(Note: I originally wrote this as a diary on MyDD. I think it's a good illustration of how we can use ideological conversion machines to de-militarize our culture.)
I believe that the Leave My Child Alone campaign has great potential to be an ideological conversion machine for liberals.
If you've been a member of DFA for the past month or so, you've probably heard about Leave My Child Alone (LMCA). LMCA is an effort to encourage parents to ask school boards not to give their high schooler's contact information to military recruiters.
If you've been reading MyDD for the past year or so, you've probably read a few front-page posts about ideological conversion machines, or social institutions which tend to alter a person's ideology.
I believe that LMCA can do for liberals what the anti-evolution movement did for Christian conservatives: sway people who are otherwise not concerned with politics to become passionate ideologues for our side.
For starters, I'll spell out what I think makes for an ideal ideological conversion machine (ICM). An ICM is an institution which:
- helps people solve a problem they have
- is local in flavor - that is, it engages people in a problem which they can attack by acting within their neighborhood
- tends to encourage its participants to think about larger issues and more abstract power dynamics
- makes the people it encounters amenable to a particular ideology
- is capable of drawing its participants into a long-term effort
Here is how LMCA meets these criteria:
- The problem in this case - kids are being recruited (and in some cases bullied) by military recruiters; those who join the military are often sent to Iraq. LMCA allows parents to solve this problem by preventing recruiters from contacting their kids.
- The problem is the degree of friendliness between the school board and the military recruitiers. If the school board is friendly to opt-outers, parents will have an easier time at defending their kids. So the problem is local because a local pressure point is the school board.
- I think it's quite evident that there are larger issues at play than recruitment here. For one, the war in Iraq; as well as the lack of good jobs and opportunities for advancement.
- This is inherently a movement which is anti-militarization, pro-nurturant parenting. Both of these attitudes are fare more suited to the liberal ideology than the conservative one.
- The long-term aspect of this campaign is perhaps least obvious, but I believe it has potential. For example, a long-term goal for LMCA participants would be to try and get as many parents in their district as possible to join the LMCA movement; then recruit teachers and school board members; and finally, try to spill over into other districts. Such a long term effort would necessarily require the creation of a strong, lasting, active citizen's group, which could morph into a more fully-developed ICM.
The long and short of this post is as follows: the more people we can get to opt-out of military recruitment via the LMCA campaign, the better poised we are to get recruits to liberalism.
I also think that we should be cultivating ideas which run along the lines of LMCA: local action which helps people solve a problem and makes them more liberal. This is the heart of the conservative culture war, and if we are going to make a liberal culture take root and grow, we've got to start with the same tactic.
To get involved with LMCA, visit the Leave My Child Alone website or your neighborhood DFA group.
