"... Offspring of parents that just did not have the time ..or the inclination, & they are bound & determined to express their free-will, and there is an effect on everyone around them who is at an impressionable age of youth and possibility, blah-blah-blah, and even those who don't buy into it are rubbed by it, brushed with it, effected, infected, & at this point, even with an open mind, I’m bummed-out, to say the least, and worrying over my kid. ...I hope he can weed through it, ...we remain sanctuary, ...but...you're leaning towards the dark siiide, Luke."

When I was in language school at Syracuse University--early 1950's--I used to tell my complaining classmates to think of those poor bastard Soviet counterparts having to learn the much more difficult English.

So it is with first year college students who come home spouting words and ideas they've heard from professors--ie., Do any of you still believe in God?--classmates from different cultures and financial strata, as well as from a myriad of new textbook concepts.

Imagine the son who has gone home to shock the father who intends to turn his very lucrative business over to him someday talking about the organization of labor, the consideration of a more widespread health care, for example, playing tunes and spouting ideas he'd never learned from home, telling of the new friend he's met who's an accomplished musician, songwriter, superb athlete, and extremely intelligent, but comes from a working class family, more in the cast of an Emile Zola hero, than the coal miners you employ and keep as shuttered as possible.

You haven't thrown your son out into the winds of change unprepared to cope with them. His anger comes more from an unsorted out confusion then from regret. It is sanctuary he needs and fights at the same time.

His world,very much like the world of my fictional rich friend above, has been temporarily tilted from the center he's always been able to depend upon by those new acquaintances you describe as "bound and determined to express their free-will." There's enough contradictory in that statement to conclude that they're sharing values which they've been, by inculcation, determined to share.

Pity the dullards who attempted to influence his high school experience. Know that they have been changed more by your son's actions than he theirs.

Leadership is welcome, even though it is challenged by bullies, and other mean-spirited people, it is, nonetheless, the reason your son was looked up to in the final analysis.

I'll wager the son who is still in high school hears stories of respect for his big brother from little brothers of your older son's peers.

I preach, therefor I am!