(All page references: Rules for Radicals, Vintage Books, 1989)
Reading Alinsky in the age of Obama, we need to remember that in 1971 LBJ’s War on Poverty was only five years into its deconstruction of the urban family and transfer of millions of citizens from self-determination to government dependence.
So while Alinsky’s narrative has some glimmers of truth, after nearly 40 years of his ideas being stirred into the political melting pot — and now on parade in the White House — we can see the underlying flaw: that those claiming most passionately to be “for the people” use them as pawns for their own angst-driven ideology. And worse, that those driven to redistribute wealth to the “have-nots” end up as blind and selfish “haves” themselves, worse than the ones who came before (as Animal Farm describes in parable form.)
In chapter one, Alinsky says he has written Rules for Radicals to show how the have-nots can take from the haves. The book will show how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people. For nearly forty years, Alinsky’s radicals have been building those organizations, which today loom large as ACORN, SEIU, and Organizing for America.
I wonder what Alinsky would make of the fact that rather than giving power to the people, these organizations have become political juggernauts exploiting people to build political power for one political party. The Democrat Party has for decades built a solid voting block of citizens dependent on government, even as they continued to foment a “never enough” mentality and racial hostility to keep that block at their disposal.
Alinsky describes this strategy as “charitable handouts dressed up in ribbons of moral principle and ‘freedom,’ but with the price tag of unqualified political loyalty to us.” (p. 9)
The way the Democrat Party has treated blacks is shameful, denying their individual personhood by laying waste to black conservatives. They’ve replaced segregated water fountains with an even more sinister form of segregation: robbing blacks of individuality and intellectual freedom.
Alinsky’s goals churn with noble abstractions:
To realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, cooperation, equal and full opportunities for education, full and useful employment [?], health and the creation of those circumstances in which man can have the chance to live by values that give meaning to life.
But the underlying premise is far from noble: a man or group presuming to create “those circumstances in which man can have the chance to live by values that give meaning to life”? How to determine the circumstances? Who decides? And is our freedom to live meaningful lives a gift of the state or a gift of God?
America’s founders stated clearly that our rights were inalienable, endowed by our Creator. But Alinsky and his heirs have examined those rights and found them wanting. Only they have the requisite knowledge to lead the have-nots through a revolution — which Alinsky describes as never-ending — which will bring them to a state of meaningfulness that presumably he and those like him will approve.
In the politics of dialectical materialism, there is no room for individuals to judge for themselves whether their lives have meaning or value. It’s about dehumanizing people so they can be exploited as a group — Alinsky’s have-nots — to crusade for against the evil status quo.
So after decades of crusading, we now have a White House full of Alinskyites who represent, as Alinsky predicted — that’s right, the status quo. And Alinsky’s descriptions apply more to O and Co. now than those who are out of power:
In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of “the common good” and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed. In this world irrationality clings to man like his shadow so that the right things are done for the wrong reason [Obama’s flight to Dover AFB? -- BC] — afterwards we dredge up the right reasons for justification. It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies immoral [Town Hall protesters, FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck -- BC]; a world where “reconciliation” means that one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it, then we have reconciliation. (p. 13) [Boy, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? -- BC]
More Alinsky observations:
“I detest and fear dogma.” (p. 4) Huh?
“All of life is partisan.” (p. 10)
” … today organized religion is materially solvent and spiritually bankrupt.” (p. 14)
“In the world as it is there are no permanent happy or sad endings.” (p. 14) Well, duh.
“It is not a world of peace and beauty and dispassionate rationality, but as Henry James once wrote, ‘Life is, in fact a battle. Evil is insolent and strong.’” (p. 14)
For Alinsky, there is really only one way to make sense of the world:
Life seems to lack rhyme or reason or even a shadow of order unless we approach it with the key of converses. Seeing everything in its duality, we begin to get some dim clues to direction and what it’s all about.
While Alinsky refers in a footnote to the Chinese yin/yang complementarianism, his own philosophical view is through the prism of antagonism. While the yin/yang approach is a spiritual way of understanding the harmony of the universe, Alinsky’s model is a political template for the disharmony of the world — filtered down from Hegel through Marx — and refined for American radicals’ taste by a man who understood the importance of not letting a good crisis go to waste.
Alinsky bemoans the missteps of the radical leftists of the Chicago Seven/Weather Underground days, but hopes to harness their dissatisfaction to accomplish the goals his own generation of organizers did not finish. And according to his worldview, even a success breeds failure: the clean-up of the sordid Chicago described in Upton Sinclair’s Jungle led to a shift from poverty to middle class — but Alinsky claims the individuals so rescued by the noble hearts like his now contribute to the problem themselves as “part of our racist, discriminatory culture.”
The CIO fought the corporate power structure and won, but even in 1971, Alinsky saw that it had become “an entrenched member of the establishment.” Wonder what he would think now, with union thugs bussed to town hall meetings to create the illusion of more support for the current administration than there is.
My dad gave me a copy of Rules for Radicals when I was college age. I remember NOT reading it. My dad the ACLU lawyer thought Alinsky was fun.
Toward the end of his life, my dad rejected ACLU and even voted for Republicans occasionally. He hated Nixon and Clinton both.
Stay with it, Barbara.
alinsky is what a person driven by envy and hate looks like.
like an angry spoiled brat getting back at all those who he could not compete with ..you’d think I was describing that narcissist obama.
“An alarming revelation from Michelle Malkin:
On the National Education Association’s recommended reading list for teachers: Recommended Reading: Saul Alinsky, The American Organizer with — you guessed it — Rules for Radicals.”
Why alarming? This is what education is all about.
Saul Alinsky did not hesitate to slime and lie about his perceived enemies. In the introduction of Sanford Horwitt’s Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky-His Life And Legacy, we find about the morally disgusting he gave to radical college students:
“College student activists in the 1960s and 1970s sought out Alinsky for advice about tactics and strategy. On one such occasion in the spring of 1972 at Tulane University’s annual week-long series of events featuring leading public figures, students asked Alinsky to help plan a protest of a scheduled speech by George Bush, then U.S. representative to the United Nations, a speech likely to be a defense of the Nixon Administration’s Vietnam War policies. The students told Alinsky that they were thinking about picketing or disrupting Bush’s address. That’s the wrong approach, he rejoined — not very creative and besides, causing a disruption might get them thrown out of school. He told them, instead, to go hear the speech dressed up as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placards, reading ‘The K.K.K. supports Bush.’ And that is what the students did with very successful, attention-getting results.”
It is useful to familiarize oneself with the tactics of one’s enemies.
These tactics have been so effective that the opposition must occasionally dive in to the same slime pit to get results.
Sad, but true.
Alinksy is not an optimist. He’s a cynic, contemptuous of men and their motives.
On page 10 in my copy, Alinsky quotes Abraham Lincoln: “Be not deceived. Revolutions do not got backward.” Much as I like Lincoln, this is simply false. One need look no further than places like Chad, Somalia, and rural Afganistan and Pakistan where an Islamic revolution has taken those cultures back to the 6th century, not forward.
I find it fascinating that Alinsky promotes dualism. This allows him to set up false dichotomies–either/or situations (Haves/Have Nots, Doers/Do-Nothings) which betrays a lazy or immature intellect unable or unwilling to admit that life is not just black or white.
Alinksy creates a duality between his own views and Machiavelli’s The Prince. Both Alinsky and Machiavelli develop an art of political manipulation with the operative word being “manipulation.” Knowing that Rules for Radicals will be read primarily by middle class college kids and guilt-ridden liberals who do not qualify as Have-Nots, Alinksy creates a special class for them: the “Have-a-Little, Want Mores.” Appealing to their idealism and egos, Alinsky tells them that the “greatest leaders of change in past centuries (Moses…Martin Luther…Thomas Jefferson… Nicolai Lenin…M. Gandhi…)” belonged to the Have-a-Little, Want More class. If you follow Alinsky’s radical rules and become a tool of the revolution, you too can be next great world leader! [sarc off] Never mind that you’ll more likely end up just being a pawn and a useful idiot.
Alinksy’s list of “great leaders” is also revealing. He juxtaposes leaders of more “peaceful” religious, social and political revolutions (e.g., Moses, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi) against people who have instigated and/or led some of the world’s bloodiest revolutions (e.g., Robespierre, Lenin, Fidel Castro and Mao). This is a cynical attempt to sanitize the roles of these murders and thugs. Obama’s radical friends like the Mao-worshipping Anita Dunn have obviously drunk the Kool-Aid.
Alinksy’s statement “If the young were writing our Declaration of Independence, they would begin ‘When in the course of inhuman events….” is nicely echoed in Jeremiah Wright’s recent rephrasing of the National Anthem ” … land of the greed and home of the slaves.
Great insights, Anneke! Yes, that list immediately brought to mind Anite Dunn, whose two favorite philosophers are Mao and Mother Teresa.
For anyone who missed his recent speech in praise of Marxism, the Jeremiah Wright quote can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ceJ-RYb39c
I want to say great essay. However, one thing:
“The coming conservative revolution — because according to the Hegelian/Alinsky model, there will be another revolution to counteract this very imperfect one — will also be imperfect. But being rooted in Judeo-Christian values, it will be built not on cynical exploitation and enslavement of voting blocks, but on individual worth, freedom, and responsibility.”
I don’t know if you meant this to poke fun at the political manicheans or not, but I think part of the toxic views of Alinsky and other Marxists is their acceptance of history as completely deterministic a la Hegel. Man is a ultimately a pawn. Victory is inevitable, see, because history and the angels are always on their side. Everyone else is expendable and a slave, kind of like humanity as portrayed in “The Matrix.” That is the source of their optimism, the inevitability of things. A fatalism that’s only dark for their enemies. I think it unwise for conservatives to fall into the same mental trap.
The political religionists have no understanding of a personal God, and therefore deify history. It is a convenient way to justify corruption and barbarism, and it should be noted that this view has its roots in the errors, that is heresies, of Judeo-Christian culture. For an excellent book on the topic see Norman Cohn’s “The Pursuit of the Millennium.”
I look forward to reading more.
This is exactly why worldview IS important. Alinsky’s foundational beliefs are obvious: there is no God – and even if there is a God, he is impotent and indifferent. This belief compels him to recommend this “political vigilanteism”. The futility of his belief is stark and, to be honest, quite sad.
Throughout the 2008 election, Obama constantly distanced himself from Jeremiah Wrights teaching and relationship. Obama would often state that the many years he spent in Wright’s church were unimportant or inconsequential to the Presidential election. He made the same disassociations from Bill Ayers. I think it patently ridiculous and even deceptive to suggest that your background and worldview have no bearing on your political views. On the contrary, a candidate’s worldview (especially presidential candidate) is probably THE most important thing for the voting public to understand.
I don’t think we are going to be done by Thanksgiving.
The next chapter attempts to justify the means used by radicals by pointing out that means/ends differ according to your perspective.
Of course the ends don’t always justify the means. If you want someones land and they will not sell, you could kill them and maybe have better luck with their heirs. But those means could never be justified.
Alinsky tries to confuse the issue to the point that unjustifiable means can be justified. They cannot.
Isn’t that what King Ahab did?