Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Michelle Obama Quotes Saul Alinsky During Her Convention Speech

I missed this, but Gateway Pundit didn't. Michelle Obama, in her speech last night, borrowed some of her phrasing from the famous / infamous Marxist organizer Saul Alinsky. I knew that her speech sounded the socialist utopian themes that her husband has been advocating throughout this election, but I did not realize she had gone so far as to quote Alinsky.

This from Gateway Pundit:

Michelle Obama quotes lines some radical Far Left book in her DNC Convention speech.

What to make of Michelle Obama's use the terms, “The world as it is” and “The world as it should be?” From whence do they originate? Try Chapter 2 of Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals. In last night's speech, Michelle Obama said something that peeked my curiousity. She said:

"Barack stood up that day," talking about a visit to Chicago neighborhoods, "and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about “The world as it is” and “The world as it should be..." And, "All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do – that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be." . . .

We really are at a crossroads in this country. Ever since FDR, socialists and marxists, far too often aided by the right, have been moving ever more towards the consolidation of power, the institution of large scale socialism and the institutionalization of identity politics. This once fringe element of the Democratic party is now its dominant force. With the nomination of Obama and the chance for a veto proof majority in the Senate, they are but a step away from realizing their goals of taking full control of the levers of power in America.

In all fairness, Marxism and socialism played a positive role at their inception. Women got the vote, the ills of the industrial revolution were blunted, and a minimum social safety net was put in place, all at a time when Marxism was in its infancy in the West, pushing these things. But Marxism is utopian and the palative it offered has long since changed to a poison for Western society. The changes it promises are fundamentally opposed to the millenia old traditions of Western Civilization and the centuries old traditions in the U.S. that have brought us to be the dominant power in the world.

We rose to that position of dominance on the bases of capitalism, freedom and individualism. Those on the Marxist left have been warring on these concepts as evil for decades, promising instead a utopian world with cradle to the crave socialism, the destruction of our existing societal structures, and their replacement by new structures based on the marxist vision of social equality. They would replace the melting pot with the multicultural. They would limit capitalism and freedom not on the margins to keep a level playing field, but at the center to insure "fairness." They would use the police powers of the state to enforce their vision of society - and there are far too many indications that they would use those same police powers to punish those who disagree.

In this context, for Michelle Obama to use her time at the DNC convention to dust off the phrasing of Saul Alinsky is not necessarily surprising, but it is very telling about how much of a radical change Obama represents. Saul Alinsky was a 1940's era marxist who quite literally wrote the book - Rules For Radicals - on how to effect the radical, left wing change we see going on within America. His philosophy and methods have been embraced by many on the left, most notably Obama and Hillary Clinton. Obama is advocating the institution of cradle to grave socialism in America and explictly followed in Alinsky's footsteps as a "community organizer." Hillary Clinton actually did her thesis at college on Alinsky, her populist rhetoric has sounded many of Alinsky's themes, and her first job offer after college was from Mr. Alinsky. Both have adopted Alinsky's tactics.

Update: I see some comments to this post at other cites claiming that Alinsky was not a marxist and the communists of the time hated him. The first is wrong. Alinsky was a dedicated Marxist. The latter is correct, however. Marxist radicals of Alinsky's era denounced Alinsky, but that was because of Alinsky's tactics, not his end goals. This from a 1972 interview of Alinsky in Playboy discussing why Alinsky always sought limited goals and incremental progress towards a Marxist utopia rather than a total and immediate revoultion such as occurred in Rusia and China:

PLAYBOY: Spokesmen for the New Left contend that this process of accommodation renders piecemeal reforms meaningless, and that the overthrow and replacement of the system itself is the only means of ensuring meaningful social progress. How would you answer them?

ALINSKY: That kind of rhetoric explains why there's nothing left of the New Left. It would be great if the whole system would just disappear overnight, but it won't, and the kids on the New Left sure as hell aren't going to overthrow it. Shit, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin couldn't organize a successful luncheon, much less a revolution. I can sympathize with the impatience and pessimism of a lot of kids, but they've got to remember that real revolution is a long, hard process. Radicals in the United States don't have the strength to confront a local police force in armed struggle, much less the Army, Navy and Air Force; it's just idiocy for the Panthers to talk about all power growing from the barrel of a gun when the other side has all the guns.

America isn't Russia in 1917 or China in 1946, and any violent head-on collision with the power structure will only ensure the mass suicide of the left and the probable triumph of domestic fascism. So you're not going to get instant nirvana -- or any nirvana, for that matter -- and you've got to ask yourself, "Short of that, what the hell can I do?" The only answer is to build up local power bases that can merge into a national power movement that will ultimately realize your goals. That takes time and hard work and all the tedium connected with hard work, which turns off a lot of today's rhetorical radicals. But it's the only alternative to the continuation of the present system. . . .

Read the entire article.

Dianne Alden has an excellent essay on Saul Alinsky and how the fringe left has embraced his methods and ridden them to power. It is a few years old, but if you are unfamiliar with Mr. Alinsky, it is well worth a read. Suffice it to say, the only thing Ms. Obama could have done to be more open about the agenda of she and her husband is to have worked in the phrase, 'from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.'


Anonymous said...

You make excellent points. As a Canadian, living in a 'socialist utopia' I can say with conviction that the election of Obama will lead to results that will make the presidency of Jimmy Carter look like the pinacle of US Presidential politics.

The left has been building a base of an economic 'emergency' throughout the entire Bush Presidency. The fact that the Clinton recession was longer and deeper than the Bush recession(caused by radicals just like Bill Ayers on 9/11) is entirely missed.

So, I predict that should Obama get elected and the slightest recession take place, that he will use this as an 'emergency' in which he will enact extra-ordinary powers and nationalise some part of the oil and gas industry. The amount of flight capital out of the US could result in the Euro becoming the reserve currency, and the enslavement of the US economy by Markists.

Come to Canada to avoid the 're-education' camps.



Anonymous said...

Interesting post, but too bad your conspiracy theory analysis of America has zero correlation with the truth, I think it will suffice to say that your a complete moron.