But the ride’s not over:
The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds, he becomes a founding father. (p. 34)
The tenth rule of ethics of means and ends is that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments. (p. 36)
Consider abortion, which was legalized ostensibly to save lives from back alley failures, but which has grown into a highly profitable industry with 1.5 million abortions per year. Instead of appealing to women to behave more responsibly or creating a more welcoming world for “unwanted” children, feminists have continued to cloak this tragic outcome in “moral garments” — with abortion treated as a religious sacrament, clinics as modern day temples surrounded by sacred space, and abortionists as high priests mediating between women and unwanted motherhood.
In the Rules for Radicals worldview, nothing is sacred. Even an icon like Gandhi is suspect — and Alinsky takes him down from his pedestal in five pages (p. 37-42).
He pushes Gandhi into his tenth rule of ethics template — a revolutionary who had to work with the material at hand while giving it a moral spin. According to Alinsky, Gandhi recognized that the Indian masses, having been emasculated by British colonialism, were incapable of any kind of action. Gandhi’s concept of nonviolent confrontation was therefore simply a brilliant political maneuver. Alinsky has no doubt that if he had had other means at his disposal — i.e., arms and a citizenry ready to use them — Gandhi would not have hesitated:
To oversimplify, what Gandhi did was to say, “Look, you are all sitting there anyway — so instead of sitting over there, why don’t you sit over here and while you’re sitting, say ‘Independence Now!’” (42).
While Alinsky eschews morals, he scoffs at those — like Machiavelli — who would purposely disavail themselves of this useful disguise:
All great leaders, including Churchill, Gandhi, Lincoln and Jefferson, always invoked “moral principles” to cover naked self-interest in the clothing of “freedom,” “equality of mankind,” “a law higher than manmade law,” and so on. (p. 44)
Alinsky does not believe that some individuals may be motivated by concern for others more than by concern for self:
The myth of altruism as a motivating factor in our behavior could arise and survive only in a society bundled in the sterile gauze of New England puritanism and Protestant morality and tied together with ribbons of Madison Avenue public relations. It is one of the classic American fairy tales. (p. 53)
Self-interest at a national level means that our allies are chosen not on the basis of ideology but on their usefulness to us at any particular time:
We do not care what kind of communist you are so long as you do not threaten our self-interest. (p. 57)
One certainly sees that in Obama’s kowtowing to China, ignoring their human rights violations, and even going so far as to snub Tibet so as not to displease the Chinese.
One way to read Alinsky in 2009 is with one eye on the test and another on a mental news feed comparing O & Co. to their playbook. Where are they true to the Rules and where have they pushed the envelope so far left as to become the repressive regime they thought they were going to overthrow?
A few quotes to consider:
Control of power is based on compromise in our Congress and among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. A society devoid of compromise is totalitarian. (p. 59)
Speaking of how leaders appear to partisans:
To one side he is a demigod, to the other a demagogue. (p. 60)
But it does seem, doesn’t it, that the right tends not to make messiahs of its untested leaders?
On the importance of ego:
If he or she does not have that complete self-confidence (or call it ego) that he can win, then the battle is lost before it is even begun.
“Ego,” as we understand and use it here, cannot be even vaguely confused with, nor is it remotely related to egotism. No would-be organizer afflicted with egotism can avoid hiding this from the people with whom he is working, no contrived humility can conceal it. Nothing antagonizes people and alienates them from a would-be organizer more than the revealing lashes of arrogance, vanity, impatience and contempt of a personal egotism. …
An infection of egotism would make it impossible to respect the dignity of individuals, to understand people, or to strive to develop the other elements that make up the ideal organizer. Egotism is mainly a defensive reaction of feelings of personal inadequacy — ego is a positive conviction and belief in one’s ability, with no need for egotistical behavior. (p. 60-61)
I’m wondering if Alinsky would find this to be a fatal flaw in his star pupil, who played from the Alinsky deck but appears to be coming up short in closing his ideological deal with the American community. The crown is slipping. (Must read for the week: “Thank you former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush.”) Obama’s “cool” factor — so highly touted before the election — has turned out to look more like cold contempt.
What would Alinsky think?
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Next up: The Education of an Organizer and Communication (Chapters 4 and 5, pages 63-97)
Another Tilt-A-Whirl moment: “To me ethics is doing what is best for the most.” (p. 33)
This begs the questions “how do you define what’s ‘best’” and “who are ‘the most’” and finally “who’s qualified to decide the answers to either?” Living in the world of instant polling, we see daily instances in which numbers can be sliced and diced in a myriad ways to prove any number of points. This is open-ended utilitarianism. Most Trekkies will recognize it in the statement “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
“You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.” (p. 10) Wow. Although Alinksy makes mention of social contracts vis-a-vis Rousseau, I would never want to live in the state of chaos that he advocates. I would never want to live in a world where using people (be they Haves, Have-Nots, et al) may freely be treated as a means to any end. In such a world, you could never trust anyone else. In every encounter, every transaction, you would have to ask yourself what the other person’s ends are and how you might be the means to those ends. I’ve had this kind of dealings with so-called former radicals and Alinksyite wannabes. I’ve heard them talk about goodness and compassion and tolerance to the oppressed and then watched them cold-heartedly and dispassionately step on those lower down the social scale then themselves. I’ve been on the receiving end of the brilliant, important achievers upon whom society supposedly hinges: you’re useful to them as long as you advance their careers, their reputations and their goals. Then, they chew you up and spit you out. In the end, you may be beaten with the same stick that you used to beat the Haves, just after the Radicals close the doors of dissent and revolution to you that they allowed themselves (“Eight months after securing independence, the Indian National Congress outlawed passive resistance and mad it a crime.” p. 43). Alinsky may as well be asking us to regress back to Hobbes’ state of nature in which life is “nasty, brutish and short.”
You mentioned “aminal farm”. The one difference is that Orwell was AGAINST totlalitarian governments, both his two largest sellers, ANIMAL FARM and FUTURE SHOCK were best noted for there criticism and red flags against totalitarian governments. Lets not forget, ANIMAL FARM was banned in both the Soviet Union and Red China for over 30 years, MAO TSE TUNG himself had apparently read ANIMAL FARM early in his tenure as leader of RED CHINA and decided this book for “too dangerous” for intellectuals and peasents to read. Saul the Red was the exact opposite of Orwell. Dont forget who originally brought Alinksy to Chicago-Frank “the Enforcer” Nitti-Al Capones sucessor as head of the Chicago crime syndicate. Lots of similarities between the mob and the commies. Only difference is the mob is mostly a crooked business. Alinsky was a meglomanical nut. So are both Obama and Hildebeast.
All I see are a new group of thugs seeking to take as much power as the can, by any means possible. They feel they need not answer to anyone for their actions. they feel they can tell you its for your own good, when in fact, it is for “their” own good & the good of any who support them. The supporters get help & priveledges, so long as they serve a useful purpose. Once they do not or once they actually ask a question or voice an opinion not in line with the new power elite, those supporters become the enemy. Health insurers tried to cooperate at first. Then the realized they had been duped & Obama planned to destroy them. Then they rebelled. Prior to rebellion, Obama & co. said the industry was working with them. Once they rebelled, they became the expendable enemy & taker of obscene profits. Profits for free market companies are bad. Profits for those who are in accord with the new power elite, are good.
Its moral relativism at its most extreme & despicable. Morals, do no harm to others & do not take from others unfairly. Obama takes, & then justifies it by saying he is helping others. All the while, padding his own nest & the nests of those who cooperate. Soros & Gore are cooperators. They will profit. Any who agree to redistribute are good, all others are bad. Yet the haves will not share & all Obama really wants is to install himself & his allies as the haves while taking from those who currently have, by using the have nots. He talks them into believing he will share the have bundle. In fact he will…. but only to a small extent. After that, it belongs to the new haves who now have, the power!
“In a political world corrupted by Orwellian doublespeak — net neutrality, affirmative action, health care reform — Alinsky’s cut-to-the-chase chapter three, “A Word About Words,” is refreshingly direct. You may not agree with his principles, but at least you know what they are.”
How right you are. You are one of the few writers at this blog (maybe the only one) and most other traditional western-affirming websites who actually point out (i.e., deconstruct, in progressive intellectual-speak) the weird stylistic contrivances of the left. Try reading discussions at, or better yet participating in, Wikipedia for real mind-bending, word-torturing sentence construction. The innuendo, the double talk, the patient, soul-destroying misunderstanding of straightforward argument – there is nothing better.
Saul Alinsky claimed that he was wary of dogmatism of any kind including Marxism. Fervent Communists were considered reactionary if not downright scary. Alinsky seemed to perceive himself as nothing more that an effective activist committed to democratic principles. He apparently failed to realize that institutionalized class warfare was inherent nihilistic. Alinsky perhaps unwittingly embraced the Marxist doctrine that the established order must be eradicated. A beautiful utopia would supposedly arise from the ruins—although nobody bothered to figure out what it might look like. Alinsky simply took it for granted that anything would be better than the present regime.
The things that we can use from Alinsky’s book are; especially, the advice about words – after all, Sarah Palin shot across the Dem’s bow when she didn’t mince words, but called it like she saw it: “Death Panels”. Cut right to the chase, and take no prisoners.
That’s why I use words like “Traitor”, “Socialist”, “Marxist”, “Narcissist”, “Spoiled Child”, etc., whenever I talk about the current resident of the White House.
I also found it quite interesting (and I can’t remember where in the book that I saw it) that Alinsky acknowledged that there is a distinct difference between an effective leader and an effective community organizer, and that if a person was one, BY DEFINITION they could not be the other. I have a feeling that he would no doubt have felt that Mr. Obama was not a good choice to be the President.
In the chapter on the word “power”, I found it interesting that Saul says:”Mankind has progressed only through learning how to develop and organize instruments of power in order to achieve order, security, morality, and civilized life itself ….”. Order? Security? MORALITY???—- Oh, he wants to re-order society, keep that new society safe, and impose a new morality. He obviously was channelling Robespierre much more than Tom Paine.
“To me ethics is doing what is best for the most. (p. 33)” … and whose value system do you use to determine best? Does the new “Power” of the former radicals now allow them to determine what is best for who? Sounds like new “elitists” who “know better” will tell us what to do, and it will be, according to Alinsky,in their own self interest. Fas⋅cism –noun — a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism. hmmm sounds familiar. (Think-National Socialist German Workers Party)
“Morality, so called, becomes the continuum as self-interest shifts. (p.55)” …. so morality is always secondary to self-interest? Self-interest based morality? John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. With Alinsky’s atheism/God=Satan=Self-interest belief system anything goes! This really does come down to a neanderthal “whoever has the biggest club sets and enforces the rules” belief system. Alinsky and followers want to gain power in order to enforce their own morality based on their ideas of what is good for them and for us. They work the system of our republic to gain power to use how they want. The framers of our constitution feared the eventuality of these a-moral people using our system and eventuating its failure. With Obama et. al., we seem to be going there fast.