One way to make Axelrod understand is to start using Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” as our playbook.
One of Alinsky’s tactics was Rule #4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If a corporation promised to answer each and every letter written to it, was to swamp the corporation with letters – thousands of them. There would be no way the company could keep its promise.
Obama has promised Transparency. We need to swamp him with requests for same. There will be no way he can keep his promise…oh, wait…he’s already broken that one, hasn’t he?
Here are the book’s opening lines: “There’s another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevski 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 (in 1971 – probably up to that $250,000 level by now). 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.”
What Axelrod doesn’t understand, I don’t think, is that those working class (“blue collar, hard hats”) did not form alliances with the community workers.
What Axelrod doesn’t understand is that he, and Obama, have failed to communicate with them (us).
What Axelrod doesn’t understand is that we have not, and will not, form alliances with him, or Obama.
What Axelrod really doesn’t understand is WHY.
He doesn’t understand that “grassroots” grow on both sides of the fence. He thought community organization was proprietary to the Left. What Axelrod doesn’t understand is that we get what he is trying to do.
What he doesn’t understand is WHY.
Why are we not thankful and appreciative of all that he, and Obama, are trying to do for us? Why do we refuse to believe their falsehoods, repeated ad infinitum, until we think they must be true? Why won’t we fall in lockstep with their “programs” for harmony (unthinking capitulatition) and unity (obedient acquiesence)?
Why? Because, unlike what community organizers like Obama and Alinsky failed to take into account, is that the community they are trying to organize is made up of individuals. Individuals who know how to think for themselves.
Alinsky also states: “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. 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.”
What do we, as individuals, believe our world should be? Should it be one where ivory-tower “intellectuals” believe they know what is best for us, and try to force us to adhere to their vision?
Or do we believe that is one in which each and every individual is FREE to chart his or her own course in life?
Rule #8 in “Rules for Radicals” is: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Probably the most important one for anyone who knows where this country is headed under Obama’s rule.
Sun Tzu said “Know your enemy.” Each and every reader of Roger Kimball’s post should familiarize themselves with Alinsky’s book. No need to buy it; there are several online sites where you can read portions of it for free. The rules can be read here: http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/8925/alinsky.htm
Forewarned is forearmed.
