PS: The second link I just gave doesn’t seem to link directly from FR, but you can find it by Googling “phyllis ryan alinsky”.
Perfect, reading it now...ugh.
I forced myself to read “Rules for Radicals” and both of Obama’s putrid books, so this can’t be much worse on me, though I hope it will be educational.
Already, it is.
You know when you see phrases like “ideological Weltanschauung” and “neo-Hobbesian, you are going to get an extremely pretentious exposition on SOMETHING.
I love how she and Alinsky both compare him favorably (actually in terms of being equals) with Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine. (Paine was flawed enough, but I give him a pass on a lot of criticism because of what he did for the embryonic country at a time when it was desperately needed. I think he deserves that.) I feel comfortable in saying, those men of revolutionary America would be repulsed by a scumbag like Alinsky. Those men believed in many things, but they did not believe in them at any cost, particularly at the cost of their own honor and principles. They believed in those and fought tooth and nail against every sacrifice that might be asked of their “sacred honor”.
Alinksy and his devotees, scum that they are, have no such anchor in anything approaching principles or sacred honor those men held. Their God is Power and Domination of others, and any means, any at all, with no holds barred, is their path. They will say anything on one day, and on the next, if it is required, will say the polar opposite, no matter the lie, the cost, the sacrifice of principles, their God, or the lives or reputations of others. Their modus operandi is total relativism, and the ends will justify ANY means, any at all.
Those honorable men would despise and ridicule someone like Alinsky. Typical of people like Alinsky to appropriate symbols that are important to people they want to rule over, and try to corrupt and crap on them to destroy the frameworks.
That is, after all, what “Rules for Radicals” is all about. Destroy the sea that your opponents live in. Pollute it to the point they have to abandon it. How I despise and detest that man, and all of his acolytes.
I read this line in her “thesis”: “One of the strongest strains in modern radicalism is the eighteenth century Enlightenment’s faith in human reason and the possible perfectibility of man.”
That is the fundamental flaw with liberalism. There is no such thing as the “possible perfectibility of man”.
They have built an entire flawed ideology and dogma on top of a flawed foundation such as this fallacy, and someday, we as conservatives, will take the correct approach of attacking this fundamental fallacy in the foundation of their abortion of a castle, rather than picking away ineffectually at their walls and turrets, which they rather enjoy because they know we won’t beat them at that.