Category Archives: Political philosophy

RULES for RADICALS by SAUL ALINSKY – TACTICS

Posted on May 14, 2012 | 1 comment

Continuing with the chapter by chapter series on Rules for Radicals, today we add Comments about the chapter called Tactics.

Synopsis of the chapter entitled Tactics
The tag line following the heading of this chapter is a quote from the great warrior Hannibal,

“We will find a way, or make one.”

The reason for having a defined set of tactics is to provide a specific set of rules that teach “how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves”, i.e. how to organize the lower classes in order to take power away from the middle and upper classes.  The message from Hannibal is not to constrain yourself to working within societal norms.  You need to be able and willing to do whatever it takes to do to get the job done.

These are the thirteen rules of Tactics that need to be observed in the process of wresting power from the establishment.  Each tactic is presented here word for word as it appears in the book.

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

2. Never go outside the experience of your people.

3. Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.

4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.

5. Ridicule is man’s most important weapon.

6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.

7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.

8. Keep the pressure on.

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure on the opposition.

11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.

12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

The final rule is by far the most important.  The author devotes more pages to an understanding of this rule than to all of the first twelve rules combined.  This, of course, is the tactic of personal destruction.  Ridicule and personal destruction are two of the most effective tools known for deflating an enemy’s power and they must be utilized to the fullest extent possible.

Commentary
By opening with the Hannibal quote, the professor shows his determination to replace traditional Judeo-Christian standards of ethical behavior with a more convenient concept of right and wrong in the minds of his students.  If the use of demagoguery, lying and deceit facilitate the creation of a better world then these methods are more than just acceptable practice, it is the moral duty of a leader to employ them.  Judeo-Christian principles have no place in Alinsky’s model of political activism.

The key tactics on the list are numbers 13, 5 and 4, in that order.

Number 13 should be familiar to everyone; it’s the tactic of personal destruction.  It starts with “Pick the target”; the natural choice is the adversary who represents the greatest current threat, take Sarah Palin as an example.  “Freeze it”, be relentless, keep the target always on the defensive.  Stop them from moving forward by a constant need for responding to your attacks.  The DNC sent a SWAT team of 30 high powered lawyers and Democratic operatives accompanied by members of the liberal MSM to Alaska at the height of her popularity.  “Personalize it”, spread a story like the rumor that Palin’s daughter got pregnant while still in high school and her mother lied to cover up for her by claiming the baby was her own.  “Polarize it”, surround the targeted person with controversy to maintain the public interest and keep the issue alive.

The practice of personal destruction is deplorable and in many cases vicious.  Unfortunately it is also effective.  Only you can change that.  The more the public recognizes demonizing for what it is and responds inversely to it (backlash), the less effective it will become.

Tactic number 5 is ridicule.  Whereas the Democratic Party is the party of personal destruction, it’s the Republican Party that excels at ridicule.  Vice President Joe Biden is the current example.  Ridicule is very effective because it is nearly impossible to counter attack and it infuriates the person ridiculed, often prompting a reaction that works to the ridiculer’s advantage.

Tactic number 4 is hypocrisy.  No one lives up to their own beliefs every hour of every day of every year.  When an opponent slips, call them on it.  It works better against the Right than it does against the Left.  As we have learned from the book, the far Left has lower standards and is less likely to condemn one of their own for violating them.  Herman Cain was quickly destroyed by unproven allegations of improper sexual advances.  Bill Clinton’s illicit sexual activity went far beyond improper advances yet his popularity within his Party, even among the women, suffered only minor decline.

One more tactic deserves mention and that’s number 12.  How can there be a price for a successful attack?  The book explains “You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy [Alinsky commonly refers to those with opposing views as the enemy] in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying ‘You’re right-We don’t know what to do about this.  Now you tell us’”.

Radical Left leaders know issues are not for solving while the ‘enemy’ is still in control.  Issues are tools for building discontent with the status quo, a necessary step in the process of deposing those in control.  To solve an issue is to waste it.

If only two things are learned from studying this chapter they should be, (1) the realization that, in politics, ridicule and personal attacks are not spontaneous reactions; they carefully planned and organized tactics chosen as part of an overall strategy, (2) there are no standards of truth or relevance standing behind them.

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ROMNEY’S COMMENCEMENT SPEECH TO LIBERTY UNIVERSITY GRADUATES

Posted on May 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

Commencement – Beginning – The Start – Coming Out – Commencement is much more than a ceremony; it’s the day when graduates leave the confined world of learning for the open and uncertain world of application.  A good commencement speech clarifies, motivates, explains, congratulates and warns.  An excellent commencement speech gives the graduating class a sense of culture to bolster them when the going gets tough, and there will be times that it surely will.

Romney gave an excellent commencement speech when he addressed Liberty University’s Graduating Class of 2012 with these words:

“You enter a world with civilizations and economies that are far from equal.  Harvard historian David Landes devoted his lifelong study to understanding why some civilizations rise, and why others falter.  His conclusion:  Culture makes all the difference.  Not natural resources, not geography, but what people believe and value.  Central to America’s rise to global leadership is our Judeo-Christian tradition, with its vision of the goodness and possibilities of every life.

The American culture promotes personal responsibility, the dignity of work, the value of education, the merit of service, devotion to a purpose greater than self, and, at the foundation, the pre-eminence of the family.

The power of these values is evidenced by a Brookings Institution study that Senator Rick Santorum brought to my attention.  For those who graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and marry before they have their first child, the probability that they will be poor is 2%.  But, if those things are absent, 76% will be poor.  Culture matters.

As fundamental as these principles are, they may become topics of democratic debate.  So it is today with the enduring institution of marriage.  Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.”

It’s not Reaganesque in style, but it’s Reaganesque in essential substance.  Here is more.

“Moral certainty, clear standards, and a commitment to spiritual ideals will set you apart in a world that searches for meaning.

[Y]our values will not always be the object of public admiration.  In fact, the more you live by your beliefs, the more you will endure the censure of the world.  Christianity is not the faith of the complacent, the comfortable or of the timid.  It demands and creates heroic souls like Wesley, Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, John Paul the Second, and Billy Graham.  Each showed, in their own way, the relentless and powerful influence of the message of Jesus Christ.  May that be your guide.”

This man Romney is looking better every day.

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OBAMA CAMPAIGN SLOGANS SEND DIFFERENT MESSAGES TO DIFFERENT AUDIENCES

Posted on May 10, 2012 | 2 comments

When Barack Obama announced that “Forward” would be a campaign slogan for 2012, some pundits on the Right criticized the choice as an oversight by the President because it once was a popular term used in radical Socialist circles, particularly in Europe.  Early in the 20th century, Karl Marx and Friedrick Engels published their works in a bi-monthly magazine called Vorwärts which is German for the word Forward.  When written with an explanation mark, it means come on, let’s go!  Vorwärts was more than a just a magazine; it was a rallying call used by Europe’s revolutionary Socialists.

The naivety of some Conservatives amazes me.  Obama has proven to be very adept at communicating openly with his far Left followers without the Right even realizing it.  Adopting the word Forward is just another case in point.  The slogan rings a bell for radical socialists.  Everyone else hears nothing but a new slogan.

Hope and Change also conveyed different images to different groups.  So did “complete transformation”.  Democrats, centrists, and even some conservatives interpreted Hope and Change in the context of Obama’s promises that he would bring unprecedented openness in government, a reduction of bi-partisan bickering, prompt return of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, closing of the Guantanamo prison camp and a stable recovery from the mortgage crisis.

But the radical Left saw a very different message.  They knew what community organizing was.  They saw the close association with Ayers and Dohrn and the farewell promise to ACORN that their concerns would be the first thing he would address as President.  They saw Obama’s commitment to socialist based Black Liberation Theology.  When political expediency forced him to renege on his vow never to turn his back on Rev. Wright, the preacher assured his parishioners that Barack hadn’t changed; his distancing of himself was just something he had to do in order to become President.  It is in this context that the socialist Left puts meaning to the words Hope and Change.  Early on, the Right wasn’t exactly sure what the pledge “to completely transform America” meant either, but his other audience did.

The consensus among socialist scholars is that America with its extensive prosperous middle class cannot be turned into a socialist society relying solely on the democratic process.  Obama’s answer is Yes We Can.  The Right wonders, can what?  The radical Left knows exactly what.

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RULES for RADICALS by SAUL ALINSKY – COMMUNICATION

Posted on April 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

Continuing with the chapter by chapter series on Rules for Radicals, today we add our Comments about the chapter called Communication.

Synopsis of the chapter entitled Communication
If you can’t communicate, you can’t agitate.  Therefore the ability to communicate is the one quality an organizer absolutely must have.  To communicate the organizer must, 1) speak in familiar terms the people understand and 2) listen.  He must talk in terms familiar to the people he seeks as his power base.  Typically, this requires talking down when speaking to the people he is organizing.

As an example, take the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima; an organizer who stresses the multiple thousands of people who died will not communicate well with his audience.  Numbers with lots of zeros in them are outside the experience of most people.  However, if he tells the personal story of a single family including the details of their suffering, the organizer will reach his people.  Family problems and personal tragedies are within everyone’s realm of experience.

By the same token, a leader should not speak of issues in “generalities like sin or immorality or the good life or morals.  They must be this immorality of this slum landlord with this tenement where these people suffer”.

When planning the American Revolution founder John Adams said “There ought to be no less than three or four killed so we will have martyrs for the Revolution, but there must be no more than ten, because after you get beyond that number we no longer have martyrs but simply a sewage problem.”

Commentary
The first thing to note is the goal the author sets out – to agitate, stir up emotions.  Beyond that, this chapter offers some good advice; nothing will be accomplished unless you are able to communicate well with your constituency.  It is also true you won’t reach them by speaking above their heads and that little heart wrenching stories reach an audience in a way the big picture does not.

Barack Obama is very proficient at speaking in the terms the people he is addressing can understand.  Here is what writer Wayne Root had to say about the President’s “put on your marching shoes” speech at the Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference in September 2011.

“When speaking before black audiences, President Obama tends to be more charismatic in his delivery. He just plays the room differently — gripping and galvanizing, with a preacher-like cadence that can sometimes rise to a holler at points of emphasis.”

“Throughout our history, change has often come slowly. Progress often takes time,” he said. “It’s never easy. And I never promised easy. Easy has never been promised to us. But we have had faith. We’ve had that good kind of crazy that says, ‘You can’t stop marching.’ “

Obama continued in this vein, with knowing references to the civil rights heroes honored during the night’s awards ceremony. “Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop,” he said, building into an oratory crescendo that had the crowd cheering him on.

The author uses the alleged quote of John Adams to teach the method of communicating by invoking emotions.  Senator Inhofe gave us a recent example of this method employing the emotion of fear.  The Senator showed a video on April 25, 2012 of an EPA official teaching his philosophy of enforcement to his staff about 2 yrs earlier.  The subject, perhaps better said the target, was the oil companies.  The official said his philosophy

“was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean.  They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them.  Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”

The Romans simply killed a few people arbitrarily to serve as examples of the consequences they might face if they rebelled against a Roman dictate.  That is one sure way to communicate to an audience that they had better toe the line.

However, with respect to the quotation, there is no evidence Adams ever said any such thing nor would it be correct to say he planned the American Revolution.  A search of internet validators turns up several investigations into the source of the remark about the need for martyrs but none of them found any evidence of its having been said by Adams.  One validator offered the opinion that the originator was most likely none other than Saul Alinsky himself.

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RULES for RADICALS by SAUL ALINSKY – THE EDUCATION OF AN ORGANIZER

Posted on April 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

Continuing with the chapter by chapter series on Rules for Radicals, today we add our Comments about the chapter called The Education of an Organizer.

Synopsis of the chapter entitled The Education of an Organizer
“The building of many mass power organizations to merge into a national popular power source cannot come without may organizers”.  Training organizers is a daunting task.  Candidates come from every corner, from students to priests to union leaders and minority groups.  Many trainees start but few go on to great accomplishment.  The failure rate is high.”

“Certain qualities mark a candidate as more likely for success.  A good candidate is curious; of every issue, he asks why?  A good candidate is irreverent.  “He is challenging, insulting, agitating. discrediting.  He stirs unrest”.  He has imagination, a good sense of humor and “a bit blurred vision of a better world”.

Alinsky explains that the best organizer is “a well integrated political schizoid.  The organizer must become schizoid, politically, in order not to slip into becoming a true believer.  Before men can act an issue must be polarized.  Men will act when they are convinced that their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil.  He knows that there can be no action until the issues are polarized to this degree”.

Commentary (Revised)
When Alinsky wrote “The building of many mass power organizations to merge into a national popular power source” there can be little doubt that ACORN was in the professor’s mind.   However he never addressed the need for a grand leader, a Commander in Chief to preside over the Lieutenants and Generals who were the focus of his teachings.  Barack Obama will be ideally positioned to fill that role after his term in office.  Don’t be surprised if that’s the route he takes.  Martin Luther King is dead, Jessie Jackson has run his course and Al Sharpton is… Al Sharpton.  The door is open.

Good middle managers are the key to success in any business.  That’s just as true for building a political power base as it is for building a chain of shoe stores.  It is particularly difficult however, to find good candidates within a political movement that is populated by members more interested in achievement by taking that in achievement by producing.

Union leaders are unreliable because they can get better pay for leading unions.  Among priests, only the disgruntled are likely to apply.  And students grow up.  So it’s no mystery why the failure rate is high.

The author says the best candidate is a “schizoid” with “blurred vision”.  Level headed clear thinkers need not apply.

Why “schizoid’ and why is a “blurred vision” helpful?  Ethics Rule 11 says in part, the organizer’s mission must be phrased in terms like “Equality, Fraternity or the Common Welfare”.  Thus we see the goal of taking property from those who earned it and redistributing it to those who have no right to it expressed as Equal Justice.  We see the goal of expanding central power over another 16% of the economy and increasing the Party’s constituency of dedicated voters phrased as providing healthcare to 30 million hard working Americans presumed to be denied any medical treatment otherwise.

The organizer must preach these causes with a deep fervor that only a true believer can muster.  But he must not become a true believer because the causes are not the goal, they are just vehicles.   Power is the goal.

When Alinsky says blurred vision, I take him to mean vague vision.  When the 2012 Republican primary campaigns were in full swing each contender and his or her followers were comprised of true believers with their own clear vision and the result hurt the Party’s chances to win the general election. It’s an age old dilemma; do you stand unwavering on your principles, possibly in vain, or do you yield to compromise for the greater probability of gaining half of what you seek?  Alinsky taught continual new demand followed by compromise, gaining a little each time until you reach the final goal.

As an aside, you may have noticed the synopsis of this chapter is almost entirely in quotes, which means the text is reproduced exactly as it was written in the book.  You may have noticed the grammatical errors many of which occur throughout the book.  We noticed them but for the sake of simplicity didn’t point them out with the customary sic notation.


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INCOME DISPARITY

Posted on April 19, 2012 | Leave a comment

A picture of income disparity

Vertical scale = per capita income Horizontal scale = population segments

This chart was published in Mother Jones to make some point or another about the shame of income disparity in America.  The chart is taken from a book titled “The Haves and the Have-Nots,” by the World Bank economist Branko Milanovic. I don’t know why Milanovic selected these countries and can only surmise it was because they were the three fastest growing major economies in the world over some recent time frame.

What the chart says to me is (1) the poorest group in the U.S. is infinitely better off than the poorest group in the other nations, (2) income disparity is the least in the U. S.  This is apparent all along the scale from the most impoverished to the wealthiest as shown by the relative flatness of the U.S. curve, (3) whatever faults the American economic system may have, they are insignificant when compared to the other systems because every group is better off in America, particularly the lower income ones.  Mother Jones picked a rose and called it a thorn.

China is a socialist country; India is not; Brazil is somewhere in between.  Nevertheless, the chart is a good illustration of the superiority of an economic system that incentivizes individual entrepreneurialism and protects the rewards for success with a healthy respect for property rights.  It’s a fact of life that equal treatment is bound to produce unequal results because people are not equal.  The capitalistic system gets the best from the best; socialism does not.  And if China can be taken as an example, socialism doesn’t reduce income disparity either.

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SOME MORE WORDS ABOUT WORDS

Posted on April 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

Now for a more serious discussion of how words are used for subtle deception –

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RULES for RADICALS by SAUL ALINSKY – A WORD ABOUT WORDS

Posted on April 16, 2012 | 1 comment

Continuing with the chapter by chapter series on Rules for Radicals, today we add Comments about the chapter called A word About Words.

Synopsis of the chapter entitled A Word About Words
Power
Words that are soft-sounding and peaceful are soporific and ineffective. Such words are inappropriate for our purposes because “In the politics of life we are concerned with the slaves and the Caesars, not the vestal virgins”. The word “power” is often maligned but fear not to use it. “To know power and not fear it is essential to its constructive use and control. In short, life without power is death; a world without power would be a ghostly wasteland, a dead planet!”.

Self Interest
“The myth of altruism as a motivating factor in our behavior could arrive and survive only in a society bundled in the sterile gauze of New England puritanism and Protestant morality …. It is one of the classic American fairy tales”.

Compromise
“To the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word…. If you start with nothing, demand 100 percent, then compromise for 30 percent, you’re 30 percent ahead.”

Ego
Ego is self confidence. The community organizer’s “ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego”.

Conflict
The word “conflict” is much maligned in the media and by Madison Avenue [the advertising industry]. However, “Conflict is the central core of a free and open society”.

Commentary
A Word About Words, the title is intriguing but the content is very disappointing. Judging by the title one would expect to read about some clever and devious ways in which various words could be employed by a community organizer to further the activist’s agenda.  However, the chapter is little more than a revelation of the depth of the sullen author’s cynicism and obsession with power.

Thankfully the chapter is a short one.

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WE ARE A REPUBLIC, NOT A DEMOCRACY

Posted on April 14, 2012 | Leave a comment

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%”.  Some credit that line to Thomas Jefferson, others say no.  But he might well have said it because the founding fathers decidedly did not form the country as a Democracy and for very good reason.  We were formed as a Republic.  Ben Franklin warned that we may not be able to hold it, but we have held it for nearly 240 years.  Now it is slipping away.

Our Republic is slipping into the Democracy the founders feared.  Democracy cedes the power to those candidates most capable of charming the people, not to the candidates most able (and honest) to govern.  There is a reason one of our political parties is called Democratic and the other Republican.  It is the same reason that Democrats seek to alter and diminish the Constitution while Republicans seek to conserve it.  The United States Constitution is a republican (small r) instrument.  Its provisions surrender simple majority rule to the wonderful concept of the separation of powers.  It is still government by the people but with added protection for the people from the government they elect.

Think about that as you watch the video.

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ROUSSEAU, LOCKE AND BURKE

Posted on April 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

GREAT HALL OF THE ESTATES GENERALE, FRANCE

It was in this chamber that a deviation of tradition launched the French Revolution.  The French majority demanded an equal head for head vote in the affairs of government and it was denied.

Locke, Rousseau and Burke were three influential thinkers of that general era when the Western world was in transition from totalitarian rule by monarchs to some other form of government.

John Locke was a British philosopher of the 17th century.  His writings greatly influenced the content of our Declaration of Independence.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was an 18th century philosopher who would fall into Thomas Sowell’s unconstrained vision category.

Edmund Burke was a British statesman and political philosopher of the late 18th century.

That’s who they were; now what did they believe and why does it matter?  I will let Jonah Goldberg answer that.  He writes:

“Readers of this blog, the book or, in particular people who’ve heard me speak about the book at length, know that I think political philosophy, or more accurately, political visions can be boiled down to Locke versus Rousseau. The Lockean vision holds that man is the captain of his soul, that his rights come from God, the individual is sovereign, that the government exists because men of free will cede certain authorities to it in order to best protect  their lives and property.

The Rousseauian vision holds that the collective comes before the individual, our rights come from the group not from God, that the tribe is the source of all morality, and the general will is the ultimate religious construct and so therefore the needs — and aims — of the group come before those of the individual.

Fascism, like Communism, Socialism, Progressivism and all the other collectivist isms are all based on the Rousseauian vision of the group, the tribe, the class taking precedence over the individual.

I’ve also been writing for years that “transnational progressives” are trying to take the Progressive project to the world stage. This was the dream of HG Wells –originator of the phrase Liberal Fascism — who often proclaimed that FDR was the living embodiment of the “world brain.” It’s the aspiration of Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village, in which the logic of everything inside the village, nothing outside the village is eventually extended, in Clinton’s telling,  to the global village.

Bill Clinton’s modestly named “Global Clinton Initiative” is sold with the following sentiment from Bill Clinton, which appeared on the GCI’s website for years. “In my life now,” Clinton declares, “I am obsessed with only two things:  I don’t want anybody to die before their time, and I don’t want to see good people spend their energies without making a difference.”  (Historians may add that there was a third obsession — with his wife’s campaign for president).

Forget the gnostic hubris in the idea that Clinton could be part of anything that could determine when the right time to die for each of billions of humans might be, the idea that everyone — and I mean everyone — should be “making a difference” as defined by a handful of global priests is really a stunning, and to my mind frightening, ambition. Leave no child behind has escaped the paddock and is now galloping across the globe.

I bring all of this up because I found a wonderful quote from John Fonte’s essay in the new Claremont Review of Books. Fonte, the author of the phrase “transnational progressives,” reviews books by Strobe Talbott and Marc Plattner. In the Talbott book, it’s recounted how the top brass of the early Clinton administration proposed dealing with the end of the Cold War. Bill was pondering the “direction of history” (in what appears to be a basically Hegelian  way) when Al Gore chimed in. Gore explained:

Rousseau said the body politic is a moral being possessed of a will. He was thinking at the national level. We need to take it to the international one. We need to make the leap from nationhood to a sense of identity that is truly global, but that embodies Rousseau’s point.

Apparently Bill agreed, he just didn’t think he could sell that to the masses. So, in the meantime he was, in Talbott’s words, “careful not to broadcast” these beliefs.”

For a critique of Goldberg’s analysis you may want to read the Cranky Conservative.

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