when Skousen's researcher insisted on adding negative comments. Skousen decided to fire him because he knew that comments would close the spigot of original source documents. Sadly, this decision was made just after the Bank for International Settlements let the researcher have access to thousands of documents. The BIS issue never was published.
In 1983, I wrote a Prologue and an Epilogue for Abraham's update of the book, Call It Conspiracy. My sections are now on-line as a separate book.
Today, the conspiracy theory of history is alive and well, though not in conservative foundations. The Rockefeller Foundation has always donated money to conservative think tanks inside the Beltway. No one calls this hush money. No one except Murray Rothbard.
MURRAY ROTHBARD
Economist/historian Murray Rothbard added many chapters to the conspiracy view of American history with his studies of the American banking system and the Progressive movement, which began in the 1880s. Rothbard began with Ludwig von Mises' concept of human action. Mises argued that human action is based on individual decision making, not impersonal social forces. Rothbard took this insight and followed the money. "Qui bono?" he asked: Who benefits?
Rothbard committed a three-fold career gaffe: (1) adopting Mises' epistemology (deductivist) in an era dominated by empiricism (inductivist); (2) adopting Mises' free market economics; (3) adopting a conspiracy view of history. Conspiracy views of history are acceptable by the historical guild only if you are a Marxist. Marx followed the money. "Cash nexus" was one of his more popular phrases. So, it is academically acceptable to indict capitalism as a Marxist, but not as a defender of free markets. To attack modern capitalism from a free market perspective implies that modern capitalism's weaknesses and evils are mainly the fault of the State, not open competition. It implies that society can overcome capitalism's weaknesses and evils by extending the realm of open competition. No proletarian revolution is needed. No government regulations are needed. Therefore, this kind of conspiracy theory is unacceptable in academia.
There is another factor: money. The Insiders have spent a lot of money to buy off the academic guild. They have paid well-respected social scientists and historians to write footnoted academic studies that self-consciously refuse to follow the money and family connections. This buy-off began when the Rockefeller foundation decided to fund a biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., which would counter Ida Tarbell's famous muckraking book. Ivy Lee, the public relations specialist, who worked for most of the major Insiders, was hired by the Rockefeller Foundation to locate a suitable author. He wanted Winston Churchill, but Churchill asked for too much money: $250,000 in advance, in the middle of the depression ($3.5 million today). Lee died in 1934. His successor persuaded Allan Nevins, who was widely respected as an objective academic historian. Nevins wrote a two-volume book on Senior. The book is generally favorable. (This story is told in Ray Eldon Herbert's 1966 biography of Lee, Courtier to the Crowd.) In my graduate school years a generation ago, Nevins' book was the standard academic biography of Senior. Tarbell was taboo. John T. Flynn's God's Gold (1932) was off limits, and Emanuel M. Josephson's The Truth About Rockefeller (1964) was unknown.
Not writing from a Marxist perspective, Rothbard was not supposed to put two and two together regarding the influence of Rockefeller money in academia – hush money, in other words. But Prof. Don Fisher has told part of the story: Fundamental Development of the Social Sciences: Rockefeller Philanthropy and the United States Social Science Research Council, published in 1993 by the highly respected University of Michigan Press. He tells it without Rothbard's penchant for calling a spade a spade.
People act in their own self-interest, Mises taught. Using the coercive power of the State can enrich some people, Rothbard taught. Conclusion: self-interested groups loot the taxpayer and the consumer. Members of these groups conceal what they are doing in order not to arouse suspicion or political opposition. All of this is the predictable result of human action in the context of the modern welfare-warfare State, Rothbard taught. But academic economic historians are not supposed to say this, unless they mask what they are really saying with arcane formulas and statistics, which Rothbard avoided. For him, these are not temporary alliances of "rent-seekers." They are permanent conspiracies of looters.
CONCLUSION
So, it's red counties vs. blue counties. The Republicans have their attention fixed on the blue cape, whereas the Democrats have their attention focused on the red cape. The bullfighter with the sword is ignored by all. So is the refrigerated meat truck just outside the arena.
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.
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