Ron Paul Revolution (VIII): Homeschoolers Unite!

Again, from LewRockwell.com, this article by Texas entrepreneur and homeschooling dad, Dave Whitinger warns against the somnambulant lovefest between Christian homeschooling organizations and the Huckster. While I encourage you to read the entire article, I’ve excerpted several of his arguments below:

A friend of homeschooling?

I count myself blessed to have known the beauty of loyalty in friendship. The word friend is a powerful word and brings to mind words like “loyalty,” “defense,” and “familiarity.” A friend stands by you through thick and thin and makes sacrifices for you when necessary. It may surprise you, then, that the New Hampshire NEA has also endorsed Huckabee. The NEA is the largest labor union in the United States and represents public school teachers. How can Mike Huckabee be loyal to both homeschoolers and the powerful public school lobby? The answer is: he can’t. Whoever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God, and whoever is the friend of the public school union is the enemy of homeschoolers. This may explain why his “Issues: Education” webpage has only one brief and token sentence mentioning homeschooling. It may also explain why he defends the No Child Left Behind Act.

Where are Huckabee’s loyalties? Well, one morning in 1999, homeschoolers in Arkansas woke up to learn that they had been betrayed by their governor and friend, Mike Huckabee. The HSLDA had reported that under Gov. Huckabee, Arkansas became the first state in the nation to add restrictions to its existing home school law. From the report linked above, Huckabee signed the bill that the HSLDA specifically did not support. Can you call this man who signed legislation taking away our homeschooling freedoms a friend? Only if you are the NEA. Why did they pass this law? According to the HSLDA, the “public school lobby had been working overtime to convince the Arkansas legislature that the home school law was too permissive.” Rather than stand up against the powerful public school lobby, Huckabee caved in and took away freedoms that were previously given to homeschoolers. As the Psalmist wrote, “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.”

I’m convinced, but what choice do we have? He’s the best candidate we have!

For this, I only need refer you to our brother, Dr. Ron Paul. For the sake of careful discernment, please look at Ron Paul with a fresh and unbiased eye. Ron Paul is a humble brother in Christ with a blameless record. His enemies have no ammunition against him, and his voting record as a 10-term congressman is consistent. He is a man who has proven himself to be trusted with the power he has been given. As an OB/GYN, he has delivered over 4,000 babies. He has been married for 50 years and has 5 children, 18 grandchildren and 1 great-grandchild. He is passionately pro-life and successfully defends that view against liberal pro-deathers. He has a plan to end abortion, starting with overturning Roe v. Wade and returning the decision to the local level where it will be handled by local leaders who must answer to their local voters.

His platform is strictly constitutionalist. His principle is that if the Constitution doesn’t specifically allow it, then the Federal government has no business doing it. He wants to abolish entirely the Department of Education, as well as many other massive unconstitutional government bureaucracies, and replace them with nothing. The beautiful thing is that we can trust him to actually do what he promises. He often repeats the mantra that he wants to “keep the government out of our lives.” As homeschoolers who want to raise our children ourselves, this should be music to our ears.

Is Ron Paul a friend of homeschoolers?

Ron Paul is the only candidate who has an entire microsite devoted specifically to the issue of homeschooling. According to Ron Paul, “The best way to improve education is to return control to the parents who know best what their children need. Congress should empower all parents, including home-schoolers, to control their children’s education…”

Ron Paul also believes that “No nation can remain free when the state has greater influence over the knowledge and values transmitted to children than the family.” Amen! Back in the year 2001, Dr. Paul said, “Under the United States Constitution, the federal government has no authority to hold states ‘accountable’ for their education performance. In the free society envisioned by the founders, schools are held accountable by parents, not federal bureaucrats.” Virginia Baker, a national pioneer of present-day home schooling, and the first mother in Texas to do so, has formally endorsed Dr. Ron Paul. She said, “Dr. Paul is the homeschoolers best friend.”

A friend is someone who will loyally defend you, even to the point of sacrifice, and I personally trust ONLY Ron Paul in this area. There is no candidate that can be trusted to protect the rights of parents to direct their own children’s upbringing and education, except for Ron Paul.

Jim Fedako, economist and homeschooling father of five wrote, “As a homeschooling father of five, I recognize that there are many individuals and groups who would like to force my children back into the public schools. In fact, the NEA has a statement on their legislative platform that advocates the end of the homeschooling movement. Ron Paul stands for Liberty. He stands for the right of my wife and I to educate our children at home, away from the influences of the NEA and other such organizations.”

Ron Paul isn’t swayed by powerful lobbies. He never accepts bribes or gifts, and votes his conscience regardless of how unpopular it makes him. Ron Paul often finds himself casting the only “No” vote on bills before Congress that he sees as unconstitutional. In the face of what must be unimaginable intimidation, Dr. Paul stays true to what he believes.

There are literally hundreds of other reasons to support Ron Paul’s candidacy, and I would encourage you to begin at Ron Paul’s website.

But most importantly, Whitinger addresses the phantom of effective self-disenfranchisement:

But the media keeps saying that he can’t win! I don’t want to waste my vote.

What right does the media have in telling us who can and can’t win an election? Can they see the future? Or do they have information that is not generally available to the public? What is their track record in correctly predicting the outcome of elections? The truth is, Ron Paul dominates in straw polls, and he has raised many millions of dollars from tens of thousands of personal donations. He has an excellent chance of winning, despite what you may have been told. I would say that to simply vote the way the media tells you to vote is the only way to waste your vote. Vote for who you believe is the best candidate, regardless of who you are told is winning.

Please, for the sake of our future liberty as homeschooling families, give this serious thought, discernment, and prayer. Should you choose to support Ron Paul, please pray for him, his family, and his candidacy. Support him financially, and tell other homeschooling families about this champion of our liberty.

Many people will say that you should vote only for the candidate that they support.  I’m not arrogant enough to make that demand.  I do, however, urge everyone who has the franchise to thoroughly research all of the candidates and prayerfully make as informed a decision as possible.  Gone are the days when Americans have only one source – the national media – for information.  The internet has put at our fingertips virtually all the information we could need to cast an intelligent ballot; as homeschooling parents, none of us should be strangers to seeking out the kernel of truth from the available mountains of rhetoric, lies, and obfuscation.