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Alinsky's Rules Equal Obama's Kind Of Change
By Mychal Massie, For The Bulletin
Saul Alinsky, the Marxist mentor of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called Satan the “first [successful] radical [organizer] known to man.” While it’s interesting that Mr. Alinsky equated successful community organizing strategies with the devil, his statement is about more than “if the shoe fits.”
Satan’s gift is his ability to foment dissatisfaction, discontent, and discord. His words to Eve were, “hath God said,” were intended to stir doubt and derision. His later words, “for God doth know,” it can be said, were intended to stir positional resentment, i.e., class envy and contempt for authority.
That is the job of the successful community organizer. “An organizer,” Mr. Alinsky wrote, “must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent … the job then is getting the people to … act — to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the [existing] patterns and change them … in a word, [the community organizer’s] function is to agitate to the point of conflict.” (Rules for Radicals; page 117)
No one has done a better job of that than Mr. Obama. He successfully used one of the most vacuous campaign slogans in the history of same. It was a simple promise of “change” and the people bought it — he didn’t need to explain it or define it. Hatred of President Bush did the rest.
He deftly utilized Mr. Alinsky’s “Rules of Power Tactics,” and it is by implementing the final two of those rules that he will indemnify his position. Rule 12 is: “the price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Rule 13 is: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. The opposition must be singled out as the target and frozen … and carry out your attacks … one acts decisively only in the conviction that all angels are on one side and all the devils [i.e., the opposition] on the other.” (pp 127-134)
That is exactly what is taking place today. Mr. Obama’s reference to Rush Limbaugh has led to attempts to marginalize him and silence his voice. There is the so-called stimulus bill that is laden with wasteful spending, and yet, all who oppose it are singled out and vilified. He didn’t sit down with Fox News or the Wall Street Journal, he sat down for an interview on an Arabic television station many view as being a half-step away from a terrorist outlet. He purposes to put our tax dollars in the hands of not just those who pay no taxes, but illegals as well. He is trying to stop the trial of a known terrorist responsible for American deaths. Yet, anyone who doesn’t agree with these measures is “targeted, frozen,” and subjected to personal ad hominem polarization.
I agree with Mr. Limbaugh and those who oppose Mr. Obama’s politics. We were opposed to his candidacy, why would we now turn around and fight for his Alinskyan agenda to be successful? Those of us calling for his incentives to fail, unlike those who opposed President Bush, do not do so out of personal hatred — we do so out of love for our country and belief in our Constitutional way of life, and we realize that the “change” he proposes is not based on either.
During her Democrat National Convention speech, Michelle Obama validated our concerns and objections when she said, “[Obama] talked about the world as it is and the world as it should be … and, all of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do — that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be.” The problem with that reasoning is what “the world as it should be” would be in his lexicon.
Mr. Alinsky wrote, “An organizer … does not have a fixed truth — truth to him is relative and changing.” My question is — does that include the Constitution?
It’s here worth noting that, in his book, Mr. Alinsky praised Satan as “the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he … won his own kingdom.” It’s also worth noting that Satan’s kingdom is called hell — precisely what we will have if Obama succeeds with his initiatives.
Mychal Massie is chairman of Project 21 — The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives — a conservative black think tank located in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at mychalmassie@gmail.com
Satan’s gift is his ability to foment dissatisfaction, discontent, and discord. His words to Eve were, “hath God said,” were intended to stir doubt and derision. His later words, “for God doth know,” it can be said, were intended to stir positional resentment, i.e., class envy and contempt for authority.
That is the job of the successful community organizer. “An organizer,” Mr. Alinsky wrote, “must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent … the job then is getting the people to … act — to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the [existing] patterns and change them … in a word, [the community organizer’s] function is to agitate to the point of conflict.” (Rules for Radicals; page 117)
No one has done a better job of that than Mr. Obama. He successfully used one of the most vacuous campaign slogans in the history of same. It was a simple promise of “change” and the people bought it — he didn’t need to explain it or define it. Hatred of President Bush did the rest.
He deftly utilized Mr. Alinsky’s “Rules of Power Tactics,” and it is by implementing the final two of those rules that he will indemnify his position. Rule 12 is: “the price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Rule 13 is: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. The opposition must be singled out as the target and frozen … and carry out your attacks … one acts decisively only in the conviction that all angels are on one side and all the devils [i.e., the opposition] on the other.” (pp 127-134)
That is exactly what is taking place today. Mr. Obama’s reference to Rush Limbaugh has led to attempts to marginalize him and silence his voice. There is the so-called stimulus bill that is laden with wasteful spending, and yet, all who oppose it are singled out and vilified. He didn’t sit down with Fox News or the Wall Street Journal, he sat down for an interview on an Arabic television station many view as being a half-step away from a terrorist outlet. He purposes to put our tax dollars in the hands of not just those who pay no taxes, but illegals as well. He is trying to stop the trial of a known terrorist responsible for American deaths. Yet, anyone who doesn’t agree with these measures is “targeted, frozen,” and subjected to personal ad hominem polarization.
I agree with Mr. Limbaugh and those who oppose Mr. Obama’s politics. We were opposed to his candidacy, why would we now turn around and fight for his Alinskyan agenda to be successful? Those of us calling for his incentives to fail, unlike those who opposed President Bush, do not do so out of personal hatred — we do so out of love for our country and belief in our Constitutional way of life, and we realize that the “change” he proposes is not based on either.
During her Democrat National Convention speech, Michelle Obama validated our concerns and objections when she said, “[Obama] talked about the world as it is and the world as it should be … and, all of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do — that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be.” The problem with that reasoning is what “the world as it should be” would be in his lexicon.
Mr. Alinsky wrote, “An organizer … does not have a fixed truth — truth to him is relative and changing.” My question is — does that include the Constitution?
It’s here worth noting that, in his book, Mr. Alinsky praised Satan as “the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he … won his own kingdom.” It’s also worth noting that Satan’s kingdom is called hell — precisely what we will have if Obama succeeds with his initiatives.
Mychal Massie is chairman of Project 21 — The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives — a conservative black think tank located in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at mychalmassie@gmail.com
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