From a Reuters article (http://tinyurl.com/2j8wfn) I read this morning:

“Homeschoolers — who teach their children at home to shield them from what they see as corrupt secular influences — have tight if unofficial networks throughout the country that were at work in Iowa. – Ed Stoddard “

Wow… corrupt secular influences, tight unofficial networks… throughout the country no less! Sounds a bit dark and subversive to me, it takes one’s thoughts toward terrorist cells or the communist spies of the 50’s – yikes.

Not being a homeschooling parent I can only take so much offense at such an outlandish statement. 32 loaded words pointed directly at the heads of parents who have made a choice in how their children are educated. I suppose Mr. Stoddard would need to say the same about millions of other parents who move to find better public school systems, pay for private school education or camp out for two days to get their children into a magnet program.

In addition to completely missing why most parents home school, Mr. Stoddard also then assumes that people who do such things must be subversive in other ways. Forming “tight unofficial networks” – kinda of a cult gang… peddling government change instead of crack. Mr. Stoddard, everyone forms “tight unofficial networks” – they’re called like-minded associations and friendships. I used to belong to this horrible “tight unofficial network” that went hiking in the Appellations each spring – we weren’t registered with the government, is that okay?

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begining rambling portion…

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In an effort to empathize with Ed Stoddard I’ll read past this unfortunate section and hear what he may be wanting to say. He didn’t like that Huckabee won Iowa. He didn’t like that it appears to have been an evangelical turnout that swayed the percentages and it seems he fears that the trend may continue. He’s able to rightly identify that there’s a segment of folks out there who place certain political platform issues higher than others – but all of America does. I grew up in the steel belt and labor issues always, always moved up higher on the list of what was important in life and you’d find more evangelicals lining up to vote for the fellow to save the mill than save a soul.

There are a lot of things out there being labeled evangelical that I don’t support, Huckabee would be just one of them. He’s an intriguing candidate and the only one running I’ve met. When I was first considering him I had forgotten that he was an “evangelical” candidate. I remember him being well spoken, running good campaigns in Arkansas and handling himself well in chaotic political situations. Upon further review of his platform statements and recent voting trends I trimmed him from my list and yes, by the way, I am a home school appreciating Evangelical who has attended many “unofficial network” meetings.

As an evangelical, I get lumped into all manner of “networks” by folk. I’ve been accused of being everything from a capitalistic demagogue to a green-minded hippy bleeding heart. It’s easy to look at any aspect of a person’s life and make assumptions about what defines them. You could go to an anti-(insert your big thing) rally an make preconceptions about who is there and why – only to find them at your next (insert local social network) meeting. What I hope does not happen is folk labeling a particular candidate as THE Evangelical candidate.

The are many things evangelical about a myriad of candidates (some of whom actually are not Republican – oh my).  It’s our tasks as citizens to find the candidates that would lead our nation well and our cacophony of unofficial networks will both shape an inform our decisions.