Moldy Peaches

What is your version of a finishing school? In the days of old, people assumed finishing schools taught young men and women proper table manners, etiquette and all the other social graces. Now, however, there is a new finishing school and it involves refining political skills with a large dose of religious fervour.

Patrick Henry College, in Purcellville, Virginia, is a Republican droid generating machine. The College's mission is train a new generation of Christian politicians. Since politics, is, after all, the most social of professions, and many students arrive at Patrick Henry having never shared a classroom with anyone other than their siblings, it is important that these students get the proper foundation. With the Christian homeschool movement as their heritage, they believe that no college in the nation better understands all aspects of the needs and desires of homeschoolers for an excellent Christian higher education.

In conservative circles, however, homeschoolers are considered something of an élite, rough around the edges but pure—in their focus, capacity for work, and ideological clarity—a view that helps explain why the Republican establishment has placed its support behind Patrick Henry, and why so many conservative politicians are hiring its graduates.

The College was started after a series of requests from parents asking where they could find a Christian college with a “courtship” atmosphere - meaning one where dating is regulated and subject to parental approval. The goal of the President is to build an Evangelical Ivy League or a Harvard for Homeschoolers.

The College President rails against MTV, Internet porn, abortion, homosexuality, greed and accomplished selfishness. It is fascinating to me how economic conservatives - who advocate for a free market and full blown capitalism can share a party with social conservatives - who often claim that people's greed and lust cause them to do evil things. Are people's consumer desires - more "wants" than "needs" - not the root of the last 15 years of economic expansion in the North America? The average North American is carrying almost 50 percent more debt than income and most of this is a direct result of material purchases (on credit). Those greedy people have made many Republicans ridiculously wealthy.

My favourite point on the college's website is the following: PHC will not borrow money to finance any of its operations or capital improvements. We believe that when the Lord leads us to expand, He will also provide the means necessary to do so. Apparently, they took the reference to Joseph as a carpenter literally.

Hanna Rosin has a fantastic article in a recent New Yorker about Patrick Henry College.