It seems the Colorado GOP has decided to go all-in on appealing to the bigoted asshole portion of their constituency this election year.

Over the last few months, Colorado GOP leaders have pulled out one of their favorite pieces of hyperbole by referring to LGBTQ members as “godless groomers.” They’ve also been calling for Pride flags to be burned.

Given the history of the GOP, this is nothing new. What is different, though, is how they’ve been ratcheting up the rhetoric about getting kids out of public schools over their perception that Democrats are using public education to “turn more kids trans.”

“All Colorado parents should be aiming to remove their kids from public education,” read the directive from Darcy Schoening, director of special initiatives for the Colorado GOP.

This leaves conservatives with two options: private or homeschooling.

Given the high cost of private schooling—one of the main reasons why the Colorado enrollment rate of 13% is less than the national average—it seems that homeschooling is the more viable option.

With a majority of homeschooling enrollees being involved in some form of Christian belief system, homeschooling is something the conservative movement knows a lot about … much to the detriment of future generations.

Now, before I get carried away with the details of why I’m against Christian homeschooling, it’s important that you know I am completely agnostic and have nothing against inherent spirituality. I’m not here to trash your beliefs, I promise. The problem I have is when someone is able to use knowledge as a means to sow confusion in order to fulfill an agenda.

And by conflating scientific principles with having a deeper biblical understanding as being equally valid, all while making supernatural events seem plausible in a scientific realm, the perfect stage is set for allowing a mentality to flourish that will openly accept that aforementioned agenda.

The Advanced Training Institute (ATI) was the GOAT when it came to doing this. If you can imagine an even more warped and nefarious version of PragerU, then you’re on the right path.

Their homeschooling content is littered with such ham-fistings. In the ATI “Wisdom Booklet 1 – How Eyes Work,” there are various diagrams of the eye and its different parts and how each can impact focus. After explaining the differences between Myopia (nearsightedness) and Hyperopia (farsightedness), the reader is asked how these specific principles can manifest in a spiritual way with questions like, “Can you apply each of these disorders to errors in spiritual perception?”

Throughout this section, you’ll find other head-scratchers that include, “What are spiritual strabismus and astigmatism?”

Sure, it’s possible that using these leaps in logic as a tool to enhance the educational experience will help some people open new neural pathways, allowing for creative thinking to expand immensely. Sadly, I’m afraid that for most people, equalizing hard science with unprovable parables is going to push them into seeing “facts” where none exist.

And with a report released by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign earlier this year showing less than 5% of the thousands of Americans they studied could differentiate between a fact and an opinion, you quickly realize how scary this method of popular homeschooling and its re-routing of logical thought processes can be.

Though ATI stopped active enrollment in 2021, the impact of its curriculum can be felt to this day. Millions of Americans are still using these teaching methods in their homes, and even current homeschooling companies have used the ATI educational model as a template. These facts make it clear that this brand of mental gameplay will be around forever.

So, don’t be surprised if pulling your kids out of public schools becomes a hot-button issue during the campaign—the GOP can only curate a bright future from the most fertile of ground. I mean, it’s not like you can find the next conservative political megastar by just flipping through the channels on your TV.