Our erudite host is pointing us in an interesting direction.
As he says, the Alinsky and “New Left” ideas were critiques of the Leninist heresies of Marxism. The very name, “Bolshevik,” or majoritarian, has always been a fraud. Having won one party congress vote in 1896, these “bolsheviks” created the rationalization of the vanguard of the working class to explain the uncomfortable truth that actual workers have always been more interested in immediate quality of life than serving a glorious cause. This non-majority majoritarianism then leads to the doctrine of ends justifying means as deceit piles upon delusion. Eventually, the central tenet of Marx – the role of economic determinism as the impersonal engine of history – becomes subsumed in the cult of personality. The “Great Man” theory of history on steroids.
Now, we see Senator Barack Obama presented as the indispensible one, the vessel of grace, the hope of our age.
Wretchard is absolutely right, Obama is a nullification of Alinsky’s philosophy. (Perhaps this is why we haven’t seen a single testimonial from a beneficiary of Obama’s community organizer days. His tenure at the Annenberg Challenge might actually stand in for his entire do-gooding career.)