Cloward-Piven Alive And Well: Progressives CONTINUE To Push For Destruction Of U.S. System

Start Thinking Right ^ | March 3, 2010 | Michael Eden

[Michael Eden]

The next time you see a progressive liberal, realize that there is a good chance that they would love to see you in a soup line - helpless, hungry, desperate, and ready for "change."

Back in August of last year, I wrote an article entitled, "Politico Article Reveals Obama’s Cloward-Piven Strategy Backfiring." I pointed out quite a few facts of history which I believed were important. For example, I cited an article that defined the radical leftist Cloward-Piven strategy:

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when “the rest of society is afraid of them,” Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven’s early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. “Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one.

Does that sound like something you'd like to see happen? I hope not! But you can bet that there are a lot of people on the political left right now who would love nothing more than having a crack at reshaping American society in their own image.

I cited the words of top Democrats like Obama's chief of staff who said:

EMANUEL: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity.... And this crisis provides the opportunity for us, as I would say, the opportunity to do things that you could not do before.”

And of course, you have Obama saying “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Change it exactly how, Barry Hussein? And what about those of us who liked the United States of America our founding fathers gave us who don't want it "fundamentally transformed"?

We haven't known exactly what Obama meant by that. Because Obama turned himself into a "blank screen" while he was running for president:

“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

As I pointed out in a recent article:

A politician who has Obama’s ostensible verbal skills is, quite simply, not a “blank screen” unless he wants to be one.

Obama did not want us to know who he was, because we would have rejected him as our leader if we knew.

The more we finally learn about who Obama really is and what he really wants to do, the less we are going to like it.

We're seeing more and more now. The man has a record. And sadly, it is a record of filling his administration with far leftist radicals - even with outright self-described communists (e.g., Van Jones, Mark Lloyd, Anita Dunn, Carol Browner, Ron Bloom, Andy Stern) - and of pursuing government takeovers of one sphere of our economy (e.g., auto manufacturing, banking industry, financial sector, health care system) after another.

For the life of me, I can't understand why a man who professes himself to be a free market president would appoint a man who would say "We know that the free market is nonsense" as his manufacturing czar. Ron Bloom is a man who said:

"We know this is largely about power, that it’s an adults only no limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend you should get a dog.”

You're a "free market guy" who appoints a man who thinks the free market is "nonsense" and agrees with Mao to restore our incredibly important manufacturing sector?

For the life of me, I can't understand how a man who says he's a "free market guy" would appoint Andy Stern to his fiscal commission given statements such as the following:

- “Because workers of the world unite, it’s not just a slogan anymore.”

- “We like to say: We use the power of persuasion first. If it doesn’t work, we try the persuasion of power.”

This same Andy Stern - whom Obama has invited to visit the White House more than ANY other person - described Obama's "free market" program this way:

We now have a new metric. The president says he wants to judge the new economy whether it increases the number of people in the middle class. Whether we have shared prosperity, not just growth. Which is a fundamental different philosophy then what we've seen in this country to date. Now how do we distribute wealth in this country ... clearly government has a major opportunity to distribute wealth - from the EITC, from tax policies, from minimum wages, from living wages - the government has a role in distributing wealth and social benefits. We are at historic crossroads ... in terms of what our new president is trying to do and a different way we are going to try and evaluate the economy. And so all of sudden we are witnessing the first new American economic plan led by the government, not necessarily by the private sector.

(Video available here).

You're a "free market guy" and you appoint a massive big government Marxist to figure out how to reduce government spending??? You're a "free market guy" and you're pushing a "fundamentally different philosophy" than anything this country has ever seen? You're a "free market guy" and you want to redistribute the wealth at the expense of growth? You're a "free market guy" and you have an economic plan led by the government, and not the private sector?

Really?

And, of course, for the life of me, I can't understand how Barack Obama would have installed a man (i.e., Van Jones) who routinely said things like this -

• “I met all these young radical people of color — I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’”

• How’s that capitalism working for ya?

• And the white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people-of-color communities.

• “This movement is deeper than a solar panel! Deeper than a solar panel! Don’t stop there! Don’t stop there! We’re gonna change the whole system! We’re gonna change the whole thing!

- to be his Green Jobs Czar!

"Free market guy"? Really? And I'm not supposed to be either rolling on the floor laughing or barfing in a giant bucket WHY?

Obama told us that he chose his friends carefully, and "carefully" chose to be friends with "Marxist professors" and Marxist terrorist-bombers. The problem is that he's STILL choosing to surround himself with Marxists.

Obama says his administration has a “fundamentally business- friendly” agenda and are “fierce advocates” for the free market.

But fully 77% of American investors understand Barry Hussein very, very differently:

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — U.S. investors overwhelmingly see President Barack Obama as anti-business and question his ability to manage a financial crisis, according to a Bloomberg survey.

The global quarterly poll of investors and analysts who are Bloomberg subscribers finds that 77 percent of U.S. respondents believe Obama is too anti-business and four-out-of-five are only somewhat confident or not confident of his ability to handle a financial emergency.

To summarize to this point, "Mr. Blank Screen," who wants to "fundamentally transform the United States of America" by "never letting a serious crisis go to waste," calls himself a "free market guy" while repeatedly appointing communists to important "free-market"-positions. But more than 3/4ths of American investors who earn their bread and butter from the aforementioned free market think he's full of crap.

With that foundation, let us get back to the strategy of Cloward and Piven.

The following comes from a member of the leftwing in very good standing. He's written and worked for LeftTurn, Political Affairs, and Monthly Review according to his Wikipedia entry. He lives in Chicago (Barry Hussein's hometown), where he founded Youth Against Apathy.

I instantly hearken to Michelle Obama's saying of her husband: "He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism."

At a recent Brecht Forum, event, Jed Brandt said the following:

JED BRANDT, COMMUNIST: "We have to help bring this government down, we have to help destroy this system and that requires increasing the alienation that working class and oppressed people feel. The way change is going to happen in this country is through the destruction of what we call the United States of America.

I'm opposed to white supremacy not because it's white people involved. I am opposed to the system we traditionally call imperialism and the idea that some people have rights and privileges that are not granted to all human beings. And the solution to that problem is called communism and socialism and we should put it in our mouths. We should say it when we say what is your politics? I am a socialist. I demand that we have health care for people and it's not a demand that's negotiable with health insurance companies.

We will take your insurance companies; we will take the farms in this country; we will shut down the military apparatus in this country and I am tired of being told to stuff my anger back in my pants.

[Youtube]:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEEtScHIC1U&feature=player_embedded]

Compare that to what Cloward and Piven were saying needed to happen way back in the 1960s:

Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands

Am I the only one who finds it interesting that the man who says "The way change is going to happen in this country is through the destruction of what we call the United States of America" is demanding that ObamaCare be passed in his very next breath?

I mean, if the Democrat talking points had any validity, wouldn't this guy be who wants to see America destroyed be saying, "I want health care that features tort reform, competition across state lines, and all the other elements of the Republican plan???

This is where articles such as Cloward-Piven Crisis Care should start making sense. I myself offered my own article, "ObamaCare Is Cloward-Piven Strategy In Microcosm" to establish this connection well before hearing Jed Brandt make the connection. I cited the world famous Mayo Clinic as pointing out that ObamaCare represents the idea of:

accelerating the financial ruin of hospitals and doctors across the country

I cited the Wall Street Journal which pointed out that:

Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable

I pointed out that the Dean of the Harvard Medical School said that:

while the legislation would enhance access to insurance, the trade-off would be an accelerated crisis of health-care costs and perpetuation of the current dysfunctional system—now with many more participants.

I pointed out the fears of the California Medical Association that ObamaCare:

would increase local healthcare costs and restrict access to care for elderly and low-income patients.

As we speak, we are talking about the destruction of America by means of a political technique that the Democrats themselves called "the arrogance of power," "majoritarian absolute power," "the precipice of a constitutional crisis," "the abandonment of the concept of check on power," and "a naked power grab."

My favorite description and prediction comes from Max Baucus, who is now pushing for the very thing that he said would be "the way Democracy ends. Not with a bomb but with a gavel.”

I think that last is correct. ObamaCare, forced down the throats of Americans by the unAmerican nuclear option, will indeed be the way Democracy ends.

ObamaCare - by whatever name it is called - will be the ultimate actualization of the Cloward-Piven strategy. It will in short order overwhelm and collapse our social support network just as leftists have been dreaming about for decades.

As one Democrat said, “Never mind the camel’s nose; we’ve got his head and his neck in the tent.”

There's your REAL "hope" and "change." Too bad it doesn't represent your hope, and too bad it is change that you most certainly don't want.

[Michael Eden]

ObamaCare: the actualization of the Cloward-Piven strategist's dreams to bring this nation and its economic system crashing down.

[pallis]

The Democrats in DC might bring this nation’s economy crashing down long before Obamao’s healthcare lunacy gets a chance to do it.

[MonicaG]

Good article; thanks for including all the links.

[bethtopaz]

Another article on this strategy:

Barack Obama & the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

[Michael Eden]

Monica:

I got into blogging for 3 reasons:

1) To tell the truth in a sea of lies;
2) To leave behind a record of what happened under Obama;
3) To provide the EVIDENCE and DOCUMENTATION for what I’m saying.

I encourage every conservative to start a file, to have the evidence, to be able to document the facts.

[MonicaG]

Good job. Thanks for the encouragement; I definitely store files to keep due diligence & document what’s going on.

[Michael Eden]

And thank you for your encouragement, also.

So glad to know that there are outstanding women out there such as yourself.

“Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command.” — I Chronicles 12:32

... and daughters.

[MonicaG]

Thanks for the verse. It is comforting to know others in California get it, and it’s pretty heavy, understanding these times. “Get wisdom; get instruction.” I’m so glad that God, who gives us hope, doesn’t change.

[Free Vulcan]

A country boy can survive...

[Michael Eden]

Two other thing we are to receive from God is the courage to fight for what is true and right, and an expectation of ultimate victory.

A lot of people are scared over this ObamaCare fiasco. And they should be in the sense that it is truly terrible.

But the Judeo-Christian worldview is not one of fatalism and despair. It is one which understands that God’s justice ultimately prevails.

It was that same mindset which allowed our founding fathers to take on the mightiest power in the world at the time - and win.