Tom’s Big Picture

Not many Protestants are aware of the deep and rich philosophical literature of English Catholics. I’m not sure whether it’s the wisdom of English culture minus the liberalizing tendencies of the Anglican Church, or the persecution endured by Catholics in England that caused such a deep vein of thought and culture. While not endorsing their doctrine of course, we can appreciate the work of English Catholics like Tolkien, Lewis (lifetime flirtation & deathbed conversion), Belloc and Chesterton.

Chesterton (1874-1936), of whom I’ve read a very little bit from secondary sources, was quite the original thinker, a defender of localism and promoter of an economic idea called distributionism derived from Catholic social principles as an alternative to what he thought were the twin evils of communism and capitalism (He defined capitalism not as free enterprise but as the unholy separation of management and ownership protected by the limited liability veil of corporate governance, effectively removing moral responsibility and consequences from both parties).

One of the distinguishing arguments of Chesterton and Belloc was the idea that the Christian faith was uniquely European, and that while it could and should be exported to other cultures, it could not be separated from its genesis in Europe. The two were eternally bound.

While I would not venture to take an argument that far (especially in light of Europe’s declining faith, as there are now more people attending mosques than churches in Europe, a double symptom of insane immigration policy and postmodern soul-killing agnosticism), it does seem there is some substance to the claim that Christianity is inseparable from Western Civilization and that culture should play a role in our religious experience.

The Orthodox Churches, arguably the closest surviving model of the original New Testament church, intentionally organizes itself into national-level entities instead of one universal church (a heresy, they claim of the Catholic, which literally means universal, Church). There is a Greek Orthodox Church, a Russian Orthodox Church, a Serbian Orthodox Church (the unfortunate victims, if you recall, of Bill Clinton’s UN-backed “police action” on behalf of Muslim-Albanian terrorists to distract from the Lewinsky scandal), an Armenian Orthodox Church, among others. Each church is headed by someone called a Patriarch who heads a church government of bishops and priests who are allowed to marry (celibacy being a Roman Catholic doctrine alien to the original NT church). Each national division of the Orthodox Church celebrates its own heroes, saints and holy days. For example, Serbians celebrate Serbian saints and historic Serbian victories over Muslim aggressors (as one of the last outposts of Christianity in southeast Europe, the Serbs are a little rough around the edges, but only because of centuries of being the firewall against various Islamic invaders of Europe).

The Orthodox understand that God has created men as members of nations and peoples- there is no universal man, thus there can be no universal church. Orthodox churches are united on doctrine (somewhat), but not in government or culture.

We sons and daughters of Western Europe sometimes in our hubris believe we can overcome the ties of blood and soil. Some believe that an abstract Christianity can be distilled from the Scripture where we can escape what we see as the unnecessary “worldly” loyalties that can be cast aside through unity in Christ. Such notions are actually anti-scriptural, because the Bible clearly indicates that nations and nationalities will even persist into the new heaven and new Earth. Such beliefs represent a hyper-scriptural idealism reminiscent of the heresies of Babel. Some Christians explicitly endorse this theologically, with specious arguments that the judgment of Babel was somehow reversed at Pentecost, and thus we can proceed to destroy God’s ordained order of nations and peoples by pursuing the same abominable global unity with a Christian veneer.

I believe that the loyalties of blood, soil and nation are ordained of God- and that the maintenance and cultivation of these loyalties is necessary to the full Christian life. Just as we favor our families over other people’s families (not because they are necessarily better- though of course it is entirely healthy for a parent to think well and be proud of their child- but because they are ours), we should favor our nation and people over those of others. This is the order ordained by God in the world, and arguably in the world to come. As a wise man once said, there is no such thing as a “man”. There are Englishmen, and Frenchmen, and Germans, and Irishmen, etc- but no one has ever seen this supposed “man”.

Taking as a postulate this loyalty, we must then determine what duties this loyalty requires of us. And more importantly, as the definition of “American” becomes less meaningful, we must determine the group to whom we must be loyal.

I also believe that participating in the culture of our people must be practiced in our lives. In the media we consume, the politics we support, and the history we teach our children we should do our best to improve and better the biocultural entity that God has ordained as ours.

Finally, as our people reject the emptiness of the broader culture and seek meaningful alternatives, largely in a real and robust Christianity, we should also avail ourselves to the rich and deep Christian heritage that sits waiting for us to experience. Poems, novels and histories, more than we could ever read, are still with us from the days (approximately 100 years ago) before our civilization went perilously off-track. But since they are all in the public domain, they will not be marketed to us- we must seek them out.

It’s very hard for us to imagine a healthy, vigorous pride in one’s people and culture that does not involve destructive attitudes toward other groups- mostly because the media in our country tries very hard to associate such feelings with low levels of education and socioeconomic status (e.g. the movie stereotype of the hateful, sadistic, dumb, skoal-dipping Southerner with a rebel flag belt buckle, from movies like Mississippi Burning that depict a one-sided biased view of history). The reason the media does this is that the urban elite in our country have A) an irrational paranoia directed towards the people of our country, imagining them as potential fascists and Nazis (this bigotry is especially directed towards Southerners and people from rural areas, as seen in occasional left-wing portrayals of George W. Bush as Hitler) and B) a vested interest in eroding American patriotism to make way for their Globalist agenda.

An example of the sort of positive, healthy pride I’m talking about can be found in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Greeks are similar to Serbians in having developed a cultural immune system to the multiculturalism that surrounds them in the Balkans. They have pride in who they are and in their culture without denigrating others (well, except maybe Turks, but there’s a history of Turkish oppression in Greece- and let us not forget that Martin Luther’s original A Mighty Fortress included a politically incorrect line referencing “the murderous Turk”). We should be more like the high-fertility proud Greek people in this movie, with a specific cultural identity, and less like the flavorless, bland, low-fertility Northeastern liberal family of the groom.

In my next post on this subject I will seek to define who “our people” are exactly. Human groups are “fuzzy”, not subject to simple definitions, and especially as Americans it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly who and what we are. Are we English? Anglo-Saxon? Celtic? I will make a case for a uniquely American people, and seek to draw some fuzzy boundaries around this group.

I will also discuss practical ways to experience our heritage, including some regular features on this site that will offer a sampling of what is available- at least what I have come across and enjoyed in my limited experience.

The late conservative writer Sam Francis, who is acknowledged by both Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan as an influence on their thinking, described life in modern Western democracies as a unique form of government he called “anarcho-tyranny.” The essential characteristic of an anarcho-tyrannic regime is oppression of the productive classes of society with taxes and mickey-mouse regulations, while the unproductive criminal classes of society are given free reign.

In our own area we see the city setting up speed traps on the nice end of town to catch mommy doing 40 on her way to Kroger, while law enforcement does nothing to prevent grandmas from getting carjacked in broad daylight at the mall. There is some logic to such a system, as the submissive, productive classes of society can be milked for easy revenue for speeding tickets, licensing fees and other associated minor harassments of government; whereas to actually attempt to control and contain the criminal element would require government employees to risk life and limb to protect the public, a much less profitable and more dangerous task.

Perhaps the most extreme example of anarcho-tyranny in recent history was the treatment of law-abiding homeowners during Hurricane Katrina. While the criminal population degenerated into savagery at the Superdome, the police were busy confiscating firearms from citizens simply trying the protect their property from the omnipresent looting and killing. If there was anytime in recent history when a homeowner needed a firearm, it was during Katrina. And this was the very time the government took away their arms.

We saw the future of multicultural America when the veil of civic order was lifted- much of the country in urban areas will simply degenerate into savagery once civil authority is removed. Contrast that with the entirely orderly response of rural counties in Mississippi equally affected by Katrina, who helped and aided each other without any police intervention or government effort.

The NRA has a particularly haunting series of videos regarding what happened to law-abiding citizens in New Orleans at this site:

www.givethemback.com/

Lesson: have a small cache of guns to “surrender” to the authorities if this ever happens again. Hide the rest.

On the last two road trips my family has taken, we have attempted (when not distracted by children’s needs, thank goodness for steering-wheel audio controls to pause and play) to listen to audiobooks of classic literature. The first one was The Hound of the Baskervilles, the most famous Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The second, for the trip we took this weekend, was Paradise Lost by John Milton (if you follow this link, disregard the modern “reinterpretations” of the work), written in the 1600’s. It is an epic poem dramatizing Satan’s war against God in heaven, his casting into hell and finally the temptation of Adam and Eve- 9 CD’s worth.

The thing I most felt while listening to the first CD was an awareness of my own lack of literacy compared to the norm during the height of our civilization and before our own degraded age. The density and content of the poem coming out of the speakers was almost more than my brain could process- ideas upon ideas layered so thick and quick it took my whole brain to process just some of them before yet another line was read.

From my experiences reading ANY document over 100 years old, whether Holmes or Milton or the Federalist Papers- all documents meant for wide public consumption- it is clear that the average illiterate person then (who lacked the technical skill to read and write) was probably more literate in their thoughts than the average “literate” person today who has been taught enough phonics to digest People Magazine.

Lack of literacy really means an inability to express ideas precisely, both externally AND internally. The lack of an ability to think precisely weakens the reasonable, rational parts of our nature and makes us more susceptible to those parts more apt to make foolish decisions.

Yet many Christian leaders see no value in literacy, and mock those who see it as a necessary prerequisite to truly understanding God’s Word. So we continue to dumb down church, dumb down the Bible into sixth-grade level paraphrases that cannot possibly contain all of the original meaning, and dumb down our culture and people.

Yet a great hope lies ahead- as more fathers and families take charge of their family’s education (through whatever means, but primarily through homeschooling), a great literary renewal should happen among our people. Did you hear the one about the homeschooled kids who took down the Ivy League in moot court competition?

I recently had a rather unpleasant experience with the new security regulations at the airport. There’s a post under construction describing the experience, but I am fast to start and slow to finish my writing. I have about five posts in various stages of completion- a necessary process for me to avoid my greatest literary sin, that of overstatement.

The essence of the airport story is that regular Americans are undergoing needless harassment because our country cannot admit to itself that one of our supposed values - “equality” - is an obvious falsehood and failure (and also, as I will argue in a larger upcoming post, one of the world’s great lies and a major source of evil).

It’s simply not true that all humans are equally likely to blow up an airplane, yet the government harasses millions of innocent people daily in airports to prop up the lie.

Then I remembered an article by one of the most interesting columnists at the immigration-reform advocacy site vdare.com, Steve Sailer. His strategy for dealing with Muslim terrorism: “disconnect”.

He describes a particularly egregious airport security incident:

In January 2002, an 86-year-old former governor of South Dakota and retired brigadier general named Joe Foss, on his way to give a speech to cadets at West Point, was subjected to the third degree by Phoenix airport security for 45 minutes because the metal detector was set off by his dangerously pointy Congressional Medal of Honor. When I first heard this, I assumed that Bush’s anti-profiling rules would be laughed out of existence.

I was wrong.

One of the distinguishing marks of liberals (and I use this term in the sense of being anti-traditional) is intolerance of dissent. A conservative person may be stuffy, legalistic, offensive, etc, but he will argue with you until the cows come home, vigorously disagree, but usually not take positive steps to silence you.

That’s why I find an article from the Wall Street Journal about the dark side of the Purpose Driven movement so interesting. Particularly:

Some pastors learn how to make their churches purpose-driven through training workshops. Speakers at Church Transitions Inc., a Waxhaw, N.C., nonprofit that works closely with Mr. Warren’s church, stress that the transition will be rough. At a seminar outside of Austin, Texas, in April, the Revs. Roddy Clyde and Glen Sartain advised 80 audience members to trust very few people with their plans. “All the forces of hell are going to come at you when you wake up that church,” said Mr. Sartain, who has taught the material at Mr. Warren’s Saddleback Church.

During a session titled “Dealing with Opposition,” Mr. Clyde recommended that the pastor speak to critical members, then help them leave if they don’t stop objecting. Then when those congregants join a new church, Mr. Clyde instructed, pastors should call their new minister and suggest that the congregants be barred from any leadership role.

“There are moments when you’ve got to play hardball,” said the Rev. Dan Southerland, Church Transitions’ president, in an interview. “You cannot transition a church … and placate every whiny Christian along the way.”

Secrecy, intimidation, silencing your critics? These people behave more like authoritarian Soviet bureaucrats than Christians trying to gently move the church in their direction.

It also begs the question- since Purpose-Driven-ness is explicitly marketed to pastors as a secret, sudden campaign to transform their church (thus outflanking the traditionalists), are church members even getting a fair chance to yea-or-nay on the ultimate destination of their church before it’s too late?

Probably not, as the Purpose Driven liberals have copied the ratcheting techniques of their secular brethren. If that’s the case, just as Republicans mindlessly defend the recycled liberal status-quo of twenty years ago, will “traditional” Christians be defending Warren’s techniques twenty years from now against the latest scheme to water down the faith?

The comments on the previous post have gone in a more general direction than the specific criticisms/questions expressed about Mr. O. I’ll take some space here to summarize my positions on the general issues:

Dispensationalism, prophecy, etc.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism

For an advocacy of the more traditional position, this from the Founders organization (a Southern Baptist group dedicated to restoring the SBC to its Reformed roots):

www.founders.org/FJ09/article1.html

Not many Christians have a systemic view of prophecy, just what they’ve picked up here and there. Very few realize that the whole framework of the rapture, Israel, the tribulation, etc, are rather recent inventions unknown before about 1820, and really only popular after about 1900. I would probably be classified as an amillenial on this issue:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amillennialism

Though when I am feeling particularly optimistic and want to annoy liberals I consider postmillenialism:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmillennialism

I am not qualified to make more than basic arguments for any position, and really smart, genuine Christian theologians disagree on them. My macro-reasons for rejecting dispensationalism have to do with its newness, its pessimism and the secondary role it gives to the church. I do not believe the church is a mere parenthesis or pause in the story so God can get back to the original plan of Pharisee priests offering temple sacrifice (I am being cheeky here, but dispensationalists really do believe temple sacrifice will be restored and sanctioned by God post-rapture). I believe Christ fulfilled all prophecy for all time, including prophecies formerly meant for physical Israel. I think dispensationalism makes some of the same errors as people made about Christ, in imagining Him to be a physical earthly king instead of a spiritual king:

Luke 17:20-21

20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Similarly, I think Galatians makes it clear that the true, spiritual Israel is the church and “heirs to the promises thereof”.

If you haven’t considered these issues before, it’s hard to comprehend how many of your assumptions about end-times are not universal among Christians and largely ahistorical to both Protestants and Catholics, but rather are a popularized theological scheme invented by a small American sect (and one person in particular, the theologian Darby) in the 1800’s.

I do not think this is an issue that is in any way critical, nor is theological correctness on this issue any reflection of status or virtue. It is an issue where I understand how people view it differently and can simply disagree.

For more information:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_of_Christian_eschatological_differences

Seeker-friendly churches/etc:

Based on the fruit produced by modern evangelicals (i.e. the lack of any statistically significant deviation from worldly norms of divorce, the massive falling-away rate of our youth, etc), I think there is a significant chance the way we teach salvation and/or handle the salvation process in the contemporary church is not effectual for salvation. By seeking growth and soft-selling sin and repentance (which is what Osteen, Warren, et. al. do; though, really, they are merely the endgame of a long trend of Gospel minimalism), we are risking not truly growing the church- we may be producing many people who only think they are Christians, which is worse than KNOWING you’re not. At the very least, we are producing very immature believers when compared to the historical context of Christian belief: the average illiterate medieval serf received more spiritual red meat watching a morality play than is often provided by the feel-good self-help sermons we have become accustomed to.

I see three historical mechanisms for church growth:

1) Primarily and foremost, through the children of believers. This is a major point of failure in the contemporary church, which does not give due credit or support to the front-line missionaries of any church: mothers. We sing the praises of missionaries to exotic lands, but rarely a word for mothers whose thankless work renews the Church each generation. We also do not explicitly encourage Christians to have large families so that the Kingdom of God grows rather than shrinks.

2) Through long-term personal relationships with unbelievers, who seeing the peace and community of believers, desire this for themselves or by contrast feel their need for salvation.

3) Through occasional God-ordained revivals that man cannot control or engineer. The last one of massive scale in this country occurred during the War Between the States. These revivals, if anything, have an even greater emphasis on sin, hellfire and condemnation, which belies the claim of the Church Growth Movement that we need to reinvent these concepts. The most famous hellfire-and-damnation sermon, “Sinners in the Hand of An Angry God“, was during the previous revival of the 1700’s- and was delivered in (if I recall my history correctly) monotone by its not-very-charismatic (in the personal persuasiveness sense) author Jonathan Edwards. When God decides to grow the church in a massive way, He does so at Will, and there is nothing we can do to hurry or engineer the process. He will use whoever is willing to deliver his unvarnished message of repentence (even a rather drab messenger like Edwards as opposed to pretty-boy Osteen) to get the job done, because the people involved are just window-dressing to His work.

The Church Growth Movement is an attempt to engineer revival, which is about as ridiculous as man attempting to build another moon. We see the results of man’s shoddy attempts, however, in a cheap salvation whose non-existent fruit makes one question its validity.

Legalism:

I think the fact we are dealing with a general discussion makes it harder to agree; legalism is hard to define, but most people know it when they see it. My one additional point of caution would be to make sure that the spirit of our age does not bias you towards being more eager to condemn those to your “right” (as in more conservative) while being more tolerant of those to your “left”.

I notice that sometimes we are more careful in our words when dealing with a popular liberal (Osteen) while reserving unmetered condemnation for someone just a little bit more conservative than ourselves- this temptation is from the culture, where “conservatives” jockey for position and demonstrate moral superiority in the liberal societal framework by condemning those further to their right, or sometimes those who are just a little less equivocal in how they express their views.

I don’t think we give the devil enough credit- he is a master strategist, and the only thing I’ve ever read that deals with this intelligently is the Screwtape Letters. While I can’t write as cleverly as Lewis, I will take a stab at explaining a likely strategy of old Beezelbub’s that takes advantage of weaknesses in the contemporary church.

If I were the devil, I’d find “the line”. That is, the line at which something that is deviating from the pure Biblical gospel is no longer effectual for salvation; then I’d invent my own gospel just to my side of the line, maybe with a safety factor of 10-20% past the line to account for any divine mercy I hadn’t anticipated. Next, I’d raise up a smooth-talker to promote this gospel.

Now, in most ages past this strategy wouldn’t have worked. Christians didn’t tolerate any deviance from the norm that was any closer to “the line” than what their church tradition allowed. The reason, of course, is that the closer we allow Christian practice to approach “the line”, the harder it is to distinguish the real soul-damners from true Christians who are just a bit off the preferred path.

But in today’s Christian environment it works great. Innovation (once a dirty word to Christians as holders of God’s unchanging Word) is rewarded and popularity is the only yardstick of success. All I’d have to do as the devil is put my smooth talker on TV and have him sell a bestseller full of wishful-thinking tripe, and Christians would defend my boy from attacks from the minority of traditionalists. And the farther my boy deviated from “the line”, the more popular he would get, because people are tired of hearing about sin, Christ’s death, sanctification and other “churchy” sounding stuff that bores today’s overstimulated media consumer to tears. What they really want is to reach their potential- and what they mean by their potential is acquiring the skills or schemes to increase their ability to indulge in the materialism that’s already enslaving them- in a word, to have their best life now. I would help Christians forget all that junk about storing up treasures in heaven or the old-fashioned Protestant ethics of wealth acquired through hard work- what they really need to focus their mind off of the world to come is a get-rich-quick scheme they think is sponsored by Jesus himself. My boy would be wildly popular in no time. And the more popular my boy got, the more Christians would defend him- after all, he holds a Bible and says “Jesus” and other stuff they think is important.

To avoid judging a brother (*which would be very, very wrong and intolerant of me*), I’ll just refer to this person as “Mr. O”. Before I give you my opinion, I should first note that I am not a dispensationalist, which means I don’t think there’s an imminent rapture or that the geopolitical concerns of Israel should be of any more significance to American Christians than that of Iceland or Peru. I hold to the traditional pre-Darby/Scofield views of prophecy.

But the whole dispensationalist-premillenial prophecy wing of the evangelical church makes for an interesting modern mythology- even if a bad movie. Surely everyone remembers the hokey, poorly made Left Behind movie with Peter York. Anyway, Mr. O’s worship services look to me like a poorly done set for the Antichrist’s False Prophet Tabernacle. I mean really- no crosses, a big animated spinning globe, some saccharin-worded preacher with bleached teeth talking about self-esteem. Mr. O would be side-splitting funny to watch if I didn’t know how seriously he’s taken by the people who watch him.

Is Mr. O inside or outside of “the line?” Since our leaders spurn doctrine and tradition, can we even tell the difference anymore?

Someone recently asked for reasons why people are homeschooling.

I should first note that the following is my opinion in the abstract and not a criticism of any particular individual.

So why homeschool? I would only answer this question with a view to maximizing the probability that someone “on the fence” about homeschooling would choose it. There are so many practical benefits (time, efficiency, cost, moral/spiritual development, superior academics = higher SAT score = better college/career and higher lifetime earnings) that I see no need to spiritualize the argument. Homeschooling is basically a long-term investment with a very attractive return. Helping people see the returns is more effective than brow-beating them with one’s personal convictions.

One of my primary reasons is one of heritage, of giving my children a sense of continuity with the past and the future of their family and civilization.

The sad reality is that almost all otherwise academically rigorous schools, public or private, will teach a version of history that will demean the ancestors of my children and the civilization they created (for example, due to the presence in our schools of Mexican loyalists who object to the very idea of Texas as “racist”, many schools no longer glorify the heroes of San Jacinto who defeated the tyrant Santa Anna).

Orwell said that he who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past. I want to control the “present” for my children and especially their perception of who they are and where they came from. Much of the weakness of Christendom today (as compared to the passionate faith of Muslims) is related to our perception that our ancestors were somehow morally lacking as they conquered, civilized and Christianized much of the world. Homeschooling provides an opportunity to help your kids escape the oppressive guilt that our society seeks to instill in them simply because of who they are. I believe only a generation raised with moral confidence in their heritage can do the heavy lifting required to restore our once great civilization.

My second reason would be allowing my children to skip the entirely unnecessary “teenager” culture and phase of life (which now starts younger and younger as advertisers seek to sexualize children), which is artificial and has no historical basis. I want to spare them the awkwardness and stupidness of a culture that promotes wasteful and self-destructive behavior. Throughout history, teenagers were capable of many great deeds- like being mother and father to God Himself. If children are able to start their adult life at 14 or 15 instead of spending ten years in a “second toddlerhood” then they will be far ahead of their peers in maturity and experience throughout life. All we really have is our life, and what a blessing to allow our children to experience REAL life (outside of the teenage ghetto, no pun intended) ten years ahead of time. Imagine having the wisdom of 40 at the age of 30- their youth will not be as wasted while they are still young.

That’s the positive side- but avoiding evil is just as important as positive good. I don’t think many parents have any idea what the teen culture today is really like. I grew up in kind of a backwater, so my teenage experience ten years ago is probably fifteen to twenty years behind the current norm- and we’ve been compounding moral decline for fifty years now. So the other night on the way back from a fishing trip I decided to turn on a top 40 radio station, 94.1 for those in the area. I felt like I was literally in a foreign country- who are these people that listen to such obscenity? These people are the students at your local elementary, middle, and high schools who consume this cultural trash and the parents who provide the funds for them to do so. We are not living in the 50’s anymore, or even the 60’s, or even the 90’s for that matter. When the top ten “songs” are all amusical rhythmic variations on some 80-IQ felon’s idea of a good time sexually, in explicit detail, we are dealing with cultural botulism. Just as we would not eat food from a dented can (it’s probably ok after all, right?), I see no alternative but complete secession from the popular culture in the schools. It wants your son and your daughter. It wants them to be self-absorbed sex-crazed losers that exist only to consume their filthy entertainment. I think minimizing my children’s exposure to that culture through homeschooling is the only acceptable strategy for my family. Twenty years ago it might have been different, but not today.

Finally, a comment about socialization. I’m not sure where this universal concern started, but I have an idea. When you start researching homeschooling, you can’t help but notice that some of the folks who do it (and their kids) are a bit strange. Naturally, we assume this is because they homeschool. But if you look more closely, you’ll notice that the parents are weird even though the parents didn’t themselves necessarily homeschool. In other words, they and their kids aren’t weird because they homeschool, they are weird people with weird kids who happen to homeschool (weirdness, like so many other things, is probably genetic in origin). They don’t represent the majority of homeschoolers, but often through their behavior they make themselves more noticeable.

If you look at a fair sample instead of just the weirdos, I think you’ll find that homeschooled kids as a group are better-adjusted and better-socialized than their schooled counterparts. I can almost instantly pick out a homeschooled teen because of their ability to confidently and intelligently communicate with adults. Since they’ve had limited exposure to the loser culture of mainstream teens, they’ve never learned that being smart, positive and articulate is uncool. They’re budding well-adjusted adults, not sullen emotional train wrecks with a sense of entitlement.

Homeschooling has many benefits, and not homeschooling has many risks. I think if we would focus on these deliverables when talking with concerned parents, we will be more successful growing the total number of homeschoolers than if we use homeschooling as a prop to make ourselves feel morally superior.

I also think homeschooling is only practical for parents who have a certain minimum of intelligence, but this is a moot point for anyone taking the time to think about it carefully or who can read and comprehend this post. We are all high-investment parents with the ability to handle it academically.

And a final word for those thinking about it: the worst thing that could happen is that your child gets a second-rate education and has to work really hard in college to catch up. And that’s what they’ll get in most public schools anyway. I can’t count how many things I had to unlearn in my freshman year of college.