Saul Alinksy

In a recent post I pointed out the practical application of Saul Alinksy's Rules for Radicals as practiced by modern liberals. So who was Saul Alinksy? Born in 1909 Alinsky was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, one of our President's past jobs. In summary here are his rules for radicals.

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Whenever possible, go outside of the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Notice the absence of truth in his arguments. Truth is not even a consideration. Its all about what you can sell. Smoke and mirrors. Illusions and strategies that wear the opposition down rather than meeting them on the debate floor and winning the debate. Whatever works. The ends justify the means. The politics of personal destruction perfected by Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton is #13.

Even a casual observer of politics recognizes this as the liberal play book. Alinksy was an amoral genius at organizing. But the keyword here is amoral. So are those people who use his strategies.

Incidentally in the first edition of Rules for Radicals, Alinsky dedicated it to Lucifer, calling him the first radical. Alinsky (and many leading Democrats) seem to be following in the "first radical's" footsteps. I wonder if they know it? I suspect most wouldn't even care.