Patriot Politics

We first started hearing Saul Alinsky’s name pop up last fall during attempts to uncover the relationship between William Ayers and Barack Obama.  A few intrepid souls – like Stanley Kurtz, and subsequently John Kass (who noted how the Daley machine shut Kurtz down from further investigations by curtailing his access to the UI – Chicago library) among others – questioned the speed of Obama’s rise to prominence from his community-organizer beginnings.  The tangled web included names such as Ayers, Dohrn, Rezco, and Alinsky.

Who is Saul Alinsky? And what does he have to do with William Ayers, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, ACORN, MoveOn.org, Al Capone (Al Capone? WHAT?), John L. Lewis, Robert Kennedy, and Eastman Kodak?  Is your head spinning yet?

The more we discover, the more we recognize that the blueprint for the “Hope and Change” we are currently seeing manifested in the Obama administration has its basis in the belief structure promulgated by Saul Alinsky.

The most widely known of Alinsky’s writings is Rules for Radicals.  Radicals were to assume the mantle of societal change-makers by employing a series of methods designed to transform society from within.  Tactics such as organizing for “social change” and “justice,” eliminating the “fundamental causes” of disparities and problems, and destroying “national neuroses” which pollute the ideal social order were to be employed by a slew of “People’s Organizations.”  These brigades of radicals – those who were dissatisfied and disillusioned with society’s ills and injustices – would be local in nature, the better to retain credibility in their respective communities.

The reach of this manifesto, originated by its 1946 predecessor, Reveille for Radicals,  is stunning.  Alinsky, studying criminology at the University of Chicago, befriended Al Capone, and later, when Capone was jailed, an associate – Frank Nitti.  Studying the tactics of John L. Lewis (founder of the CIO union) Alinsky identified parallels that he could apply to the relationship of the citizenry and government.  Systematic application of power transfer to oppressed population segments would effect a sweeping transformation by collapsing societal status quo and its innumerable ills.

The transfer of power from the Haves to the Have-Nots held universal appeal to idealistic acolytes in the liberal movement of the sixties such as Kennedy, the young Hillary Clinton (whose conversion from Goldwater Girl to liberal Democratic operative occurred in concert with her undergrad thesis on Alinsky’s writings), William Ayers, Cesar Chavez and others.

Inappropriate zeal and transparent methodology in the 60’s New Left was tempered by Alinsky’s admonitions to conceal and infiltrate from within.  Ayers moved from throwing bombs to the board of an Annenberg-funded educational foundation.  Clinton paid her dues in the Rose Law Firm while her husband was Governor of Arkansas.  Kennedy allied himself with Chavez to create a more man-of-the-people persona.

Speak the people’s language, cloak the movement in moral rationalization, magnify the effects of progressivism, exploit publicity, act first and rationalize later, demonize the opposition via derision and the assertion of hypocrisy, assess and initiate battles to win.  Sound familiar?  It should.  It’s all been employed with a stunning degree of success by the Obama campaign, prior and post-election.  Michelle Obama even quoted Machiavelli, via Alinsky, at the Democratic Convention:  “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be.”

The trouble for Obama is, the veil has been lifted.  Although some of us have been paying close attention to the man behind the curtain for some time, more and more have been awakened.  We’ve been played, and Alinsky, that magnificent bastard, wrote the playbook.

For a more comprehensive analysis of Rules for Radicals, visit David Horowitz’s blog and the following articles, not for weak stomachs:

Alinsky, Beck, Satan and Me

Hell on Earth

Boring from Within

To Have and To Have Not

Hat tip:  Dennis Prager, radio interview with David Horowitz

See also:  I am Finally Scared of a White House Administration