I Come to Praise Alinsky, Not to Bury Him

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We interrupt our blog for this special news note:
Revenge is a dish best served cold, and Osama ought to be about room temperature by now.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled rant —
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Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears, I come to praise Saul Alinsky, not to bury him.

1) Alinksy did not hide his motives.

As you know, authors dedicate their books. This is no small matter, the dedication usually goes to a spouse, children, mentor or some other person who inspired or assisted in the creation of that book.

Alinsky's seminal work, Rules for Radicals, opens with this: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history . . . 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."

Lucifer? Satan? Beelzebub? Mephistopheles? The Adversary? The Enemy of all Righteousness? What was he thinking? I cannot say for certain, but a couple possibilities come to mind:

"I can really offend those religious b******s with this one, ha, ha, ha!"
"This will get me a lot of free advertising."

Something like that, something self-serving, or just plain mean-spirited because he knew he could get away with it. You see, Saul Alinsky was many things, but "nice person" wasn't on that list. Just before passing on to his Jacob Marley-like reward, he gave an extensive interview to Jim Britell of Playboy. If you want to know this man, what better way than to know him by in his own words?

Britell followed Alinsky around for some time getting to know his subject.  During a plane ride, Alinsky tells a stewardess: "Will you please tell the captain I don't give a **** what our wind velocity is, and ask him to keep his trap shut so I can get some work done?" Wow, for a guy who claimed to work for the middle class, he certainly wasn't nice to that member of his constituency.

Alinsky also proudly describes his upbringing in Chicago of the 1920s and '30s: "My father started out as a tailor, then he ran a delicatessen and a cleaning shop, and finally he graduated to operating his own sweatshop." A sweatshop? Isn't that the kind of exploitation Alinsky the Younger was trying to end?

After college graduation, times were tough, but Alinsky managed to maintain his standards. "I went hungry . . . I suppose I could have gotten some help from a relief project, but it's funny, I just couldn't do it. I've always been that way: I'd rob a bank before I accepted charity." And, he did. Well, not a bank, he stole meals from cafeterias by switching checks. He even held a campus meeting to show other students how to do it. "We got the system down to a science, and for six months all of us were eating free. Then the bastards brought in those serial machines at the door where you pull out a ticket that's only good for that particular cafeteria. That was a low blow. We were the first victims of automation." Victims? He says he regretted his crimes, but he justified it by saying he was hungry, and claimed crime was preferable to charity. Oh, excuse me, Alinsky added, "Crime? That wasn't crime – it was survival." My mistake.

His graduate program was in criminology, (a subject with which, at that point, he had some acquaintance) and he decided to do his dissertation on Al Capone. Through a (fortuitous?) accident, he met Capone's enforcer, "Big Ed" Stash, and through him, Capone's right-hand man, Frank Nitti. Nitti, de facto mob boss, became Alinsky's mentor, 'the Professor," Saul called him. When asked, "Didn't you have any compunction about consorting with – if not actually assisting – murderers?" He replied, "None at all, since there was nothing I could do to stop them from murdering...I was a nonparticipating observer in their professional activities, although I joined their social life of food, drink and women: Boy, I sure participated in that side of things – it was heaven. And let me tell you something, I learned a hell of a lot about the uses and abuses of power from the mob [notice, not by the mob], lessons that stood me in good stead later on, when I was organizing." Well, that makes me feel so much better.

What does all this say about Saul Alinsky? Nothing more than he said of himself in this, his last major interview: When asked about the afterlife, he said, "Let's say that, if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell. . . . Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I've been with the have-nots. Over here, if you're a have-not, you're short of dough. If you're a have-not in hell, you're short of virtue."

Saul Alinsky would have known, and, by now, I'm sure he does.

2) Alinksy gave us a plan to defeat him.

In his most famous books, Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals (both of which are on the National Education Association recommended reading list), Alinsky lays out the methods by which he organized neighborhoods, unions and others over the course of four decades. While honest, decent conservatives won't use Alinsky tactics – harassment, threats, crime – the principles can be used to combat the socialists, Marxists and other scoundrels who claim Alinsky as their patron saint.

From Rules for Radicals:

With advice to conservatives.

1. Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.

Understand that you will never be the majority. Those who refuse to be politically active, those who refuse to be counted as conservatives (even though they are), the moderates, liberals, socialists & Marxists, will always outnumber you. Therefore, fall back on that old adage, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease," and make so much noise you drown out the voices of opposition.

2. Never go outside the expertise of your people.
and
3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.

When your opponents know more than you do, they have the advantage, therefore, become the expert. Do what Thomas Jefferson did with the Declaration of Independence – "place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent."

4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. 

The liberals believe the end justifies the means, so, let them use all the underhanded dirty tricks they wish, then be sure everybody hears about those underhanded dirty tricks.

5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. 

Conservatives do not seek to humiliate anyone; however, we can and should make very public the hypocrisies, the inconsistencies, the long history of failure that is the liberal agenda. If that makes them look ridiculous, well, I'm not responsible for their personal problems.

6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy. 

Each of us has our specific talents; we should always get people involved in doing what they love. Some want to rally, others want to teach, others want to be at the Capitol dealing with the legislature. Some even want to run for office. There's plenty of work to do, matching talents with projects will get that work done faster, more effectively and with better quality.

7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. 

Americans have a short attention span, especially after they've spent time on the Internet. Most liberal proposals are full of flaws. Deal with its unconstitutionality this week. Talk about its damage to the economy next week. Discuss how it will limit individual liberty the week after. And so on.

8. Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.  

Campaigns for state offices or a good piece of legislation can take a year, or more, to accomplish. Growing up in near New York City, I often heard that Macy's starts planning next year's Thanksgiving Day Parade the Monday after Thanksgiving. If the legislature convenes in May, don't wait until April to get your program started. There are plenty of opportunities throughout the year to make political statements – without getting in somebody's face every time that face shows itself!

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. 

Conservatives don't make threats, but, when several dozen state delegates (the ones who select candidates for the Republican Party) met with a Republican governor (who is up for re-election next year) to request his veto on a bill they didn't like, that governor wouldn't be a very wise politician if he ignored them. (He didn't listen to them, but he isn't ignoring them.)

10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. 

Have a plan! It's tempting to say "I need to spend my time doing, not sitting around talking." Talk is good – talk wins you allies; talk gets people where they need to be at the time they need to be there; talk teaches people how to answer questions; talk helps you raise money; talk helps you allocate limited resources to where they will be most effective. Do you think Ike told 1.5 million soldiers "you just steam across the English Channel and start shooting."?

11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside . . . every positive has its negative. 

Huh? Well, the best explanation I've seen was in a Facebook note: "Imagine 50 years ago saying traditional values were bad, illegal immigration was okay, abortion was good for a society, God is dead in America, we are not a Christian nation. Imagine? Yes, hard to imagine isn’t it. Yet, those are the new societal norms of the day. They have yelled, screamed and protested for over 40 years and those negatives have become positives. Get it? I hope so."

We stand firm. God lives, abortion and illegal immigration are wrong, traditional values became traditional values over centuries because they work! And so on.

12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. 

People have been complaining about the Obama budgets since he declared his candidacy. Finally, Paul Ryan came up with something truly substantive – dare we say, radical? – a budget proposal that would cut $6 trillion over the next decade. This is not the whole answer, but it's more than we have seen so far from anyone else. Never say, "This is bad." Always say, "This is bad, and here's how to fix it." 

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. 

Let's face it, when will government change? When we stop electing politicians and start electing statesmen. There is a professional political class in America, "the incumbent party" a friend of mine likes to call it. This is bad. Washington, Jefferson, Madison and others believed in term limits, they retired from public office; some of them several times. Adams also believed in them, after he was term limited by Americans who were offended by the Alien & Sedition Acts and elected Jefferson. Be nice, don't call him a jerk, tell the people: This legislator voted for this bill, and this is the negative consequence you are suffering because of that vote. Now, here's a candidate who's pledged to vote the other way, and you will like the result.

How can you not love such a guy?

Seriously, Saul Alinsky deserves infinite praise – he is honest about himself; he was a bad guy, a blackguard, a cad, a cur, a knave, a miscreant, a skunk, a snake, a stinker, a toad, a villain, a worm, a wretch, a yellow dog . . .

But, I digress.

Rules for Radicals has been favorably compared to Sun Tsu's Art of War, and not without reason. Its precepts – altered only by use of honorable means – are an effective plan for defeating all the evil that its author and his nyekulturny idealogue descendants have spawned over the last half-century.

Thanks for listening, tune in next week for another rant.