Posted on 12/03/2007 4:27:53 PM PST by Richard Poe
| by Richard Lawrence Poe Monday, December 3, 2007 |
Permanent Link Past Columns |
HILLARY CLINTON is America’s leading gun-hater. This is no secret. Her “F” rating from the National Rifle Association merely confirms the obvious. More perplexing is why she hates guns. The explanation may lie in the teachings of Hillary's one-time political mentor Saul Alinsky.
As noted in last week’s column, Alinsky was a radical organizer who got his start building militant community groups in Chicago slums during the 1930s. Young Hillary met him through a leftwing church group in high school. She wrote her senior thesis about Alinsky at Wellesley College, and remained friends with him until Alinsky died in 1972. After law school, Alinsky operatives got Hillary an appointment to the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate investigative team in 1974.
Hillary’s ties to Alinsky run deep. Her tactics have long borne his imprint.
In 1971, Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals, a book destined to change the American left. In it, Alinsky mocked Sixties radicals as dilettantes who loved to talk revolution, but shunned the hard work of organizing the masses.
Especially irksome to Alinsky was loose talk of guns and bombs.
Such talk was fashionable in the Sixties. Student protestors loved quoting Chairman Mao's 1938 statement, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”.
Some activists, like those of the Black Panther Party, went beyond mere words. In their ten-point platform of October 1966, the Panthers declared, among other things, “The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self-defense.”
On May 2, 1967, Panther boss Bobby Seale led some 20 armed Panthers into the California State Capitol Building in Sacramento, brandishing loaded rifles, shotguns and pistols. They were protesting the Mulford Act, a pending bill that would bar Californians from carrying guns in public or in vehicles.
Police arrested Seale and five others, but pressed no weapons charges. Carrying guns was still legal in California. Prosecutors ended up charging the Panthers only with disturbing the peace.
Young Hillary Rodham supported the Black Panthers. At Yale, she helped defend the New Haven Nine, a group of Panthers who tortured to death a suspected police informant. Hillary worked closely with Panther attorney Charles Garry on the case. She was put in charge of monitoring the Panther trial for civil rights violations.
Despite her work on behalf of the Panthers, Hillary may have developed doubts about their tactics. Her mentor Saul Alinsky had harsh words for Panther gunmen. In his book Rules for Radicals, Alinsky expressed “contempt” for “those who leave their dead comrades and take off for Algeria or other points”.
Alinsky was no pacifist. In Rules for Radicals, he wrote, “The power of a gun may be used to enforce slavery, or to achieve freedom”. He rejected violence for practical reasons, not moral ones.
The problem with America, Alinsky wrote, was that rightwingers had more firepower than leftists. This made violent revolution impractical. “`Power comes out of the barrel of a gun!’ is an absurd rallying cry when the other side has all the guns,” Alinsky admonished his readers.
In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky noted approvingly that Lenin renounced violence upon returning to Russia from exile in April 1917. The Tsar had abdicated, but Social Democrats now controlled the government. Lenin’s Bolsheviks were outnumbered and outgunned.
Alinsky explained, “The essence of Lenin’s speeches during this period was `They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet’ And it was.”
Lenin did not have to wait long. He siezed power in an armed coup in October 1917.
As long as the right has more guns, the left should oppose guns, Alinsky concluded. Only when the balance of power shifts, and “appropriate weapons” became “available” to the left, should leftists consider turning to violence.
To what extent Senator Clinton adopted Alinsky's thinking on revolutionary violence we can only guess. However, her policy on guns is clear, whatever her motives may be. She seeks to disarm the American people, while arming herself to the hilt.
Hillary exhorts us to give up our guns for the common good. For herself, she aspires to the Presidency, from which perch she would wield power as America’s top law enforcement official, highest-ranking intelligence officer and commander-in-chief of the mightiest army, navy and air force in the world.
Something about this deal does not strike me as equitable. Or wise.
|
Richard Lawrence Poe is a contributing editor to Newsmax, an award-winning journalist and a New York Times bestselling author. His latest book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party, co-written with David Horowitz. |
Mr. Poe, I bought your book, "The Seven Myths of Gun Control". Great work, that!
On May 2, 1967, Panther boss Bobby Seale led some 20 armed Panthers into the California State Capitol Building in Sacramento, brandishing loaded rifles, shotguns and pistols. They were protesting the Mulford Act, a pending bill that would bar Californians from carrying guns in public or in vehicles.
Even they could understand what the Constitution says. Amazing that groups like the Black Panthers and the ACLU can get things right occasionally.
To what extent Senator Clinton adopted Alinsky's thinking on revolutionary violence we can only guess. However, her policy on guns is clear, whatever her motives may be. She seeks to disarm the American people, while arming herself to the hilt.
Another thought, that the leaders on the left are making a mistake by supporting gun control. It also disarms those on the left that would support/help their revolution. It also puts the mentality of guns are bad into the left's supporters which would basically keep them from using them when the time of the revolution came (or should I say if it did). I understand that she wants the government to have the power, which limits them to a revolution at the ballot box and I don't think that will ever happen. However, if the leftist leaders had not said that guns were bad more of their supporters would most likely own them and would be less likely to have an adversion to them.
Watch that broad like a hawk!
Be Ever Vigilant!
Great read as usual..........thanks !!
Good article, and your Myths of Gun Control is a great read as well.
Bolsheviks rightly fear lead poisoning.
Seasons don’t fear the reaper...
Nor does the wind, sun, or the rain.
The one exception might be when Democratic candidates are chumming for money at some anti-gun organization. There's the video we need to see.
I’ve gone all the way back in time (on google) and she has not to my knowledge slipped up here. She always couches her statements on gun rights in carefully hedged weasel words.
Leon Trotsky wrote a whole essay in the 1920’s on how the Russian Revolution was armed and the value of firepower in the success of the revolution; there used to be a link to this article on the web. Its no surprise that Hillary, being a good communist, would understand that tyranny cannot be instituted fully while the population at large is well-armed.
Compared to Hillary, Medusa is a runway model.
She's also a cosponsor of the Long-Range Sniper Rifle Safety Act of 2007, along with the "usual suspects" Feinstein, Boxer, Dodd, Kennedy, Levin, Mikulski, Durbin, Lautneberg, Menendez and of course (UpChuck) Schumer.
Guns represent people who will not be enslaved under communism/socialism.
Did she show Vince Foster how to commit suicide with that gun?
Bans are a fantasy that liberals seek to use like a magic-wand, to eliminate a problem. Bans speak volumes about their supporters' tyrannical nature as well as their disconnect from reality.
Like the class-room teacher who refuses to allow the class to go to recess due to one student's misbehavior, they exhibit their desire to have others pay for the discretions of a few- by the many- who haven't a similar disregard for the rules or conduct expected of them.
In a truly American classroom, the students would walk-out to the playground and ignore the tyrant prick altogether. She/He wants to punish Johnny Dumbass, fine. Keep your socialist/agenda driven mitts off everybody else.
Thanks for digging up Hag Hillary's quotes.
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.