Saul Alinsky died in 1972, but as anyone that has studied 20th century political science, or more importantly Cultural Criticism is aware of his brilliant theories, and his devotion to the “poor and powerless”, and his goal of a backyard revolution in cities across America. While Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals relies heavily on Alexis de Tocqueville, the French philosopher who “gravely warned,” writes Alinsky, “that unless individual citizens were regularly involved in the action of governing themselves, self-government would pass from the scene”, much of his work has become a toolkit leveraged by the left for the acquisition and deployment of power. He developed a group of 13 rules which have been used by the Left to destroy people, organizations, industries, and recently, individual rights. This toolkit has been used to attack Christian bakers, isolate companies, as well as demonize the police.
“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.” — Saul Alinsky
Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals have now taken aim at the NRA and repeal of the Second Amendment.
The playbook is rote. Take a mass shooting A (except the weekly mass shootings in Chicago and Baltimore), and then attack gun ownership.
Rules For Radicals Number 1—”Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” At this point, suspect polls will be rolled out showing that most Americans are in favor of “sensible” gun control; and that we should ban these “assault rifles”. This should sound familiar.
Go after corporations, protesting that doing business with NRA members would be bad for business because the anti-gun forces would crush them economically. Note: Delta Airlines lost $40-50 MILLION in tax credits over 13 people who used the NRA ticket discount. Was that a good corporate decision for the shareholders?
Rule Number 9, “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.—We bemusedly watch the media and gun control activists cower like craven dogs at the sight of an extra capacity magazine, or claims that the awful AR platform is a machine gun.
Number 13, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. Cue NRA demonization. The NRA is now to blame for all mass shooting events that have occurred since all of time and forever.
After Parkland, the talking points got handed out. The NRA is to blame for a clearly emotionally and mentally disturbed man who stalked the halls of his former high school and killed 17 people. Forget the fact that it looks like law enforcement failures allowed him to kill as many people as he did.
The NRA organization was labeled a “terrorist” organization. NRA members were called “Child Killers”, and spokesperson Dana Loesch was called a “terrorist in a cocktail dress” .
The target had been chosen. It had been frozen. It had been personalized. It had been polarized.
Most intelligent Americans saw through all of this.
Oddly, 2nd Amendment rights folks, like the NRA used some of Alinsky’s own rules to defend themselves–Number 3, 4, and 5.
Rule 3—Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of your enemy—in this case, that wasn’t difficult. It becomes apparent that anti-gun people don’t know the first thing about firearms or firearm safety. When challenged, the gun critics could not even explain what an assault weapon really is.
Example: Student David Hogg, anointed the poster boy for gun control. Sadly, his ignorance and bias were just too obvious. He is probably a good kid, but he was embarrassingly out of his depth when challenged with facts.
Note: The kid actually hung up the phone on the POTUS.
Rule 4—Make the enemy live up to its own rules.
Maybe suggest that the celebrities, such as we saw at the Oscars give up their armed security.
At this year’s Oscars, a battalion of armed guards included (Variety):
- More than 500 LAPD officers, many of them working overtime, as well as police helicopters.
- FBI agents.
- Private security guards from Security Industry Specialists.
- Firefighters.
To ensure security, nearly a mile of Hollywood Boulevard was closed, from Cahuenga Boulevard to La Brea Avenue. Highland Avenue and Orange Drive were closed for almost a half a mile, from Franklin Avenue to Sunset Boulevard.
In this segment of Keeping Up With Kardashians, the girls discuss having a gun for protection. Kim states why get a gun, when you can just hire security?
Rule 5—Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. While the left tried very hard to ridicule gun owners, the reality is that it’s hard to portray rape survivors, small business owners and elderly women who live alone as racist, sexist, homophobic, in-bred rednecks.
Maybe it’s time for the left review Rule 7 —A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Don’t become old news.
Note: Hillary Rodham’s senior thesis for Wellesley College was on the Alinsky method. From Wikipedia:
A 2007 New York Times review of Rodham’s thesis summarized her views as follows: “Ms. Rodham endorsed Mr. Alinsky’s central critique of government antipoverty programs — that they tended to be too top-down and removed from the wishes of individuals. But the student leader split with Mr. Alinsky over a central point. He vowed to ‘rub raw the sores of discontent’ and compel action through agitation. This, she believed, ran counter to the notion of change within the system.”
In 2016, reporter Michael Kruse quotes the thesis and describes a centrist theme:
“Alinsky’s conclusion that the ‘ventilation’ of hostilities is healthy in certain situations is valid, but across-the-board ‘social catharsis’ cannot be prescribed,” she wrote. “Catharsis has a way of perpetuating itself so that it becomes an end in itself.” She continued: “Interestingly, this society seems to be in a transition period, caught between conflict and consensus.” It was clear where this 21-year-old stood: “… as our ‘two societies’—the establishment, the anti-establishment—“move further apart contrived conflict serves to exacerbate the polarization.”
I’m afraid it’s going to come down to this:
2nd amendment supporter – I have guns.
Gun control activist – I don’t want you to have guns.
2nd amendment supporter – OK………………………your move.
No one is going to wake up that ‘sleeping giant’.
Things to keep away from liberals:
1. Liquor
2. Firearms
3. Women
4. Positions of power
5. Voters
6. Podiums with microphones
7. Smartphones
8. Voting booths
9. email
10. Hammers
11. Children, and our children’s children (edit)
12. Slush funds
13. Foundations
14. Uranium (Yellow cake)
15. Russians (Yes, this includes Black Russians)
16. Tarmacs
17. Cigars
18. Tax revenue
19. Education
20. Local city council
21. Interns
22. Schools and colleges
23. Bleach-bit, or cloth
24. Oval Office
25. Fake news camera’s….
26. Illegal Aliens (edit)
27. The United States Constitution
The sooner the better. Move to the next problem.
Alinsky argues that those who wish to change circumstances must develop a mass-based organization and be prepared for conflict.
He is a neo-Hobbbesian who objects to the consensual mystique surrounding political processes; for him, conflict is the route to power.
– Hillary Rodham, “THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT – An Analysis of the Alinsky Model,” a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Bachelors of Art degree under the Special Honors Program, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, 2 May 1969
It is interesting that in her thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Bachelors of Art degree under the Special Honors Program at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts on 2 May 1969, Hillary Clinton labeled Saul Alinsky a “neo-Hobbesian,” especially in the context of this thread.
“Neo-Hobbesian” is probably a term that sails right by the heads of most people today, especially America’s youth, who likely would not know who Thomas Hobbes even was.
As to Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), he was an English philosopher and political theorist best known for his book Leviathan (1651), in which he argued that the only way to secure civil society is through universal submission to the absolute authority of a sovereign.
Ah, yes, universal submission!
If only we could all put aside our identities as individuals, and then submit to the absolute authority of a sovereign like Barack Hussein Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton, the world would be a glorious place.
According to the Free Dictionary, sixteenth-century political theorist, philosopher, and scientist Thomas Hobbes left a stark warning to succeeding generations: strong central authority is the necessary basis for government.
In several influential works of legal, political, psychological, and philosophical theory, Hobbes’s view of society and its leaders was founded on pessimism.
He saw people as weak and selfish, and thus in constant need of the governance that could save them from destruction.
end quotes
That sounds very much like what we are hearing today from those who wiled the Alinsky toolbox in our present American society – people who own guns are weak and selfish, and thus in constant need of the governance that could save them from destruction.
According to the Free Dictionary, Hobbes’ writing canvassed many subjects, such as language and science, to arrive at a general theory of people and their leaders, with the most influential works of this polymath coming in the 1650s.
Now, think about how relevant the thoughts of a privileged Englishman like Hobbes, born on April 5, 1588, in Westport, Wiltshire, England, the son of an Anglican clergyman, are to people in the United States of America today.
Hobbes was a prodigy who had, by the age of fifteen, entered Oxford University; and by twenty, he was appointed tutor to a prominent family, a post he would later hold with the Prince of Wales.
Would being the tutor of the Prince of Wales in England in the 1600’s give Hobbes insight into the minds of American citizens in 2018?
One has to wonder, anyway.
Getting back to the Free Dictionary:
Hobbes was a supreme pessimist.
To him, people were inherently selfish; they struggled constantly against one another for survival.
“(T)he life of a man,” he wrote in his master-work, Leviathan, “is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
end quotes
Uh, pardon me here, Mr. Hobbes, but my life has been anything but solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, which goes to show what you know about life in the United States of America today, or your philosophical off-spring Saul Alinsky, for that matter.
Getting back to the Free Dictionary:
Thus, people could not survive on their own in the state of nature.
This foundation led him to a theory of the law: only by submitting to the protection of a sovereign power could individuals avoid constant anarchy and war.
The sovereign’s authority would have to be absolute.
end quotes
There is the political philosophy of the neo-Hobbesians exposed for all to see – the sovereign’s authority has to be absolute.
Thus, we should welcome benevolent dictators like Barack Hussein Obama, the Democrat Messiah, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Getting back to the neo-Hobbesian political philosophy:
Law derived from this authority rather than from objective truth, which he argued did not exist.
end quotes
Yes, people, objective truth is dangerous because, uh, well, hey, you know, because it’s objective.
That is what makes it so dangerous.
Getting back, then, to the neo-Hobbesian view of things given that reality about objective truth:
All citizens of the state were morally bound to follow the sovereign’s authority; otherwise, law could not function.
Hobbes chose the leviathan (a large sea animal) to represent the state, and he maintained that like a whale, the state could only be guided by one intelligence: its sovereign’s.
end quotes
All hail Caesar!
With respect to the political philosop0hy of Hobbes and our own American history, the Free Dictionary tells us this:
The influence of Hobbes’s ideas varied dramatically over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
But his theories eventually lent support to loyalists who wanted to preserve the Crown’s control over the American colonies: Thomas Hutchinson, the last royal governor of Massachusetts, viewed the upstart challengers to royal authority in a Hobbesian light.
end quotes
If it had been up to the Hobbesians in England back when, and the Tories and Loyalists in this country, we would still be bending the knee to English royalty and tugging our forelocks as the King and Queen pass by, which incidentally, is something many people in this country wish for today.
“The condition of man … is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.”
—Thomas Hobbes
Hence the need to strip people of their guns in America today!