What Change Will Obama Make? |
||||
| Home page Contact Us Blog (coming soon) | ||||
|
Saul AlinskyBarack Obama’s ties to William Ayres, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko speak volumes about his character, judgment and underlying political/cultural/religious views. But the intellectual underpinnings of Barack Obama’s thinking derive from one of the most radical and unprincipled figures in modern American history — Saul Alinsky. Saul Alinsky was born in Chicago in 1909 to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. He attended the University of Chicago in the 1920s, where, like many naïve young college students, he fell under the spell of communist ideology. But the young Alinsky was not one to leave his revolutionary fervor in the classroom. In the 1930s, he set about the task of organizing the Back of the Yards section of Chicago popularized in Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906). Thus, while Josef Stalin was systematically exterminating millions of innocents, Alinsky set about the task of bringing the revolution to the streets of Chicago. Leaving the University of Chicago before completing his graduate studies in sociology and criminology, Alinsky worked briefly as a state criminologist, then a labor organizer. In 1940, he founded the Industrial Areas Foundation as well as organizing Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood. He also associated with Chicago mob figures, including the notorious Frank Nitti, ostensibly to understand the root causes of poverty and criminal behavior. He went on to promote a network of community organizations across the country. In the midst of the Depression, when support for Communism peaked, Alinsky was most successful in organizing poor and ignorant immigrant communities who lacked the capacity to resist his rhetoric and tactics. In the ensuing years, Alinsky employed his tactics with labor unions, blacks and other economically marginalized groups, building resentment against the existing economic and political structure. His ire was directed not only at conservatives, but against liberals whose methods he considered to be passive and ineffective. Alinsky adopted an “in your face” approach which worked to circumvent the normal democratic process. It informed student radicals in the 1960s who sought to achieve their ends through violent protest and confrontation. It is the kind of approach that, today, defines the tactics of such groups as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a collation of community organizations who are doing more to corrupt the election process than any group in America’s history. ACORN and its allies, and the politicians who pander to them, are also at the root of the subprime lending meltdown which has created the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. With the coming of WWII, and the post-war economic boom, Alinsky remained forever mired in a Depression-era anti-capitalist mindset. As a Communist, Alinsky was far more concerned about income redistribution than in the expansion of the nation’s wealth. Had we followed the views of this “visionary” beginning in the 1930s, we would have achieved the kind of economic "success" enjoyed by the former Soviet Union. But, in Saul Alinsky’s mind, at least the misery would be shared. Alinsky’s life work was aimed not at helping individuals achieve economic independence and self-sufficiency, but in attempting to pull down the income producers. It was the politics of envy and resentment, not the politics of self-improvement. Essentially, Alinsky’s approach let his followers off the hook. Under his prescription, they could conveniently blame others for their status, rather than looking inward at their own shortcomings. It is an approach milked to best effect by the modern Democratic Party. Alinsky’s views on community organizing were laid out in his Rules for Radicals (1971), a book which has become a “bible” for left-wing organizers. It is an amoral tract which argues that the most effective means are those which achieve the desired ends. To achieve his socialist ends, Alinsky sought to raise the consciousness and discontent of the “disadvantaged” and turn it against the existing system. “Change,” the mantra adopted by Barack Obama, was originally Alinsky’s code word for creating a socialist revolution. He advocated using whatever tactics would bring about that result. He urged his supporters to adopt the style, appearance and manners of the middle class to increase their effectiveness. For Alinsky, acceptable tactics included hiding one’s true intentions, denying the truth, and lying. He taught his supporters to ridicule their opponents when they cannot refute their arguments with logic, reason, or sound argumentation. Alinsky’s elitist approach also informs a sizable segment of the modern organized labor movement, whose growth is almost entirely among the ranks of government employees. In fact, the ranks of union members in the private sector has declined precipitously since the era of the New Deal, and for good reason. Most American workers want nothing to do with organized labor, with its forced union dues, with its thuggery, and its intimidation tactics. And even after the Supreme’s Court’s Beck decision, organized labor continues to unlawfully extract dues money from its members to spend on big-government candidates with whom their members may disagree. Now, organized labor has abandoned the very concept of democracy itself, promoting a “card check” system in place of the secret ballot for organizing elections. Alinsky had a profound influence on an entire generation of leftists, including both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary, who had been radicalized during the course of her Wellesley College experience, wrote her senior thesis on Alinsky. As a disciple of Alinsky, Barack Obama was chosen to become a classroom instructor of groups associated with the Industrial Areas Foundation and the left-wing Gamaliel Foundation, including church groups immersed in the black liberation/social justice orbit. Obama’s decision to join Trinity United Church of Christ was very much an Alinsky-inspired move, a calculated attempt to insinuate himself into the community for the purpose of radicalizing it. Alinsky may be dead, but his influence lives on in the person of Barack Obama. Rules for Radicals is dedicated to one of Saul Alinsky’s heroes: Satan. Quoting himself, Alinsky says: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins -- or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer." Building on the tactical principles of Machiavelli, he suggests: "The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-nots on how to take it away." Alinsky, however, realized that political power could not be achieved by organizing only the poor and disaffected. The acquisition of power would require the assent of a sizable proportion of the white middle class. “That is where the power is,” he argued. In reality, Alinsky had a deep-seated contempt for the middle class and was interested in them only for their usefulness. He wrote: "Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and the way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt. They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the middle class majority." As a student and teacher of Alinsky’s methods, Barack Obama is attempting to use the middle class as a tool for advancing his socialist agenda. His promises of a “middle class tax cut” are calculated attempts to build a coalition large enough to create political change. Indeed, his “Change” mantra and accompanying ubiquitous signage is being used as a not-so-subtle form of mind control of the kind one might expect in a Soviet-style state where leaders are promoted as demigods and citizens are treated like children. We have it on the authority of Alinsky’s son, L. David Alinsky, who, in the Boston Globe (August 31, 2008), suggests that “Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.” Yes, Barack learned his lessons well from his Communist guru. The candidacy of Barack Obama presents the biggest threat to our democracy since its founding in 1787. Never before has a major political party nominated a candidate as extreme as Obama, despite his attempts to mask his real views. The current state of the Democratic Party calls forth that famous quote from Alexander Fraser Tytler: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." It is Barack Obama and the modern Democratic Party which has brought us to the brink of this precipice. More on Alinsky:
"The World as is should be"
|
|||
| Citizens For Sensible Change | ||||