For anyone wondering how a man like Obama is about to be sworn in as President of the United States, I implore readers to read two books. Read Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and Obama’s (ghostwritten?) “Dreams from my Father.”
And, for conservatives now gnashing teeth over issues: bailouts, taxes, gun control, welfare, immigration etc. etc., Obama did not win on issues, he won by employing tactics that many conservatives do not grasp. It was all about some elusive “change” that community organizers strive for—not change in issues or policies, just change for change’s sake. I know if your mind sees things in black and white, as mine does, it’s hard to imagine this.
But, if conservatives want to survive, they must now wrap their minds around the “community organizer” concept. Although I find it distasteful and not a tactic I would feel comfortable employing because it’s basically a cynical way of pulling people in, really devoid of goals (remember the ends justify the means), but one doesn’t tell people what the end is because the “organizer” doesn’t know that for sure either. It is all about change!
In a chapter entitled, “The education of an organizer,” Alinsky lists the characteristics required for a community organizer working for change. Here is one:
A free and open mind, and political relativity. The organizer in his way of life, with his curiousity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, distrust of dogma, his self-organization [by the way, these characteristics are not described earlier in the chapter in ways conservatives might recognize], his understanding of the irrationality of much of human behavior, becomes a flexible personality, not a rigid structure that breaks when something unexpected happens. Having his own identity, he has no need for the security of an ideology or a panacea. He knows life is a quest for uncertainty; that the only certain fact of life is uncertainty; and he can live with it. He knows that all values are relative, in a world of political relativity. Because of these qualities he is unlikely to disintegrate into cynicism and disillusionment, for he does not depend on illusion.
Finally, the organizer is constantly creating the new out of the old. He knows all new ideas arise out of conflict; that every time man has had a new idea it has been a challenge to the sacred ideas of the past and the present and inevitably a conflict has raged.
The conflict leads to change, literally for change’s sake. This is creativity. This is how one determines the meaning of life. This is how Alinsky and his followers find joy. This is what life is about for them. This is the goal—simply bringing about change (masked with some moral sounding supposed aim like beating the “Haves” in the battle with the “Have-nots”). If you are now thinking, what the heck is she talking about, I don’t blame you. My world view is built around right and wrong, good and evil, so it’s hard for me to get this, but you too must read Alinksy and Obama and know what we have elected.
It can’t be beaten by fine-tuning conservatives’ positions on issues, it will require some brains sharper than mine to craft a strategy to beat them.