Tag Archives: Saul Alinsky

OLD WHITE MEN AND THE FISCAL CLIFF

Posted on December 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

Will he or won’t he, no one but he knows; however, president Obama is very capable of letting the economy fall over the fiscal cliff.  After all, it would mainly affect old white men because it’s old white men who own stocks and engage in private enterprise.  The Republicans would be to blame for the economic collapse due to their obstructionist policies designed to return the country back to the horse and buggy days rather than progress Forward into Obama’s New America.

Remember, the modus operandi of a community organizer is to gain power by taking advantage of a crisis.  Then Saul Alinsky taught that, if you can’t find a crisis, make one.  Remember also the answer Obama gave when an interviewer suggested that the consequences of raising capital gains taxes might be a loss of revenue.  The simple answer would be “I don’t believe it would.” but that’s not what the president said.  He said that spreading the wealth around was worth the cost of a little lost revenue.  That reply revealed where his priorities lie.  Add a dash of “Never let a crisis go to waste” and you have a formula for a return to economic recession.

The free market system results in unequal prosperity but that beats socialism which leads to equal misery.  Or as another wise man said “You can’t make the poor rich by making the rich poor.”  It’s too bad the president doesn’t know that.

Post script: However, you can make the poor poorer by making the rich poorer.

Leave a comment

Posted in Economy, Political polemics

Tagged , , ,

RADICAL-IN-CHIEF – Chapter 10 – The Obama Administration

Posted on September 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

This post continues the series of chapter by chapter summations of the book Radical-In-Chief by Stanley Kurtz.

Chapter 10
The Obama Administration
The modern socialist movement in America has abandoned its open and militant ways of that were so evident in the sixties.  That approach might work to bring the sought after revolution and change in an impoverished nation but not in a democratic, free and prosperous country like the United States.  Socialist scholars like Saul Alinsky and Michael Harrington convinced other movement leaders a long time ago that the only workable strategy for transforming the United States into a Marxist socialist government is a combination of stealth and incremental advance.  That’s the course followed by Obama and his administration today.

Stealth was evident in the way the health care plan was handled.  The stakes were high because single payer health care would bring 16 % of the national economy under government control.  That was Obama’s real objective.  Every measure was taken to avoid scrutiny which is why there was such a rush to get the bill passed as rapidly as possible.  The “public option” originally proposed was designed to lead to single payer, government only, healthcare over time…  Obama denied the single payer objective claiming the public would always have a choice; the government would simply be offering an additional option in fair competition with private insurance companies.  It should be obvious to anyone that private industry must remain profitable to survive and cannot compete with government that, supported by taxpayers, can operate indefinitely at a loss.

Barack Obama ran his presidential election campaign on promises of a post-partisanship and an open style administration.  Once in office, it turned out to be quite the opposite.  He stirred controversy, for instance, by attacking the Fox News network, calling them illegitimate and attempting to bar them from press conferences to which the other networks were invited.  He attacked the Supreme Court while speaking as President of the United States before the entire Congress and to the entire nation by television.  These are not steps toward healing; they are overt acts of division.

Naive voters may think the increased partisan hostility is a failing.  But, to a trained community organizer it is an objective.  The generation of animosity and division is the ground work laid for the conditions that prepare people to accept, even demand change.

To a community organizer, polarization is a strategy.  Creating division is the first step in the path to transfer of power.

Leave a comment

Posted in Book Reviews

Tagged , , , , ,

RADICAL-IN-CHIEF Obama’s Organizing; the Hidden Story

Posted on August 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

This post continues the series of chapter summations of Radical-In-Chief by Stanley Kurtz.

The book takes the reader into the world of Barack Obama prior to his emergence as a national figure.  The Preface makes a bold opening statement.  The chapters that follow are evidential arguments that substantiate the statement.  The author’s documentation is exhaustive and the source attribution is impeccable.  The source notes alone number 1,119 and take up 63 pages.

*****

Chapter 4
Obama’s Organizing; the Hidden Story

Obama relates his various activities in Dreams from My Father without using the real names of the people and organizations with whom he associated and worked.  In the Preface to Dreams he explains “With the exception of my family and a few public figures, the names of most characters have been changed for the sake of their privacy.”  Neither did Obama disclose the full nature of the community organizing activities in which he was engaged.

Following his six month stint with Nader, Obama went to Chicago to work as a community organizer under the mentorship of Greg Galluzzo. Galluzzo’s group, called The United Neighborhood Organization (UNO), wanted better penetration into the black community to expand UNO which was mostly Mexican.  Responsibility for bringing in the black community was given to Barack.

UNO fought to have a new school be given the controversial name “Niños Heroes” in honor of 6 teenagers who died battling against the United States in 1847.  UNO singled out one of the school board members and besieged his home.  In another case, UNO opposed the building of a free medical clinic in a Hispanic neighborhood claiming the money should be spent on other causes.  Once again UNO picked one individual, this time an elected official as a target around which to personalize and polarize the issue.

UNO’s tactics are instantly recognizable as classic examples of  Saul Alinsky’s 13th rule for radicals “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Galluzzo realized “churches were the most significant pre-existing source of organized constituents.”  So  Obama was given the task of bringing in the churches but he wasn’t very successful at it.  One priest is quoted as having said “[The organizers] are not interested in us…All they want to do is take over. It’s a political thing. And that’s not what this group [of ministers ] here is about.” Obama wrote about the priest in Dreams from My Father.  He discredited the priest by describing him as a bigot and gave him the name “Rev. Smalls”.

In his autobiography, Obama tells of his work to get federal money to pay for a job creation center in Chicago.  The program was called the Mayor’s Employment and Training Center, shortened to “The MET”.  The center failed in its ostensible purpose of creating jobs and was closed after just three years.  However, it was deemed a success by its organizers for two reasons, 1) it brought in federal money and 2) the local politicians were able to tell the community they had done something for them.

Barack worked with a partner in organizing the MET project. For Dreams the partner is given the alias “Rafiq” and described by Barack as an anti-American, anti-white, anti-Semitic black militant.  While Obama works with Rafiq he distances himself from Rafiq’s radical views, but says he was willing to tolerate them if it helps “to change the rules of power.”  Obama preferred to bring the same change by working within the capitalistic system rather than by overthrowing it

Asbestos and landfill concerns make ready issues around which community agitation can easily be built. Obama was active in both.  A demonstration was organized and Chicago’s Housing Director was invited to address the crowd.  When he arrived he was  prevented from using a microphone.  The crowd began chanting and when they turned militant the Housing Director fled in his car.  Naturally the press covered it all.  Organizers have two objectives for such events, either to win their demands or to enrage the crowd.  The organizer’s demands were not met but when the official fled it enraged the crowd.  Therefore the event was deemed to be a success.

School reform.  Obama’s efforts at school reform never accomplished much, but it was not for lack of trying. He formed an organization called the Developing Communities Project (DCP) and this became the vehicle for the school reform program. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Father Pfleger and someone named Anne Hallett were influential with educators and other community leaders.  They all became members of the DCP School Advisory Board.  Hallett went on later to assist Bill Ayers in running his brainchild, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

The first goal of the coordinated school reform plan was to transfer the power over the school system from the teachers unions to community organizations like ACORN, UNO and Obama’s own DCP.  To that end, the DCP and Galluzzo’s UNO formed a coalition to strengthen their respective hands.  The UNO method of operation was right out of Alinsky’s book.  The coalition followed suit.  For example, the coalition leaders gathered a sizable group of supporters and showed up at the door of a Chicago Board of Education meeting when it was already in progress.  They demanded to be heard and were invited to present their plan.  However, the coalition refused to do so unless every member of their group were allowed into the already crowded room, a demand they knew full well was impossible to fulfill.  Thus they were able to claim the school board denied them a hearing.  Community agitated.  Community polarized.  Mission accomplished.

Leave a comment

Posted in Book Reviews

Tagged , , , , , , ,

THE CASE FOR INCIVILITY

Posted on July 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

When you are in a war fighting for the survival of your country and the enemy is aiming a gun at you it’s not the time to tip your had and say “pleased to meet you” before you shoot.  Morgan Taylor at American Thinker makes an excellent case for incivility.

The slash and burn Saul Alinsky tactics, that all knew were coming from the Obama campaign, have arrived with a vengeance.

Why then was the Romney campaign not better prepared, and ready with a withering counter-attack against someone with not only a woeful record in office but one with innumerable skeletons in his past that have only come to light in the past three years?  A personal biography of fabrications, radical beliefs and rank immaturity.

Perhaps the reason lies in the modern day Republican character flaw: civility.

Morgan’s argument is an old one, desperate times justify desperate means.  I agree, but I wouldn’t say Obama’s incivility requires incivility in return.  All that’s required in Obama’s case is no-holds-barred exclamation of the truth.  There is nothing uncivil about that.  But like the soldier fighting for his life on the battlefield there is no room for compassion.  Compassion can come later, after you have won the battle.

Former Governor John Sununu of New Hampshire says Romney is holding fire until he sees the whites of their eyes.  Voters are still watching ball games and feasting at family barbeques.  They have heard enough of the barbs and are turned off by all the political telephone calls.  When the Conventions start they will turn to politics.  That’s when the Romney campaign will get tough.  So says Sununu; I hope he is right.

Leave a comment

Posted in Opinion

Tagged , , ,

RULES for RADICALS by SAUL ALINSKY – THE WAY AHEAD

Posted on May 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

RULES for RADICALS by SAUL ALINSKY – THE WAY AHEAD

Today we add Commentary to the final chapter of Rules for Radical

If you have read the full review you have gained insights that few others have into an important part of the political world as it is played out in America today.  You will grasp the political element behind Republican ridicules of Obama and his teleprompter and Joe Biden’s antics.  It becomes clear why the Democrats came up with the slogan “Republican War on Women”.  You understand that compromise is difficult because it is a solution.  And solutions deprive one or both sides of an issue that could be used to their advantage as long as it remains unresolved.  Rules for Radicals is a simple book but a highly enlightening one when you see how the author’s teachings are manifested time and again in current events.

Synopsis of the chapter entitled The Way Ahead
The middle class is the largest group in America. The focus, now and in the future, must be on winning the middle class.

These “are a fearful people, who feel threatened on all sides:”. “Seeking some meaning in life, they turn to an extreme chauvinism and become defenders of the ‘American’ faith”. “They don’t know what, if anything, they can do. This is the job for today’s radical – to fan the embers of hopelessness into a flame to fight”.

Students who come to college from middle class backgrounds must be taught to reject their parent’s values and way of life as “materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt”. No one is better equipped to organize, agitate and convert the middle class than those who have escaped it.

Commentary
How could this college professor possibly have developed such a dismally incorrect perception of the vast middle class? Psychological projection would account for it. According to Sigmund Freud, projection is a defense mechanism where a person “projects” their own unwanted motivations, desires, fears, feelings and opinions onto someone else – if most everyone else feels and acts with the same fears and emotions that I have then there can be nothing wrong with me.

Also note the lightly veiled contempt for American ideals expressed by adding cynical quotation marks around the words American faith. The author has no faith in this, his country. In fact, disdain for America is a theme that recurs again and again throughout the book. It should not be surprising to see the same attitude toward America coming from Barack and Michelle Obama because it was the Alinsky model of community organizing that Barack followed and briefly taught to ACORN activists in Chicago.

There many things very sad about this closing chapter. The author ends his work with the same hopeless view that he began it. The professor’s only vision for the way ahead is to the drag America’s youth down into the same hellhole he has created for himself. Presumably, then they would fight for…, fight for what? The author never says. I submit they would fight for those very things they so soundly rejected. But they would fight the opportunity to take them, not for the opportunity to earn them.

Leave a comment

Posted in Opinion

Tagged , ,

RULES for RADICALS by SAUL ALINSKY – THE GENESIS OF TACTIC PROXY

Posted on May 21, 2012 | 2 comments

Continuing with the chapter by chapter series on Rules for Radicals, today we add Comments about the chapter called The Genesis of Tactic Proxy.

Synopsis of the chapter entitled The Genesis of Tactic Proxy
“America’s corporations are a spiritual slum, and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society.”

The title of this chapter is derived from the idea of using corporate shareholder proxies to achieve your own goals.  Corporate stockholders have certain rights as to how the corporation conducts its affairs.  These rights are exercised by voting and the voting document is called a proxy. The tactic involves persuading colleges, foundations and churches to vote their proxies in solidarity according to the organizer’s plan of attack.

Alinsky stumbled upon this idea when talking to three business administration college students who were opposed to the Vietnam war, but “recoiled from such actions as carrying the Viet Cong flag or burning their draft cards.  However, they did believe in using proxies.”

The genesis of the proxy tactic is an example of why an organizer should hang loose. When a door opens unexpectedly, go through it. Be not concerned that it takes you off the path you had planned. Do not fall into the trap set by “our alleged educational system” that teaches “order, logic, rational thought, direction and purpose”. These ideas are invalid because they are too rigid. The organizer must be ready to go where the flow leads him.

Commentary
The author’s statement at the top of this awkwardly named chapter only needs minor editing to be correct.  “America’s corporations Democratic leaders are a spiritual slum, and their Obama’s arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society.”

Saul Alinsky must have been quite proud of himself when he stumbled on this idea.  Here he was, using capitalist corporate procedures to promote a Marxist cause.  He didn’t realize it was never destined to work.  Not many corporate shareholders are going to join in solidarity with any radical causes, let alone socialist ones.

2 Comments

Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy, Political polemics

Tagged , , ,

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.

-o 0 o-

1 Comment

Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy

Tagged , , , , , , ,

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy

Tagged , , , ,

RULES for RADICALS by SAUL ALINSKY, FIRST IN A SERIES

Posted on March 26, 2012 | 1 comment

This Post begins a series on the book Rules for Radicals by Professor Saul Alinsky.  During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama proudly proclaimed his experience as a community organizer.  The professor is known as the Godfather of community organizing.  Hillary Clinton wrote her Wellesley College thesis on the life and work of Saul Alinsky.  Chris Matthews stated on his MSNBC Hardball program that Saul Alinsky is one of his heroes.  Who is this man Alinsky and what did he teach?  Let’s go to the book and find out.

Prologue
At the front of the book, even before the Prologue, Alinsky writes a brief tribute to Lucifer the devil.  Alinsky admires the devil, holding him in high regard because he succeeded in winning a kingdom for himself.

The author’s prologue is a litany of misery. In his view, the world is a thoroughly miserable place. The prologue is replete with phrases like these — “the outcome of hopelessness and despair is morbidity” and “there is a feeling of death overhanging the nation”.

Alinsky correctly cites Leftist radicals as completely rejecting the common “goals of a well paid job, suburban home, automobile … and everything else that means success” to others.

Young radicals are unhappy because they see only the faults in the world, and no purpose in life. They are in a constant search for themselves. The middle class and affluent are mired in the likes of divorce and disillusionment. The whole world is such a discouraging place that anyone who is happy in it must be blind.

Alinsky seldom speaks about changing America. He talks mostly about changing the World.  His vision of ubiquitous despondency transcends domestic locus.

Revolution with some violence is likely to be required in order to wrest the power of government from those now in control. But revolution must come at the end of the process, not at the beginning. A successful transition of government must be directed like a three act play –  first set the stage, then develop the plot, and finally conclude with the main event. The function and duty of a community organizer is to direct this process.

Act I is join the crowd, gain respect, acceptance and legitimacy.
Act II development, spread discontent, build support for Act III
Act III is the revolution itself, which of necessity will be violent.

Alinsky encourages radicals to fight but discourages those who are impatient and want to go directly to Act III.  Starting at the conclusion is ineffective and it will never bring success.

Commentary on the Prologue
There can be no doubt about the fact that we are dealing with a very morose individual.  Midway through the Prologue it would seem to be a great waste of time to read any further.  Just then he puts forth the analogy of the Three Act Play and suddenly begins to make sense.

Act I.  Join the crowd, gain respect, acceptance and legitimacy.  Of course!  We live in a democracy with a prosperous and sizable middle class.  Such a large segment of people are not going to surrender the fruits of their labor voluntarily.  The goal of complete transformation with redistribution of wealth must begin with stealth.

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.”  A statement generally accredited to Norman Thomas, six time candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket.

Obama completed Act I with his election.

Act II is development, spread discontent, build support for Act III.  Contented people do not cry for change.  Therefore discontent must be sown and spread across as wide a spectrum of the population as possible.  We see this today in class warfare by which Obama pits American against American.  The rich, the banks, the oil companies are all made out to be enemies of the people, every one, without exception.  Even riling up the Catholic Church has its advantages providing it does not cost Obama the election.  To solve that, the whole contraception issue is laid on the opposition.

Act II is where we are now.  Understanding what Act II is all about answers a lot of questions.  For one, harmony is not an objective, quite the opposite.  Later in the book, Alinsky tells the community organizer that the establishment will label him an agitator and they will be correct.  That is the job of a community organizer.  Act II is about fomenting unrest and building passion for change.  It is not possible to completely transform a democratic government when most of the people are content and united.

Act III is the revolution itself and Alinksy says violence is inevitable because both power and possessions will need to be wrested from those who have them and they will fight violently to keep it.  There is now general agreement among Socialist leaders today on Acts I and II but they are split on Act III.  Francis Scott Piven argues for the violent revolution option and the sooner the better.  The other school argues that attempts to overthrow the standing government by militant violence are destined to fail.  But with stealth and patience working within the democratic process America can be led to succumb into a socialist state at the ballot box.

Alinsky is basically in the non-militant camp but with the caveat that some violence will be unavoidable at the very end to complete the transformation.

1 Comment

Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy

Tagged , , , , , ,

MORE ON THE CATHOLIC FLAP

Posted on February 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

Professor Paul Rahe minces no words in writing More Than a Touch of Malice, an article you can read at Ricochet.  He adds his wisdom to the argument that, far from committing a gaffe, Obama’s riling of the Catholic Church was a deliberate and well thought out step taken to define and solidify his base.

In 2008, when he first ran for the Presidency, Barack Obama posed as a moderate most of the time.  This time, he is openly running as a radical. His aim is to win a mandate for the fundamental transformation of the United States that he promised in passing on the eve of his election four years ago and that he promised again when he called his administration The New Foundation.

In the process, he intends to reshape the Democratic coalition – to bring the old hypocrisy to an end, to eliminate those who stand in the way of the final consolidation of the administrative entitlements state, to drive out the faithful Catholics once and for all, to jettison the white working class, and to build a new American regime on a coalition of  highly educated upper-middle class whites, feminists, African-Americans, Hispanics, illegal immigrants, and those belonging to the public-sector unions. To Americans outside this coalition, he intends to show no mercy.

Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, taught that transforming a nation with a prosperous middle class like the United States into a Marxist socialist society could only be accomplished if approached as a three act play:

Act I – join the crowd, gain respect, acceptance and legitimacy.

Act II – develop the theme, spread discontent, and build a following for Act III

Act III – the act of final transformation which Alinsky says will of necessity, be violent.

Act I is complete.  The Occupy movement opened Act II; there is ample discontent.  It only needs to be channeled, fanned and kept alive.  “Those damned Regressives, now they want to take away your sex life”.  That will do it.  That’s the Catholic flap.

Act III…, there will be no Act III; we will see to that in November.  But if there were, the curtain would open in January with an Inauguration Proclamation declaring, “I, Barack Hussein Obama, am the way, the truth and the light; there is no way out of this mess but by me”.  And America would be on the road to becoming a Marxist Socialist society.

Bob B

Leave a comment

Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy, Political polemics

Tagged , , , , , ,