Patience. I suspect that nothing less than a detailed description of my complaints will suffice, and so here you go ;)
The problem with people with whom we are predisposed to agree is that, very often, in our haste to agree with them, we wind up signing on to some surprisingly weak premises. Take this, for example:
The biggest problem with conservative Christians is not their ideas, but their leadership and organization.
What? This assessment is, at best, the product of someone who lacks any sort of historical perspective. Have we all forgotten the Lee Atwater machine? Have we all forgotten how ruthlessly effective the RNC was during the elections of 1984 and 1988? Have we forgotten the efforts required to salvage the Clarence Thomas nomination, in the face of the most savage political smear job to come along in a generation? Is there anyone here who denies the organizational skills and leadership of the Christian Coalition? Have we forgotten how quickly and efficiently conservatives and conservative organizations rallied together and swung into action during the disputed period of the last election?
In case Master Williams failed to notice, here's a bit of free insight for him - conservatives in general, and Christian conservatives in particular, are very much a minority in this country, one faction among many. The lad is confusing a lack of results with a lack of organization. But this is simply silly. The historical fact is that organization is the major reason that conservatives are a factor at all - if we were half as disorganized as Master Williams suggests, we'd all be enjoying the fruits of a Gore presidency right now. We are, when the chips are down, far more organized than the left is - we have to be, or else we'll be forever on the outside looking in. But even if we grant his premise, that factionalism is running rampant within and crippling the conservative movement, does anyone seriously believe that the solution to that problem is to promote yet another faction, that bringing some new interest group into the mix somehow promotes unity? At best, this is the screed of a splitter, someone who wants to promote their own faction over and above other existing factions. Color me stupid, but that doesn't serve the goal of unity and organization - if those are our goals, we're far better off funnelling homeschoolers and their associated interested parties into existing organizations, rather than diluting conservatism even more by building yet another wing on to the house.
But I think he really believes what he's saying, that somehow this new thing is a quantum leap above and beyond the old thing. That's one bit of wrongheadedness, probably engendered by a lack of perspective - the boy simply does not remember the past, and it leads him to false premises about the present. More evidence of that lack of perspective rears its head in the salesman's pitch for Patrick Henry College. PHC has, I agree, great potential for the future, but to describe it as "at the forefront" of much of anything is purely wishful thinking at this point - their curriculum is still woefully underdeveloped, as is obvious from their course listings. Clearly, not everyone is in a position to know this, as many people simply aren't familiar with the institution yet, but I assure you that their liberal arts curriculum is not at all up to snuff yet, and suggesting that it will have an immediate impact on the contemporary political landscape is fantasy - if and when PHC has a real influence on the body politic, that influence will not be felt for decades to come. But that's not the point - somehow, Master Kyle has to stick to his theme, which I suppose is good in and of itself, but it leads him into the rather ridiculous assertion that somehow these new groups like PHC and HSLDA are "unprecedented in their organization". And it is an assertion, not an argument - he simply tosses some names out there and claims that they're much more organized than extant groups. Well, they may very well be, but you're not going to discover that from this piece, since Master Williams does not bother to support such a claim in any serious manner.
The problem is not organization, and never really has been. By the same token, the solution is not organizing homeschoolers - these are kids who, by dint of their background, are natural conservatives to begin with, much as Master Williams himself is. Educating them does nothing to advance conservatism - it's preaching to the choir, and the best you get from that is insuring that they don't stray from the reservation. The real problem, the real reason that conservatism is advancing slowly or not at all, is that we're simply outnumbered. And the only way to solve that, long term, is not by organizing and manipulating the system to our advantage - we've been doing that all along - but rather it is to get out there and evangelize among the great masses of the mushy middle, to convert the unconverted.
Outreach is the key - for as much as Master Williams complains that the government is out of control, he fundamentally misunderstands the fact that most people today like the government the way it is, that they want a great big state that does great big things. And why should he be expected to understand that fact? He's fifteen, for crying out loud - he has yet to hit the real world, and he therefore has yet to figure out that his parents and the staff at WND are not representative of a majority in this country. He's simply assuming that most people out there are like him, and are all being tyrannized by some small leftist faction that's managed to worm its way into positions of power.
But that's not how the real world is, and the only way to really change how things actually are is not by organizing and manipulating your way into power - do that, and conservatives will either be unelected for failing to give the electorate that which it thinks it wants, or they will wind up giving away the farm in an effort to retain power for its own sake. The only way to do that is to convince all those other people in the mushy middle that they shouldn't want bread and circuses, because in the long run, it's bad for them. And outreach doesn't begin with homeschoolers - they're in, they're already on board. We need to be getting out there among the folks who aren't predisposed towards conservatism - they're the ones we need to educate and organize.
I suspect that this overemphasis on the importance of homeschooling is a result of the all-too-human tendancy to magnify one's own importance, and the importance of those like you. Kyle is a homeschooler - it's hardly surprising that he should be biased towards other homeschoolers. But the future of this band, if it has one, is not going to be found in rearranging the seating chart and hiring a new conductor - the future lies in bringing more musicians into the band.
And that's simply the beginning of the errors of substance. Stylistic errors are the other half here. The piece opens with "government expanding...blah blah blah...this is bad...state abuse of power...blah blah blah." And then you get, almost as an afterthought, "That's just the government side of the coin, but the culture war is worse." Come again? Planning on discussing that...oh, well, I guess not. It just gets tossed out there without discussion and without comment, as though we're all supposed to know what he means.
Well, we do all know what he means, right? I mean, everyone here knows what he means by the culture war, and what he's referring to in a general sense. Everyone here knows what he means, but as advocacy for general consumption, you can't simply leave that sort of thing hanging. Either back it up, or leave it out, but don't take the low road of assuming that everyone knows what you're talking about - the only ones likely to know what he means by that are the people who are already in agreement with him. No wonder he thinks preaching to the choir is the answer - it's his own preferred method of polemic!
"....where the executive can commit many crimes but cover its tracks, as we saw with Bill Clinton" - I think we have successfully established the gender of Bill Clinton, and hence there is no need to refer to him as "it". Any doubters can contact Miss Lewinsky.
"Founded...with the purpose to affect America within a student's respective field" - what on earth does that mean? Affect America within a field?
"Force and support must be put behind this movement and homeschooling and its activism must be encouraged" - and, by the way, the passive voice must be avoided.
Yes, we all know what he's trying to say, and these may seem trivial things, but generally speaking, in the hands of a competent editor, there might be some things worth extracting from this pile. Not that he's in the hands of a competent editor - I suspect that his columns are printed exactly as they're submitted to WND, with precious little editing at all. Which is a real shame, to tell the truth - in the absence of any critical feedback, and without the guidance of a real, experienced editor who can challenge him to produce worthwhile output, lazy habits of the sort that young Master Williams is falling into will only be reinforced, not eliminated. The world already has one Vox Day, and one is already too much when it comes to advocacy.