Round about the time that McCotter's New Zealand Media efforts folded up and Botkin resigned as
CEO (reported to be a business partner with McCotter in
several sources), he appeared (rather mysteriously, it seems) at Vision Forum with his family in tow. In 2005, Botkin's daughters wrote a book that Vision Forum published (
"So Much More"), outlining their odd views about the role of women and particularly unmarried women, glorifying the role of daughter as her father's helpmeet. All persons in a family serve the vision of the head of household, the patriarch and must have all of their activities approved by the father. In 2007, they released a video that the family produced called
"The Return of the Daughters," glamorizing their teachings. In these writings, they state that they had a constant influx of university students in their home (inferring that the mysterious Geoff Botkin was a professor), and they speak as though they are not really Americans who were able to observe westerners, evaluating the problems in their worldviews. Botkin has also worked on several other Vision Forum films including something called the
"League of Grateful Sons" that was released in 2005. Botkin claims to have been a Marxist, but since I know that this group teaches that anyone who rejects their rigid view of women is a Marxist, I don't know that I find this claim so convincing. I would like to know in what capacity he was a Marxist exactly.
Geoff Botkin apparently attended a GC group in Silver Spring, MD, presumably while he was a lobbyist on Capitol Hill, though I don't know for who or what.
This article cites Botkin as an administrative assistant for them, dating back to 1986. His CEO bio from NZMG, he says that he was the president for "an American policy think tank," but I wonder if that just describes his activities with the GC church in Silver Spring, trying to organize a group, involving them in politics. (
On the website for his current self-established video group, he states that his 12 year old son did work for the US Navy and consulted with Hopkins, so who knows. I suspect that "Deerwood Studios" is his own home studio where he trained his children. Smoke and mirrors...) Not much else is known about this man of mystery who just showed up in Texas a few years ago, and he's been busy producing films with and for Vision Forum ever since. Doug Phillips has a fascination with films and established a Christian film festival (to capitialize off of people like those who made "Fireproof" and Ben Stein's "Expelled"). They are masters of spin. So I am curious to know (and don't know that I ever will be able to discover) whether Doug Phillips recruited Botkin to make films and whether he is on Vision Forum's payroll. Botkin is touted to be quite erudite, and when his daughters spoke at a homeschooling convention that a friend of mine attended, he would not let "common folk" near his family. It was like they had secret service agents around them at all times. They come across as odd and definitely mysterious -- this supposed former Marxist.
What is terribly interesting is that Botkin has said that if conditions for families do not improve soon, he is asking for families to emigrate to New Zealand! I know of people who actually seriously investigated this. Basically, he's said that the US is becoming increasingly hostile to homeschoolers, so it is his brainchild idea to move people to New Zealand. (I'm ready to start taking up a collection to send them, but I don't think New Zealand has ever done anything that offensive to deserve that fate! Ha, ha, ha.) There are two other odd facts about this. Bill Gothard who has a center in New Zealand announced in the 1980s that he wanted all of the ATI homeschoolers (his homeschooling curriculum) to move there, too. It had something to do with his belief in the Psalm that said "From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same" and the fact that NZ sits on the international date line. And on a radio interview that I heard, Botkin talked of his plan of micromanagement of his childrens lives called the 200 Year Plan. Therein he suggests that it is his plan that his son become Prime Minister of NZ (roughly 25 years from now), something that might be hypothetical, but I don't think that anything these people say is innocent. Near the bottom of
this blog post, I pull out the quote, and you can link from there to listen to the interview (which does not otherwise reference NZ).
archive.md
archive.ph
archive.md
A juicy bit:
