A Stitch in Haste

This kind:

"I have not been super-active in politics over the years, and so I am not current with all the issues and position papers," said Pete Kottra, 43, who helps his wife, Jeannie, 40, home-school their four children. "But with Mike Huckabee, I know he's a Christian. So I know he sees the world the way I see it."

Behold the political elites of Iowa:

• Iraq? Dunno...


• National sales tax? Dunno...


• Nanny state? Dunno...


• Christian? Check!

Splendid.

Note also the irony in the term "sees the world the way I see it" -- which for these yokels means not seeing evolution and not seeing gays as human beings and not seeing the difference between a church and a school or a church and a courthouse. For them, it's precisely about a desperate need not to see.

Meanwhile, I was of course not shocked -- not shocked! -- to learn that Christian homeschoolers (who perhaps more than anyone put the "radical" in "radical social conservative") are coming out in droves to support Huckabee:

Conservative Christians are said to represent the vast majority of the parents of the 1.1 million children estimated by the federal Department of Education in 2003 as home-schooled in the United States.

Remember, these theocrats do not homeschool in order to provide a better education. They homeschool in order to provide a redacted education. And in a decade or two, as these home-(un)schooled kids start to move off the farm and into the Twenty-First Century, this nation will find itself having to deal with a multitude of rural conservative-spawned illiterates to complement its multitude of inner-city liberal-spawned illiterates.

But at least the rural conservative-spawned illiterates will know that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that eating shrimp is an abomination, and that Jesus spoke English.

(Previously: What Kind of People Support Mitt Romney?)