Conservative boot camp

I'm torn. On the one hand, I take conservative boot camp to be just another way in which the Right is far, far more organized than the Left. I'm tempted to say, "Why is it so hard for liberals to do this?" On the other hand, there's something anathema about it. After all, it's really indoctrination under the guise of healthy debate.

I guess the problem is that conservatives have long viewed themselves as an oppressed minority, and as such to give theoretical underpinnings to your biases is viewed less as indoctrination and more as providing a healthy alternative viewpoint to a presumed inherent liberal bias in, well, everything. In contrast, liberals are only now beginning to feel like an oppressed minority. The more they feel this way, the more they may start acting in the same manner and thus trying to create an organized and fiercely loyal resistence (didn't we already do this in the 60's?).

(incidentally, the idea that conservatives rely more on a theoretical underpinning than liberals is unsubstantiated horse shit. Rationalization of your inherently held biases is not the same thing as arriving at your "enlightened" views through intellectually honest debate.)

While we're on the topic, I am increasingly of the opinion that what liberals should be doing is creating programs to ship kids from red states into either coastal blue states or even internationally for summers and such. Not into ideological camps where they're told why they should be liberal. Just any kind of camp where they're forced to interact with people from different places and different views on life. After all, a lot of the ignorant conservative philosophies are bred from living an utterly insular existence, and the solution is not to yell at people and tell them they're dumb but instead expose them to different people, cultures, etc. Why is this such a difficult concept? The blue states are blue largely because they _are_ on the coast and thus have more interaction with the outside world. Has no one ever watched "30 Days"???