In case there was any doubt that there is a deliberate tactic behind the windstorm of accusations against Sarah Palin, one need only refer to the Democratic playbook, “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky.
You may not have heard of Alinsky. A radical born in Chicago in 1909, Alinsky is the granddaddy of the extremist, anti-American left. Hillary Clinton wrote her thesis on Alinsky. Barack Obama considers himself a student of Alinsky’s teachings.
After a lifetime of involvement with “social groups,” as most fawning bios put it, Alinsky wrote his book “Rules for Radicals,” published in 1971, a year before his death.
In the book, he gives 13 (note the number) rules for destroying opposition to any crazy proposal.
I won’t bore you with the full list, but among them is Rule 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” In that rule, Alinsky counsels wannabe radicals to simply flood the opposition with unending attacks until they give up in frustration. Other rules advise humiliating your opposition; attacking people, not institutions; how to stir up violence; using irrelevant arguments to keep opponents off-balance; etc.
It literally is the Democratic playbook, used by Obama, Hillary, the liberal media and every Democratic Party socialist and self-described “reformer” out there.
Alinsky summed up what has become the real core of liberal belief (emphasis mine):
“There’s another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families – more than seventy million people – whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don’t encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let’s not let it happen by default.”
He actually makes some good points about citizen involvement, but whatever good intent may have been behind the writing of the book is obliterated by the destructive tactics it counsels and has inspired over the years. In short, there’s something seriously rotten at the heart of “Rules for Radicals,” and it has infected thousands of groups, from Greenpeace to Jews for Jesus.
Personally, I think the question of what’s wrong with Alinsky’s philosophy is answered in the beginning of the book. Immediately following the dedication “To Irene,” there is a page in the original printing that includes a quote from Rabbi Hillel, followed by a quote from Thomas Paine. The third quote on the page is from Alinsky himself:
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgement 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.” –Saul Alinsky
The current entry in Wikipedia fawningly dismisses this as an example of Alinsky’s “dark, mischievous sense of humor,” which is probably easy to do for the secular anti-God crowd. For most intelligent people, I think the fact that a book central to liberal thinking is dedicated to the devil should be deeply disturbing and revealing.
But that is the foundation set for Alinsky’s “science of revolution.” And it develops accordingly, because Alinsky makes it obvious that his book is not about the good of one’s country or the betterment of mankind, it is about power:
“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.”
… “My aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and how to use it.”
Power corrupts. And if you’ve ever wondered why conservatives are so opposed to and by liberals, and why we conservatives believe liberalism unchecked will destroy this country, you need look no further than Alinsky.
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Follow the trend, if this method of tearing down the opponent has been used in this campaign, both camps have read the manual well. The real issue is that Palin’s daughter is pregnant for an 18 year old, and they say they will watch over America better than inexperienced Obama. Whatever else will she let slip in her watch! Obama got skinned over his pastor’s comment, Palin cannot but get some hiding for this lapse. Now, can we get back to the more lasting issues?
There’s a key difference, however, in that I’ve never heard anyone on the right touting Saul Alinsky as a role model, whereas he is virtually the handbook for the left. Right-wing radicals look to people like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Jesus. Left-wing radicals look to Saul Alinsky, who dedicated his work to Lucifer. The difference is pretty clear.
As for what you call “the real issue,” Obama’s mother was 18 when she got pregnant, if memory serves. How do you know Bristol Palin didn’t want to start a family, a la Mama Obama’s example? How do you know she wasn’t following liberals’ sex-ed advice and using condoms? (They fail.)
I do agree we should get back to the issues, like the fact that Sarah Palin is clearly a believer in the sanctity of human life, because she chose to have her son, who has Down syndrome, and she is supporting her daughter marrying the father of her child and raising the baby. Obama, on the other hand, has said he views babies as a punishment, and he supports killing babies, born alive, who survive abortions. If Obama can’t be trusted to protect a helpless infant, how can we trust him to protect an entire country?
Back at ya!
Comment by chumaokoye — September 3, 2008 @ 11:40 am
How can you note on the one hand that the book is dedicated to Irene (his wife as it happens), but then say it’s dedicated to Lucifer?
For that matter, how is the “Lucifer” quote a dedication at all?
Alinsky says there that he “acknowledges” Lucifer. Did Christ not also acknowledge Lucifer? (Luke 4:5-8). But look how Christ did that. Clearly, when Alinsky makes his acknowledgment “over-the-shoulder”, it’s because he feels community organizers have Lucifer behind them. Should this be interpreted as “backing” from Lucifer, however? Not likely, given the immediately preceding quote from Thomas Paine: “Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul ….” No, clearly, in context: Alinsky’s telling budding community organizers that they’ll be fighting the temptations of power all the time, rather as Christ did, when he said, “get thee behind me, Satan” after being offered an earthly kingdom.
One can fault Alinsky for being pretentious here, one can say that Alinsky is framing the community organizer as a Christlike figure, virtuous, a force for good, but still susceptible to the temptations of power. After all, a lot of community organizers have had messiah complexes, and martyr complexes, and very likely they will continue to suffer those neuroses. But I don’t see how you can call this “Lucifer acknowledgment” a “dedication” of the book to Lucifer when it’s already dedicated to Alinsky’s wife, and when the immediately preceding quote (from Thomas Paine) speaks of how he couldn’t sell his soul.
Alinsky was certainly aware that community organizing could fall prey to corruption. In fact he spoke openly in interviews of the virtual certainty of such corruption. But he didn’t despise that corruption any less because of his belief in its inevitability. And it is simply implausible that he would earnestly dedicate a book to Lucifer considering how frequently he had worked with faith-based community groups.
I think too many people are seeing what they want to see in this “Lucifer acknowledgment”. You’re seeing more than most — at least you noticed who the book is actually dedicated to. But you don’t notice (much less remark on) how the Rabbi Hillel and Thomas Paine quotes set the context, and you confusingly contradict yourself, saying on the one hand that it’s dedicated to Irene, on the other, to Lucifer.
You’d be better off, I think, going after Alinsky for his situational ethics. I must say, however, given his background in a Chicago run more by Al Capone than anyone else, he might be forgiven for thinking that one might as well attack people rather than institutions, given how corrupt virtually ALL of the institutions were at the time. When you have judges attending the funerals of gangsters, the problem isn’t constitutional. The problem is that you’ve got some corrupt judges. When Christ overturned the moneychangers’ tables in the temple, he wasn’t attacking an institution, he was attacking bad people who had infected the institution. You might not like Alinsky’s rules, but at least he had some.
Comparing Alinsky to Jesus? Words fail.
But I’ll try to clarify any way.
How is that quotation (from Alinsky himself, no one else) a dedication to Lucifer, you ask? And is it not similar to Jesus “acknowledging” Satan?
Here’s Alinsky: “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgement 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.” –Saul Alinsky”
Obviously, Alinsky is designating God (and heaven, etc.) as the “establishment,” which his entire book gives instructions on destroying. So for Alinsky, God and everything considered by other people holy is “evil” from his perspective. Also, the tone of the quote is clearly admiring of Lucifer’s nature and achievement, from describing him as “the first radical” (i.e., the model for the heroes of Alinsky’s book) to praising his achievement’s efficacy (and therefore usefulness to followers of his rules).
Now here’s the Bible passage you cite: “The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
Jesus is only “acknowledging” Satan in the sense that the devil is standing there talking to him. Jesus rejects the devil and his offer of power utterly.
Alinsky, on the other hand, is all about power, as he makes clear in his book. Had he been in Jesus’ situation, he clearly would have said “Hell, yeah!” then promptly kissed the devil’s butt.
You say Alinsky’s targeting individuals instead of institutions is comparable to Jesus chasing out the money lenders from the temple, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Jesus targeted the money lenders because they were engaged in blasphemy, their practice at the temple was evil and he sought to purify the temple (the institution). Alinsky counsels targeting individuals because they stand in the way of acquiring power, they are vulnerable, and he wants to destroy or take control of the institution.
As for the supposed contradiction of dedicating the book to Irene and Lucifer, it’s clear he did both. The quotes from Hillel and Paine are from other people (both of whom would probably be alarmed that such a person as Alinsky was misusing their words). But the Lucifer admiration is all Alinsky. He’s not telling his followers to avoid the temptations of power, he’s telling them to roll in it, eat it, drink it, breathe it. Power is the beginning and end of Alinsky’s teachings. The Lucifer quote just clarifies what the man was really all about. The fact that he had rules does nothing to absolve his character. Hitler had rules. Stalin had rules. Mao had rules. And so does Alinsky, and so does the Democratic Party.
People who accept Alinsky’s teachings into their lives ignore the dedication to Lucifer at their own peril.
Comment by Michael Turner — October 29, 2008 @ 8:05 pm