Posted on 01/12/2005 9:45:10 AM PST by gidget7
A group of billionaire philanthropists are to donate tens of millions more dollars to develop progressive political ideas in the US in an effort to counter the conservative ascendancy.
George Soros, who made his fortune in the hedge fund industry; Herb and Marion Sandler, the California couple who own a multi-billion-dollar savings and loan business; and Peter Lewis, the chairman of an Ohio insurance company, donated more than $63m (£34m) in the 2004 election cycle to organisations seeking to defeat George W. Bush.
At a meeting in San Francisco last month, the left-leaning billionaires agreed to commit an even larger sum over a longer period to building institutions to foster progressive ideas and people.
Far from being disillusioned by the defeat of John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, the billionaires have resolved to invest further in the intellectual future of the left, one person involved said.
Their commitment to provide new money comes amid criticism of the efforts of high-profile donors such as the Hungarian-born Mr Soros to sway US politics as well as doubts about the effectiveness of record funding in helping the Democratic cause in 2004.
The details of the San Francisco meeting are closely held. Mr Soros and his son Jonathan, the Sandlers and Mr Lewis asked aides to leave the room as they discussed the planned financial commitment.
But the still-evolving plan, according to one person involved, is “joint investment to build intellectual infrastructure”.
The intention is to provide the left with organisations in Washington that can match the heft of the rightwing think-tanks such as Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. At a state level, the aim is to build what one person called a “deeper progressive bench”.
The sums involved are the subject of speculation: one person said he had heard a commitment to spend more than $100m over 15 years, another said at least $25m over five years. Several people said their understanding was that the billionaires had decided to spend more, rather than less, than they did in 2004.
Mr Soros donated $27m, the Sandlers $13m and Mr Lewis $23m to so-called 527 groups privately-funded political organisations during the 2004 campaign, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, the campaign finance tracking service.
Stephen Bing, a film producer and heir to a real estate fortune who donated $13m, is also expected to be involved in the investment in progressive infrastructure.
Andrew Stern, who is president of the Service Employees International Union, has been working to include organised labour in the initiative.
Leftwing policy experts have already got wind of the new funds. One former aide to Mr Kerry said there had been talks with the Center for American Progress about making permanent the network of foreign policy experts established by Democrats in the 2004 campaign. He said he had been told: “Money is not a problem.”
Agreed.
We can work with guys like Vladimir Putin some of the time. In fact, I think alliance with Russia will be necessary to counter the EU down the road, espeically if France and Germany dominate the EU. That is how bad I think it could get.
A very wealty and priviledged man, obsessed with pervert sex willing to take over countries for his financial gain, hates conservative Christians..... why, that sounds like CALIGULA of the old Roman empire.
It certainly does, doesn't it? And we all know what happened to the old Roman Empire. We also know what caused it to happen. These "progressives" would have the same thing happen here in America.
Will the Republicans have to write off these donations? The more Soros spends the better the Republicans do.
Athiest/ Commie makes that hard to do.
An Enron executive?
"Hope they spend it as effectively as they did in the last election cycle." ~ EternalVigilance
Soros will be spending some of that money backing Jim Wallis and his Sojourners magazine, that's for sure. See my next post to you if you don't know who Saul Alinsky (mentioned here) is.
Saul Alinsky - The Religious Left follows his tactics "religiously". Their magazine: Sojourners
Rev. Jim Wallis, Editor, Sojourners Magazine
"Saul Alinsky Goes to Church"
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=Soj0003&article=000311
Here's their latest strategy per their email to me yesterday. (I'm on their email list so that I can closely monitoring what they're up to):
From: "Sojourners" sojourners@sojo.net
Subject: Give Progressive Faith a National Voice
We have a unique opportunity to lift up a much stronger national voice for progressive faith. If we can make God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It a national best-seller, your progressive religious values will be in the front of bookstores across America!
[]As the Bush administration prepares to inaugurate another four years of its policies, together we can raise up a voice of Christian conscience and a visible alternative to the Religious Right. The post-election focus on the faith and values issue is offering us many new opportunities, and the media attention already focused on Jim Wallis' new book holds the potential for it to become a national best-seller.
We need your help! If enough supporters of Sojourners purchase God's Politics today, give copies to friends, family, and church members, and start study groups in their congregations and communities, this goal is well within reach.
Help make God's Politics a national best-seller and save 34% today!
Jim Wallis will soon be touring cities, churches, and campuses across the country to generate a national dialogue on all our moral values as people of faith. Imagine the increased media exposure progressive faith values will receive if this "new vision of faith and politics in America" becomes a best-seller. Imagine the national coverage given to a prophetic vision that challenges both the Right and the Left. Just imagine.
You can make a difference! If you order today for only $16.47, you'll save 34% off the cover price and a percentage of every sale will support the mission of Sojourners! Together, let's create a grassroots movement to make God's Politics a best-seller and lift up an alternative religious voice for justice and peace.
Behind Sojourners magazine --- Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Tony Campolo, et.al. -- all Marxist radicals right out of the 1960's.
They all follow the playbook of another 60's radical by the name of Saul Alinsky. (Hillary Clinton admired him so much as her mentor that she wrote her college thesis on him and his tactics on to get around the Constitution and usurp the will of the people by going over their heads through the use of activist judges / the judiciary).
Saul Alinsky wrote two books outlining his organizational principles and strategies: Reveille for Radicals (1946) and Rules for Radicals (1971).
Rules for Radicals opens with a quote about Lucifer, written by Saul Alinsky:
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins -- or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer.”
Sojourners - March / April 2000 issue -- Saul Alinsky -(the admirer of Lucifer) - Goes to Church
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=Soj0003&article=000311
*
BILL, HILLARY, SAUL, AND MORAL RELATIVISM Saul Alinsky and the Lessons He Taught Bill and Hillary FR ^ | 03/23/00 | The Wanderer http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/886451/posts
In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky says: “Here I propose to present an arrangement of certain facts and general concepts of change, a step toward a science of revolution.” He builds on the tactical principles of Machiavelli: “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.”
Rules for Radicals is concerned with the acquisition of power: “my aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and how to use it.” This is not to be done with assistance to the poor, nor even by organizing the poor to demand assistance: “...[E]ven if all the low-income parts of our population were organized ... it would not be powerful enough to get significant, basic, needed changes.”
Alinsky advises the organizer to target the middle class, rather than the poor: “Organization for action will now and in the decade ahead center upon America’s white middle class. That is where the power is.”
Alinsky is interested in the middle class solely for its usefulness: “Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and the way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt. They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the middle class majority.”
To accomplish this, Alinsky writes that the organizer must “begin to dissect and examine that way of life [the middle class lifestyle] ... He will know that ‘square’ is no longer to be dismissed as such -- instead his own approach must be ‘square’ enough to get the action started.”
Rules for Radicals defends belief that the end justifies the means: “to say that corrupt the ends,” writes Alinsky, “is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles ... the practical revolutionary will understand ... [that] in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind.”
Altogether, Alinsky provides eleven rules of the ethics of means and ends. They are morally relativistic:
“The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe’s ‘conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action’; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind.”
“The second rule of the ethics of the means and ends is that the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent on the political position of those sitting in judgment.” Alinsky elaborates his meaning on this point, saying that if you were a member of the underground Resistance, “... then you adopted the means of assassination, terror, property destruction, the bombing of tunnels and trains, kidnapping, and the willingness to sacrifice innocent hostages to the end of defeating the Nazi’s. Those who opposed the Nazi’s conquerors regarded the Resistance as a secret army of selfless, patriotic idealists ....” Rules for Radicals is therefore concerned with how to win. “...[I]n such a conflict, neither protagonist is concerned with any value except victory.”
“The third rule of the ethics of means and ends is that in war the ends justifies almost any means.”
“There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds, he becomes a founding father.”
Rules for Radicals teaches the organizer that he must give a moral appearance (as opposed to behaving morally): “All effective action requires the passport of morality.”
The tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends states “that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments ... Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.”
Rules for Radicals provides the organizer with a tactical style for community organization that assumes an adversarial relationship between groups of people in which one either dominates or is dominated.
“The first rule of power tactics is: power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”
“Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.”
“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this. They can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”
“The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself.”
“In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt.”
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
One of the criteria for picking the target is the target’s vulnerability ... the other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract.”
“The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
Saul Alinsky urged the active and deliberate “conscious-raising” (Ed note: a tactic used by feminists) of people through the technique of “popular education.” Popular education is a method by which an organizer leads people to a class-based interpretation of their grievances, and to accept the organizer’s systemic solutions to address those grievances. “Through the People’s Organization these groups [of citizens] discover that what they considered primarily their individual problem is also the problem of others, and furthermore the only hope for solving an issue of titanic proportions is by pooling all their efforts and strengths. That appreciation and conclusion is an educational process.”
Rules for Radicals stresses organizational power-collecting: “The ego of the organizer is stronger and more monumental than the ego of the leader. The organizer is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which a man can reach -- to create, to be a ‘great creator’, to play God.” Alinsky considered Hillary a terrific “organizer” and wanted her to become his protege. She declined. She had bigger fish to fry. She learned her lessons well. She and Bill have employed Alinsky’s tactics probably better than anyone else.
Jonathon Soros IS gay. What about George Soros? Gay may have a whole different meaning to the Greeks.
I have Allstate and I don't plan on switching..
Conservative talkers and thought have advanced because of competition. Talented people and good ideas attracted audiences, no-talents and bad ideas fell by the wayside.
By trying this kind of top-down intellectual force-feeding, they inevitably are going to back the wrong horses. In fact, the subsidizing of their bad idea mays well squeeze out whatever few decent ideas/personalities the left may have.
The irony is perfect. The ideology of centralized governments is going to torpedo itself by applying the same flawed philosophy to its media efforts.
I do have a question, why aren't they sending any money to the Tsunami victims???
All that money and the Swiftees sank them for pennies.
Soros is Hungarian not Greek.
Yes, he's one and the same. I wasn't sure, but I asked a friend and he gave me this link. If there are others who wonder they can click here to read a little about Engels.
THANKS!!
I really appreciate your posting the article for us to read and discuss. Thank you very much.
Oh no Thank you for your input! We all need to know what "the other side" the opposition is up to!
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