Please join me in welcoming Dr. Mike Adams to The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.

TOS: Your book describes the college culture as one in which conservative, religious, and moral values are ridiculed and rarely allowed pubic expression. How were you hired by the university system even though you call yourself a Conservative?

Dr. Adams: You have to realize that when I was hired by the University of North Carolina system eleven years ago, I was far different than I am today. I was fresh out of college, where I had used drugs, abused alcohol, and was immersed in a hedonistic lifestyle. I was also a professional rock musician and engaged in everything that goes along with that lifestyle. Somehow I managed to earn a Ph.D. in Criminology, which is really not much harder than getting a hunting license. You just have to know how to say what they want to hear.

So when I interviewed for this job, I had all the right - excuse me - the left answers that the officials wanted to hear. Things began to fall apart rather quickly for me after that. I began to look at issues and say "Whoa! That is not what I was taught." For instance, I saw the anti-abortion movie The Silent Scream and learned that a fetus was not "just a scab" as I had been taught. I found myself thinking, "I wish that I had been presented that idea before." But it took many years before I could renounce agnosticism.

TOS: You mention this in your book. Tell me about your spiritual journey and how it has impacted your world view.

Dr. Adams: I was reared in a home with a fundamental Baptist mother and an atheist father. As a child, I attended church regularly and was baptized at age eleven. However, I was a fence-sitter. In college, though I met some people who were great influences on me academically, I was surrounded by other influences pulled me in the other direction spiritually. In psychology classes, there are all sorts of theories that were presented to explain religious beliefs. Just before my 19^th birthday, I decided to become an agnostic. By 1992, I reached a point where I renounced God entirely and became an atheist. I felt I had to. When you are engaged in a hedonistic lifestyle, you come to the point that you get in deeper and deeper and that voice of religion still echoes in your head. You have to fully reject it in order to justify your immoral lifestyle.

In 1996, I visited a prison in South America. The conditions there were horrible. Men were often kept for years without a trial for minor offenses. I met a man there who was in a horrendous situation, held for two years because he would not confess to petty larceny. Yet his religious beliefs gave him peace in the midst of those circumstances. I realized that my life was so much better, yet I was not happy. I began to think that maybe it was a mistake to declare myself to be an atheist.

Still, it took me a long time. How do you go from a falling-down drunk living my lifestyle to walking into a church?

Later, in December of 1999, I interviewed a man of limited mental ability who was scheduled to be executed in 15 days. He kept trying to quote John 3:16. This incident had an impact on me and I thought if this guy can read the Bible, every educated person should. Still, it took me two weeks to get the courage to sneak into a Barnes and Nobles at 10:30 at night and get a copy of the King James Version of the Bible. I read it over the next nine months. I tell more about this in my article, "Up from Atheism," which is available on my website.

TOS: You indicate that this gradual change in your religious views paralleled a similar shift in your position from liberalism to conservatism. Do you think that the scriptures teach a conservative position?

Dr. Adams: The short answer is that I do. What differentiates the conservative and the liberal position is your view of human nature. Liberalism requires that you have a positive view of human nature: be good to people and people will be good in return. If you truly understand the Scriptures, you know that is not true. The answer is there in Genesis chapter three. Conservatism is based on the notion that people are not inherently good and will primarily respond in ways that promote their own self-interest and survival.

TOS: In your book, you describe some of the appalling ways in which the liberal social agenda affects the choices of programs, courses and speakers at your college. Do you think this is characteristic of most universities?

Dr. Adams: Yes. I used to think that we were the clear winners in lunacy, but I am finding that is not the case. These tactics of the Left are present all around the country.

TOS: What do you think is the driving force behind the culture that we find in most colleges today?

Dr. Adams: The idea of moral relativism is the driving force behind the diversity movement. These people don't really believe that, because it is a self-contradictory concept, but they want to teach it to others. It is really thinly-disguised cultural Marxism. The ideas are the same as the ones that Marx expressed, only it is in cultural terms instead of economic ones. The main idea is that human pleasure is the ultimate good. Their god is in the mirror.

TOS:What is your view of homeschooling?

Dr. Adams: I am not really that familiar with it as I do not have kids. I have only been married for nine months. . However, I have had several home-schooled students in my classroom. I don't see homeschooling as a solution, necessarily. I see it as a trade-off. I do think that kids lose some opportunities for social development, but I also see the need to protect kids from these liberal ideas that are filtering down into the school system. I can certainly understand the desire for a parent to educate their children at home. Every day, the public schools themselves make the case for home education.

What concerns me most is the current trend towards sexualization of children. It is deeply disturbing. How can you have a strong society without a strong community, strong communities without strong families, strong families without strong marriages, strong marriages without fidelity? How do you have this when kids are becoming involved with promiscuity at such as young age? You wipe this out and it destroys the cornerstone of society.

Some of these people in the diversity movement are disturbed; they are obsessed with the sexualization of children. That would terrify me about the public school system. They want to get the kids to buy into moral relativism early. If you can dupe as many as you can into believing this, if you can get them tear down absolute morality and tear down their orthodox religious beliefs, the world is yours.

But I think it is sad that we have to take our kids out of the public school system because the lunatics have taken over. At the same time, I think we have to do something besides retreating. We need to smoke these people out, expose them, ridicule them, and if necessary, sue them.

TOS: What advice would you give to students and parents who are looking at college choices? How do you find out what they are really like?

Dr. Adams: This is a really great question: one that people don't ask often enough. In addition to the usual avenues of research, I would suggest that they take a careful look at the website of the school. Don't just look at the main pages. Do a search on their search engines. Type in words like "Christianity, morality, abstinence",and see what pops up. How are these topics treated? Then type in words like "Homosexuality," "sodomy," things you don't like. Sometimes history and other liberal arts courses will actually be teaching these things or providing links to these topics masked under the guise of education. Also, look at the programs they offer, such as Office of Student Diversity programs and Women's Centers. What is going on there? What kinds of clubs do they have? Do this for private and so-called "religious" schools, too. Some of them are just as bad as public universities. When you choose not to go to a school for these reasons, then write the university and tell them why you are not applying there.

TOS: Finally, if a student chooses to go to a college which has these cultural influences, what advice do you give them?

Dr. Adams: They should seek out support organizations that support their religious beliefs. Of course some universities have attacked these organizations. For instance, one university told a Christian organization that they had to take the words "believes in God" out of their membership requirements or lose their recognition as an official organization. If a university comes after your organization like that, don't give in, fight back. Contact an organization like the John Locke Foundation or Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Or contact me. We can find superior attorneys that will fight for you. Don't capitulate. We need to fight these influences. And we will win.

TOS: Thank you, Dr. Adams, for your time, and what you are doing to wage battle in the Cultural Wars.

Amelia Harper is author of Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings and a contributor to the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. In November, she will be presenting a paper on "Worlds of Imagination in the Writings of Lewis and Tolkien" at a C.S. Lewis conference at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Watch for her review of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which will be posted on the TOS website at www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com in early December.