Posted on 04/06/2003 9:34:52 AM PDT by Liz
Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky Courtesy of The Wanderer. From a FR post dated 03/23/00.
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.”
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.
I think Saddam/Stalin/Mao/Alinsky is/was/would be proud of how Hillary dealt with her nemesis, don't you?
"Fear, greed and vanity. These are the three great levers by which men are moved."
And the left has paid close attention, haven't they?
* Greed -- We must put a stop to George Bush's war on terrorism, so that money can be used for better purposes, such as "free" education, "free" income, "free" medical care and anything else you want for "free."
* Vanity -- you're just as deserving of high grades, school admission, professional licensure and six-figure income as anybody else, just because you exist.
1. God's strength is made perfect in our weakness as we rely on HIM, not on ourselves.
2. Humble ourselves before God and HE will lift us up.
3. Behold, God is at work creating a new heaven and a NEW EARTH in which there will be NO TRACE of Alinsky or any of his disciples who will all be in hell with their leader, the prince of darkness.
"If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me". Another "radical" gave that "rule" and it is one that neither Hitlery, nor Alinsky, nor Stalin, nor Saddam, nor all the gates of hell shall prevail against!
GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS, UNBELIEVABLE NEWS
compiled by James W. Harris
Hillary Clinton's Mystery Thesis
Recently syndicated columnist Jack Anderson was doing a story on Hillary Clinton, and in the process his staff requested a copy of her 1969 senior thesis from Wellesley College. It was a seemingly simple request, since normally college theses are public record, available to anyone.
Not, however, in this case. Anderson was told that the current Wellesley president had created a new rule in 1992. The new rule, Anderson says, is that "...the college would seal the senior theses of any Wellesley grads who were either the first lady or the president of the United States." (Perhaps not coincidentally, the president of Wellesley is a long-time friend of Mrs. Clinton's.)
Okay, Anderson asked, can you just tell us the *subject* of the paper? No. Well, was the new policy enacted at Clinton's request? Again, no answer.
Perplexed and intrigued, Anderson contacted Hillary's White House press corps. He was assured it was no big deal, and that he'd be sent a copy of the paper, along with an explanation of why it had been sealed. Several weeks passed, however, and no thesis appeared. Finally he was told that no copy would be coming -- and no explanation would be given.
Eventually Anderson and his staff discovered some answers on their own. Hillary's thesis, it turns out, was a critique of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" programs. Her conclusion: community-based government anti-poverty programs don't work.
Which may explain all the secrecy, since President Clinton recently called for federal funding for a number of... community-based government anti-poverty programs.
(Source: column by Jack Anderson and Jan Moller)
Where she followed Senator Brooke 'in attack mode'.
Anderson quotes her political science prof at Wellesley, Alan Schecter, as saying that by the late l960s his pupil had decided that the best radical strategy was to "'use the legal system' as an agent of change." She wasn't alone in that calculation. The long march of the left through the courtrooms was under way: the world would become a better place, courtesy of courtroom briefs, complaints and class action suits.
She declines the road that led to West 11th St and goes instead to Yale Law School. She works for John Doar, helping draft articles of impeachment against Nixon.
That's why I jumped onto your story!
Good Post..!
F_T_D
Communists got quite good at three steps forward, two steps back.
Hitlery is such a bitch, she'll never be as successful as Bill.
Bill proved an effective Lucifer, assuming a pleasing shape to enough to get elected to power.
That of course is Alinsky's advice, assume that camouflage, don't eat that ham sandwich in front of the Jewish rally.
Hitlery, being strident, dogmatic, unbending, fails this test at all times.
Hitlery is an it, ultimately defined as an aggressive lesbian per the anecdote of Gennifer Flowers straight from the traitorrapist's mouth (Passion & Betrayal, Emery Dalton, 1995, page 41, and elsewhere).
Thus she's blown through Alinsky's stern counsel to assume enough of the "square to get in the game".
And Hitlery further marginalized itself in the health care fiasco, demanding 99%, rather than compromising with the 30% advised by Alinsky.
The so-called ethical relativism of Alinsky and Hitlery distils to any lie for power.
Bill was a world-class parser, able to keep himself on the technically true side of lying.
Hitlery is continually forced to refuse comment with disdain, feign horror a la Lazio's gambit, or simply limp along with a cane, be it "you know" or "I wasn't involved" or "I'm sadly disappointed" by her obese excrescent brother, e.g.
Oddly enough Sharpton would be her natural ally at this time.
Sharpton is the demagogue most adept at the game, for he announces the emperor is naked, the so-called leaders of the left, from Hitlery to the killer of Kopechne are given a pass from the probing questions he fields.
Hitlery has failed serially to muddy-up and degrade George W. Bush, yet continues with the same attempts to personalize the target.
Hitlery failed to instill the "homeland security is a myth" poison, and is so befuddled for the next attack Simon & Schuster despairs of its book.
Rush Limbuagh has said Hitlery is waiting for a point in the Iraq war to back-date its check.
Hitlery's success relies upon the ability of Democrats to block an effective tax cut plus the ability of Democrats and the Democrat press to degrade the accomplishments of the Iraq campaign.
Democrats plus the UN, France, Germany, Russia, China and the leftist media were not enough to prevent the Iraq campaign, and are not likely to be able to suppress the U.S. economy to their communal advantage.
The barnyard animals who would not help bake the bread will now demand to eat it, and when denied will misrepresent its qualities.
From Hitlery we shall have the "myth of Bush's victory in Iraq"--we expect no less kooky a canard from the adultery denier hallucinating a "vast right-wing conspiracy".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.