Planting Liberally

As everyone knows, today is Super Bowl Sunday. Hundreds of millions of people across the world will turn on their TV sets to watch the New England Patriots take on the New York Giants.

Perhaps less known, Super Bowl Sunday is also the day that typically sees a peak in incidents of domestic violence. (Update: The MyDD commenters took me to task for this statement, which turns out to be a half-myth.  The reality is that there is a small bump in domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday, but the bump is minor compared to other holidays.  Sorry about that.) Indeed, the time period stretching roughly from Thanksgiving to Super Bowl Sunday is acknowledged by police, domestic violence shelter administrators, doctors, and other first responders as a time when domestic violence skyrockets.

Before reading on, please make sure to stay safe, and look out for your friends and loved ones. If you or someone you know might have a violent situation at home today, the phone number for the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).

Today, I want to discuss what the progressive movement can do to address the issue of domestic violence. This is a terriffying problem which makes life hellish for millions of people a year, and as a movement which values equality and respect for all people, we should not turn a blind eye towards it.

To begin with, there are certainly important political reforms which we can pursue. These reforms include, cerainly, training for doctors, police, and other first responders to detect potential symptoms of domestic violence, and to provide help to those who may be suffering from it. They also include increased funding for hotlines and shelters, as well as other forms of housing assistance for domestic violence survivors, like Section 508 vouchers. The reforms don't stop there - there are a variety of ways in which policymakers can be creative in addressing this issue. For example, see Transplated Texan's candidate diary regarding Joe Biden's proposal to train 10,000 domestic violence lawyers.

Furthermore, we can encourage the media industry not to glorify violence, especially violence against women. I think this kind of work will include numerous kinds of pressure, like letter-writing campaigns and boycotts. It also includes critical review of TV and film, as the folks at Screening Liberally and Alternet do on a regular basis.

We can make efforts to teach children not to use violence in schools, and we can create educational programs in high school and college to teach young adults about the warning signs of domestic violence, how to control violent impulses and treat romantic partners with respect, and how to get out of potentially violent situations.

Finally, I believe that we need to make efforts to reform family life more directly. That is, we need to make efforts to help families which are struggling with the early warning signs of potentially violent situations, like excessive control by one partner over the other, unequal or unhealthy power distributions, emotionally abusive behavior or language, and so on. In my opinion, such efforts would best be rooted in small groups which allow partners to work out these sorts of problems together, with the guidance of therapists or counselors who could help them unlearn potentially dangerous behavior, and work out new and more peaceful behavior. Such groups would probably be ideally established within the context of institutions like churches and labor unions, which can help families work out their problems with peers who share similar values and lifestyles. This idea is a twist on the consciousness raising movement which helped women in the 1960's and 70's identify and overcome inequality at home.

To be sure, this would require a massive effort on the part of social institutions which espouse progressive values. In addition to addressing specifically the problem of domestic violence it would, hopefully, help address a wide range of potential problems in family life, ranging from drug and alcohol abuse to financial stress. Such an effort would be a supplement, never a replacement, to crisis services like hotlines and shelters. But it would hopefully reduce the need for those crisis services considerably.

What I'm suggesting is, I'm aware, a pretty serious departure from the kinds of reform efforts progressives usually discuss. For the most part, we are content to lobby government, participate in elections, criticize the media and other institutions, and, on the whole, restrict our activism to the public square. I think this tendency is the result of a larger discomfort with the idea of intruding on family life, and respecting cultural differences. But family life is an incredibly important institution, and it has enormous impact on our everday lives. To avoid interfering with this sphere of life is to turn away from measures that could save lives and prevent a lot of personal destruction. Of course, we need to respect cultural diversity, and that is why I believe that efforts to reform family life should start within the context of voluntary private affiliations - church and union membership, and the like - where problems like domestic violence can be addressed in a culturally sensitive way.

I'd love to hear additional thoughts on this issue, including as many different ideas as possible about what our government, media, schools, workplaces, and religious communities can do to reduce and, perhaps one day, eradicate this problem. Above all, stay safe and keep an eye out for loved ones.

If you've ever seen Bridezilla, Father of the Bride, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, or nearly any other tv show or movie about throwing a wedding, you know how stressful weddings can be. They involve a thousand little details, complex project management responsibilities, and superb personal negotiation skills. They tend to bring all sorts of long-buried thorny personal and family dynamics to the surface. Moreover, any couple trying to plan a wedding has any number of family traditions, social norms and mores, and expectations breathing down their collective necks; if they don't live up to expectation, they may feel, they will have "failed" to successfully plan one of the most important days of their lives. Nevertheless, most weddings go smoothly, and everyone leaves happy. Months of stress and agony and expense pay off, and they all live happily ever after. Right? Maybe, maybe not. For all the focus and celebration of the wedding process in pop culture, there's very little focus on the weeks, months and years of married life which follow the big event. (Actually, that is starting to change, and it is almost all focused on marriages which go horribly awry shortly after the wedding day; see for example, Imagine Me and You, or from a different angle, In Good Company.) However, these first few steps in a young couple's life are incredibly important, both for the couple and society. Family life is an incredibly important part of most people's lives, and it shapes their worldviews in ways which no one fully understands. It's not entirely clear how that happens; there is some evidence, for example, that conservatism is not inheritable from parent to child. But liberalism might also not be inheritable, or the question could be considerably more complex. Regardless of the effect of liberal family life on children, I am particularly interested on the effects of liberal family life on spouses (and here I'm discussing families headed by married couples, or couples joined by civil unions). I don't know for certain, but I will wager a bet that liberal family life tends to make spouses more liberal. What do I mean by liberal family life? Primarily, I'm talking about a family life governed by equality and mutual respect among the spouses, and a family where liberal values are dominant; these values include diversity, connectedness as opposed to materialism, the value of individual potential and the nurturing power of education. This idea is not unlike George Lakoff's Nurturant Parent superframe, but it is an actual family dynamic, not a metaphor for understanding the nation as a recognizable social unit. Obviously, there is a chicken-and-egg problem within my proposition. Are liberal spouses more likely to sustain a liberal family life? Or does liberal family life create liberal spouses? It could go either way, however, I'll suggest that it is true in at least the second sense, i.e., liberal family life does indeed make spouses more liberal. For progressives who are serious about molding the political ideological landscape so that more people are liberal, the problem is, how do we create more liberal families? One event that critically affects the shape of a marriage is the structure and format of the wedding. On a practical level, the wedding is, for most couples, the first time when they have to make a series of complex decisions, and the first time when they have to negotiate their shared traditions and customs. The wedding is also an meaningful day whose messages and values are, for most couples, an important part of their joint identity. The decision-making skills which couples learn during the wedding planning process, as well as the kinds of values communicated through the ceremony and the reception, are the "raw materials" from which the values of the new family are created. To consider the extreme case, Anne Kingston's book The Meaning of Wife argues (among a variety of other things) that the modern wave of super-weddings lays the foundation for a new generation of stay-at-home wives. (My wife gave me some good insights on these points, and also pointed me to the book.) Because wedding planning is stressful and difficult, many couples (as many as 19% of all marrying couples, according to The Wedding Report) turn to a wedding planner. Wedding planning is a lucrative business, with some planners charging as much as 10% of the budget of the wedding, or anywhere between $50 - 150 per hour. With the average planned wedding costing around $15,000, a typical wedding planner can earn $1,500 and upwards from a single engagement. For a liberal entrepreneur who's been keeping score so far, starting a progressive wedding planning agency is both a good way to help shape the course of a couple's marriage, and a way to make a good deal of money. It should be no surprise that wedding planners can have a big impact on a wedding, and consequently, on the marriage. Wedding planners are not simply project managers in the classic sense. The wedding planner guides a couple through the dozens of questions which they must answer in the course of the planning process. These are usually depicted in the movies as mundane ("should we go with carnations or daffadils?"), but in fact they can be quite profound ("Is it ok if I don't want to wear a veil?"). The wedding planner helps the couple negotiate the boundary between tradition ("well, you could go without a veil, but what will your Aunt Louise think?") and modern values ("it's your wedding, wear what you want"). There is a fine line to draw - respect for tradition is fine in some cases, and certainly might not be toxic to marital equality. But a progressive wedding planner will help give the couple perspective on the trade-offs involved, since that planner will have seen the same problems in other weddings. Wedding planners also manage some of the more complex problems which crop up during the course of a wedding, including venue acquisition. Venue acquisition sounds innocent enough, but it is anything but innocent for couples who come from different religious traditions or cultural backgrounds. The venue literally sets the stage for the wedding, and the choice of venue (as well as the process of choosing) can have a powerful impact on the values inherent in the wedding. A progressive wedding planner will attempt to give both spouses a meaningful say in the choice of the venue, or will guide the partners through a compromise on the venue. (There are a variety of ways to compromise on the venue; for example, while the ceremony might be held in one partner's chosen venue, the other partner might have a choice in the decorations, or might get a chance to determine who the officiant will be, or how the ceremony will go, and so on.) Finally, wedding planners are almost always the first to appear at the scene of conflict during the planning process. Their job, quite often, includes a good dose of couple and family counseling. They can guide couples towards healthy, respectful decision-making processes; they can stand aside and let the couples do what they want; or they can make matters worse. Clearly, a progressive wedding planner's job is to encourage couples to make healthy, joint decisions which respect the wishes of one another's families, without allowing either partner to dominate excessively. There are already a number of progressive wedding planners. Typically, these planners focus on the consumption angle, i.e., they help a couple buy recycled-paper invitations, caterers who buy fair-trade food, etc. For example, consider the kinds of suggestions offered in Organic Weddings, by the founder of OrganicWeddings.com/. Along similar lines, see Green Elegance Weddings. These companies do important work, but more is needed. A progressive wedding planner will incorporate this kind of socially responsible purchasing into a larger framework of progressive values which inform a progressive wedding. Who will enlist the services of a progressive wedding planner? It's a good question. Here are a few potential target audiences:

• Couples where both partners are progressive, or one is very progressive and the other is more or less apolitical.
• Couples where the partners come from very different cultural or religious traditions, who wish to navigate those differences during their wedding planning. Since most planners stress the project management side of wedding planning, a progressive wedding planner can occupy the niche of planning which emphasizes counseling and negotiation of different traditions and thorny family dynamics.
• Same-sex couples. These couples face a starkly unfair hurdle: acquiring a marriage license or other legal document. The laws are frequently changing, yielding even more stress in the same-sex marriage planning process. While this situation is unfair, and will hopefully result in true marriage equality in the near future, for the present time a progressive wedding planner would serve same-sex couples well with sound legal advice on how to obtain a civil union certificate, marriage license, or other legal document. (Such advice could also be coupled with referral to a good tax attorney, who can help a same-sex couple negotiate the dicey waters of federal and state tax law.)

There is a subtle point in this list: progressive wedding planning is a business which inherently distributes progressive values to people who may not already be progressive. Couples where one partner is apolitical, where the partners do not come from the same cultural tradition, or who are same-sex are not necessarily progressive; they may have some latent progressive values, but these might not be fully developed or articulated. The wedding planning process is an opportunity to infuse expressly progressive values into these couples' lives, in a way which is beneficial to both partners. In addition to describing a good idea which a liberal entrepreneur can run with, this post is also meant to describe another kind of revenue stream available to liberal entrepreneurs: the consumer economy. Consumer spending is a large and messy beast, and it's responsible for a pretty large piece of the US economy. It's also the site of extremely important personal events, which taken together shape the larger cultural and political landscape. Progressives should participate fully in this part of the economy, and liberal entrepreneurs should do what they can to distribute progressive values to consumers while making a tidy profit for themselves.

Several months ago, I noted that data which suggests a "baby gap" between liberals and conservatives is only relevant in so far as the act of parenting has no effect on a parent's ideology. I doubt that's true, although it's not clear to me entirely which direction the act of parenting tends to move someone. My guess is that parenting is a moderating process for both conservatives and liberals, but what do I know? Regardless, I think it's important that liberals make an effort to support parents, and to use the parenting process as a "hook" into the liberal movement. Focus on the Family has done this for years, bringing legions of parents into the conservative movement by providing them with much-needed advice and support. Now it appears that a new site, Babble.com, is seeking to create a "magazine and community for the new urban parent". If I read that right, the site is making a play at supporting parents who are highly predisposed to be liberals, if they are not already. Babble is founded by Rufus Griscom, the founder of Nerve.com. As MediaLife magazine notes, it remains to be seen whether Babble will succeed in the face of growing online competition for parents. My belief is that Babble will tap a need which is so far largely unserved online. While I haven't had a chance to fully explore it, my understanding is that blogs dedicated to parenting are a very active and growing niche. That suggests to me that many parents are online, tech savvy, and interested in finding other parents. To the degree that Babble can work together and augment the parent-blogosphere, the site will be tremendously successful. Of course, there's no guarantee that Babble will work wonders in liberal ideological conversion. My guess is that its overall ethos will be distinctly liberal, but not explicitly so; after all, Griscom is out to make a buck, not win an election. Still, it's a step in the right direction, and it opens the door for further and more explicit liberalizing parenting sites to spring up in the coming years. My guess is that parenting is really just one piece of the puzzle. If liberals really want to garner the support of people whose family and personal lives put them in a position for potential ideological conversion, they will start to focus on providing more advice and support to niche families and households, including: - Single-parent households - Mixed-race households - Same-sex households - Low-income households - Multi-roommate households - Newly married couples - Domestic partnerships - Civil unions - Families with adopted childern By "advice and support", I don't mean new policies and political support (although there's nothing wrong with that.) I mean immediate, on-the-ground, person-to-person support with the daily trials that face these households, including help with everything from legal advice to carpooling and babysitting. I think the need for this kind of support is already tremendous, and I believe it will only grow stronger in the coming years. To be sure, there are probably scattered examples of providing such support throughout the country. We would do well to weave these separate efforts together into a full-fledged effort, in order to make it easy for any family in any city to find this network of support and to spread the word about it.

A few weeks ago, in response to a Wall Street Journal opinion piece claiming that a "baby gap" would ruing liberal's chances in elections of the future, I wrote:

For the liberal movement to grow, it's necessary to either reverse the baby gap; make liberalism a more readily inherited ideology than conservatism; make the parenting process itself a liberalizing life change; or some combination of these three changes.

An insighful diary at Street Prophets points to a lot of worry in the evangelical community that fewer and fewer young adults will stay in the church into adulthood. The diarist, Sarea, hints at some reasons why that might be a problem, or why those people might not abandon religion forever, just evangelical Christianity. At any rate, if the trend holds out, it would be an interesting validation of what I've suggested here: conservatism is not inheritable the way liberalism is. There is an obvious caveat that evangelicals are not all conservatives. On the other hand, they are predominantly center-right politically, and the steep drop in numbers (down from the current total of 35% of the adult population, to 4% of the future adult population) suggests that the loss in numbers cannot possibly come all from the leftist part of the evangelical community.

The Wall Street Journal today discusses a trend that should be troubling for liberals:

Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children.

The piece rests on some rather shaky assumptions:

• Having children does nothing to affect a parent's ideology
• Children of parents with a particular ideology will adopt that ideology later in life

In fact, neither of these assumptions need be true, now or into the future. But the baby gap does charge liberals to think about the problem of parenting. For the liberal movement to grow, it's necessary to either reverse the baby gap; make liberalism a more readily inherited ideology than conservatism; make the parenting process itself a liberalizing life change; or some combination of these three changes. It's not hard to imagine solutions that will address some of these goals. For example, a liberal cultural movement to help parents with the day to day challenges of raising children would help attract new parents to the liberal movement. Such a movement might take the shape of a liberal alternative to Focus on the Family, a network of day care centers which espouse liberal values, or some other form. Arguably, the liberal movement has already succeeded in making liberalism a more readily inherited ideology: young people today are considerably more liberal than their parents. This ideological shift must be watched closely and expanded, however, through continuing investments and outreach in youth culture, as well as development and mentorship of young leaders. Of course, in order to maintain this shift in a way that will offset today's baby gap, such efforts must be extended for several decades into the future. Update: Via kos, Echidne questions the validity and impartiality of the professor who wrote the Wall Street Journal piece. Good eye, but at least some of the data is based on the 2004 General Social Survey, so I'm going to assume that a decent part of the data is valid. The baby gap appears to be 19%, not 41%, when we correct for factors like age, race, gender, etc. That's a huge difference, but 19% is nothing to sneeze at when you're talking about hundreds of millions of people. Echidne makes excellent points also about factors like the Latino migration, but even there we can't rest on our laurels. Latinos vote 2-to-1 for Democrats, which isn't half bad, but it's very much a demographic in play. Moreover, however much Latino immigration benefits liberals, there's no guarantee that it will continue for decades. Changes in our laws or in the economic conditions in Latin America could easily reverse that tide. Consequently, I still think that it's very important for our movement to take some of the steps I outline above - making parenting a liberalizing process and making liberalism more inheritable than conservatism.

(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.