In response to questions I posed in the previous thread, thor chides:
This thread is about the evil radicalism that hibernates in Obama’s dark heart. We all know it’s there so we remind ourselves of his inner-evilness just so we know we know.
Cartoon it all you’d like, but the thread is about how much of Obama’s early ideological training — bolstered and finessed by his associations (Wright, Ayers, et al) — is apposite both to his current belief system and his superficial appeal as a managed candidate.
Alinsky thought the new left silly for having tried to attack the bourgeois institutions (and liberal ideology) head on, with outrageous costuming, in-your-face radicalism, smash-the-system rhetoric, and so on. The resounding beating the Dems took in 1972 only hammered that point home to the new left (Ayers and Dohrne, eg. — once radical activists who promoted violence — are now “mainstream”; respectable members of the “intellectual class”).
It was shortly thereafter that the new left — the “progressives” — decided it was better to attack from within, just as Alinsky and Gramsci counseled. The new left progressives, who at one time spit at the bourgeois liberals of the Democratic party, now joined them; and over the years, progressivism, having redefined the First Amendment, having enacted “diversity” initiatives and “hate crime” laws, having turned the very notion of “tolerance” on its head while successfully turning ideas like “merit” and “color-blindness” into “racist” and “sexist” code words, has established itself as the base of the Democratic party, and in so doing, seized control of the title “liberal.”
At the same time, progressives marched through other institutions — including the Humanities and social sciences, taking positions at universities, where they’ve agitated for PC speech codes, forced “sensitivity training,” “free-speech zones,” and an overall attack on Enlightenment principles. The result is that we now have bastions of higher learning that are, in many important respects, fundamentally anti-intellectual.
Naturally, the trickle down from the universities into the curricula of public schools is to be expected; so, too, is the reinforcement of academic progressivism by politicians raised under its auspices (Obama perhaps chief among them).
The question is, how much of all this has Obama himself internalized? The Alinsky model has not failed, as some have argued. Certainly, parts of it have had to adapt to new situations and challenges, but then, that’s the whole point behind it.
Putting that happy face on progressivist authoritarianism — the “liberal fascism” of Jonah Goldberg’s book — requires a long march through our institutions. And today, we see a press that rationalizes its own “advocacy” journalism, speaking of fact-reporting as pedestrian compared to the media’s new role of instructive story tellers; we see an education system that refuses entry of Judeo-Christian mythology, but that gleefully welcomes junk science that acts as a cover for a vast global wealth redistribution scheme; we see a university system so rigidly dogmatic that it has had to establish caged-off areas where dissent is “tolerated” (provided one stays in the box, and follows the guidelines on when it is appropriate to use his free speech); we have one major party that is owned by progressives — controlling its politicians through fear and threats to their funding and reputation.
We have a judiciary that, for 80% of Obama supporters, is wrong in appealing to the Constitution rather than to the far more open-ended idea of “social justice” — a “justice” conveniently defined by the progressive left to match their ideological agenda.
This is a march through our institutions in an effort to reframe them for progressive totalitarianism: the press, academia, one of the two major political parties, the rules for public discourse and “tolerance” enshrined in our founding documents, religious institutions…
And Obama, trained by those immersed in Alinsky’s strategems, is the new face of such a movement: the urbane intellectual minority who promises hope and change, but whose life remains much of a mystery, and whose previous connections are kept carefully guarded.
So while thor would like to hyperbolize away very real questions by labeling them “dark conspiracies,” I would like us to take a good look at exactly what it is that underpins Obama’s candidacy, just as I would like to have some idea what his policies truly are.
It is no accident that progressives are running a well-groomed cypher; the question is, will they succeed in getting him elected — and if they do, will it be by having internalized Alinsky and Gramsci?
As Roman points out in the comments of the earlier thread:
This thread is about the intellectual framework that shaped Obama. If Alinsky’s tactics were indeed a cornerstone of Obama’s training, why should we view this any differently than the intellectual framework that Putin grew up with (i.e. The KGB) and how this framework has shaped Putin’s actions. It’s a valid discussion to have. Certainly, we can agree that Obama wants to move the country to the left. What, prey tell, comes after socialized medicine? Let’s even jet back to current state – what comes after the TSA and what comes after the goverment takeover of the mortgage giants – how big is this thing going to get?
— To which I’d add that the palpable desire to frame such questions as inappropriate or inapposite is precisely what one would expect from those who have learned from Alinsky, if only indirectly.
Ironically, these same folks embrace a culturally materialist and new-historical approach to “interpreting” texts in order to “deconstruct” them — to show how they’re authors have been inscribed by the cultural dialogic that creates them.
And yet when it comes to “reading” Obama, such a well-worn maneuver is suddenly off-limits — laughed away as an attempt to “smear by association,” or “inscribe onto Obama” seminal moments from his autobiographical and biographical record that we’re suddenly told are insignificant. Even if it doesn’t appear to be insignificant to Obama himself:
And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community organizing and go to law school. Kellman, who was already thinking of leaving organizing himself, found no reason to argue with him. “Organizing,” Kellman tells me, as we sit in a Chicago restaurant down the street from the Catholic church where he now works as a lay minister, “is always a lost cause.” Obama, circa late 1987, might or might not have put it quite that strongly. But he had clearly developed serious doubts about the career he was pursuing.
Yet, two decades later, to hear Obama the presidential candidate tell it, those years in Chicago as a community organizer shaped the person–and the politician–he has become. Campaigning in Iowa last year, he declared that community organizing was “the best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School.” In a video this spring, Obama stated that community organizing is “something I carry with me when I think about politics today–obviously at a different level and in a different place, but the same principles still apply.” “Barack is not a politician first and foremost,” Michelle Obama has said. “He’s a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.”
[…] his campaign has taken the point a step further, implying that Obama the politician is a direct descendant of Obama the organizer–that he has carried the practices and principles of community organizing into his campaign, and would carry them into the White House as well. This is the version of Obama’s biography that most journalists have accepted.
The TNR story goes on to make the case that, despite Obama’s own protestations to the contrary, he is precisely the opposite of an Alinskyite — that community organizing disillusioned him and moved him away from the ideas of Alinsky that he’d lectured on while at Harvard. Which is to say, Obama is a creature of his unconsciously intended discarding of earlier radicalism, and that he is now to be judged not on what he claims about his past, but his current motivations.
I guess we’re all intentionalists now…
(h/t Tom)
And this, my friends, is why Barack Obama cannot be allowed to appoint Supreme Court justices.
Well, honestly I don’t know where to go since we can’t judge him by past associations, and no one (from O’s side) want to discuss the issues.
For shit and giggles, though I just skimmed the Barack on the issues page here and he supports giving kids $4000 bucks for college for 100 hrs community service. That’s $40 an hour! $40 an hour of OUR money. Wealth redistribution.
This one is old (’98), but it’s a hoot too :
Free public college for any student with B-average. (Jul 1998)
B-AVERAGE?
Just so. Attack the soft white underbelly. Use our best intentions against us.
I really, honestly, have no idea why some people are getting the hump about looking at the O!ffiliations. It seems pretty clear to me, swimming up to my oxters in real live socialists, that not only are all of O!‘s mentors/tutors/influences avowedly socialist, but that O! is some subset of socialist. Short of someone actually asking him what he thinks of the Alinsky method, community organising, Gramsci et al., and watching his face for signs of fibbing, I don’t know what the electorate is supposed to do to find out about a candidate. Perhaps the defenders of the faith could enlighten us?
Funny – my brother and I have been exchanging e-mails on this subject.
From Matt:
But, while he may not want it (the revolution) the whole premise of Gramsci was that over time (and it is generational) what was once revolutionary will become common place and before long the revolution is complete and few knew it happened. Think about the Episcopal church over time the far-left has taken over the church, gone its own way and restructured it (Anglican as well). Gay marriage and other social norms have been eroded – now gayness is no longer taboo and to be disgusted by it is a crime. Now I am not saying the end is neigh but using your sliding scale of moral superiority you can see how much of what you talked about is now either law (can’t do this, or say that) or has been turned into an accepted norm (it is a black thing and I don’t understand…affirmative action is okay and so on).
Obama will bring more of his ilk to the forefront of the party and steer it even further than Howard Dean has…they want the slogans to be class (and to a less extent race) warfare and envy.
My response:
They have restructured the Episcopal Church darn near out of existence. meanwhile other churches have sprung up and eclipsed them. The revolution didn’t really occur. If the Democrats want to go the way of the Whigs, then they should continue on this course.
Note – I am not saying that things haven’t changed, they have. They always do. The Anglican Church came into existence, and it can go out of existence. You can’t really capture the institution in the name of the revolution because then it ceases to be the revolution and becomes the establishment. The revolutionaries captured the Chicago Democratic machine and became the Chicago Democratic machine and run it just like old man Daley did. If they tried otherwise a new machine would arise and eclipse them. The machine has a reason to exist as it does.
With the Episcopal Church. The radicals captured it and turned it into their image – and watched as the congregations dwindled and weren’t replaced. The entire denomination may disappear this century. By changing the institution, they got rid of the reason for it to exist as it was, and in this case have gotten rid of its reason to exist at all.
Another example is academia. The revolutionaries took over the institutions – and pretty much kept them the same. Some new courses of studies, different student codes (which are as resented as the ones the revolutionaries lived under), but the institution remains. They didn’t change too much. Instead, they got captured by the institution. The tenured professor shouting fight the system? Yep, and as big a joke to the students as he is to you and me.
There are many forces at play in the life of this nation, as there are in every nation, and radical revolutionaries are only a small part of that. Give them their due, but no more. If the Democrats, led by the Obama and Dean crowd go to far to the left to fast, then like the Episcopal Church’s leadership, they will be suck-starting a pistol and will join the Whigs.
I may be wrong, but this is my impression of things. You take over the institution then either:
(A) You become the institution – meet the new boss, etc.
(B) You change the institution and you end up killing it, i.e. – the Episcopal Church.
With respect to academia, it is there – it was there when I was a student twenty years ago and I just ignored it. In a lot of fields of study you can just ignore them. The take over of the public schools has worked so well that vouchers and charter schools are on the agenda.
A final e-mail to Matt from me:
Remember that Marxists have a very strict view of history, that there is a strict line of one thing happening after another that is scientific and is preordained so the revolution taking over is inevitable. And then everything will freeze in place and no other forces arise that will dislodge the revolution from the institution or any new institutions arising and eclipsing the old ones.
“That crap just ain’t gonna happen! We’re the revolution and we are the last, best word on all that ever could be!”
This, to put it mildly, is bull-squash. History is ‘one damn thing after another’ as Churchill said. The revolution isn’t they only force acting out there and to sit and expect that everything will arrive like clockwork (or that you can move the clock’s hands a little faster to that point) is one of the greatest feats of hubris and narcissism ever seen.
“It ain’t all about you or your ideas, buddy. It really isn’t.”
O! say can you see?
Off to take the kid to school. Will respond when I get back.
“…So. Ain’t this some shit…?â€Â
And with the greatest possible respect toward Norm, who is the smartest, nicest, most avuncular lefty I know, there has to be a better reason for voting for someone than his b) symbolism. Otherwise, his conclusions are sound.
As you can tell, neither my nor my brother’s day has been particularly productive…
Talk about rose coloured glasses! Don’t worry about it? That’s a pretty cavalier look at letting the enemy take over. I suppose France would have eventually gone back to being French and the Germans would begin to prefer croissants to dark rye but somehow I doubt it. For better or worse, it will all work out the same? Why resist any change? There is no change! Too zen for me!
Oh, apologies to Norm – that would be his c).
With respect to academia, it is there – it was there when I was a student twenty years ago and I just ignored it. In a lot of fields of study you can just ignore them. The take over of the public schools has worked so well that vouchers and charter schools are on the agenda.
So, Mikey, just ignore it, and it will go away. Vouchers — how have they increased? It seems to me they’re something the left fights tooth and nail, usually successfully. Charter schools? — you do know they can be co-opted? We had one, at the taxpayers’ expense, run by the local do-gooders on the city council. A really progressive money-pit that failed miserably, after being dead last in the county academically for five years, complete with a new building — which is now for sale.
And a church disbanding/self-destructing is some kind of triumph against radical liberals? I guess I’m not nuanced enough to understand how that works out.
Jbean: “And a church disbanding/self-destructing is some kind of triumph against radical liberals? I guess I’m not nuanced enough to understand how that works out.”
Part of it your lack of understanding of the Anglican Synod, which is a collection of churches under the nominal leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury — he’s the spiritual leader, but it about as useful as a hood ornament.
Now, the current AofC is a self-described “hairy lefty” whose direct underlings like the church, but would, by their own admission, would like to get away from “all this God stuff.” The African and Asian branches of the church are far less atheistic in their approach to the faith.
Now, what is happening is not that “Anglican church” is imploding. What is happening is that geographical lines are breaking down and a reorganization on theological lines. As the liberal branch withers, cui bono? The liberals lose a bully pulpit, if nothing else.
Don Boudreaux letter to WSJ on “Tit for Tat”:
“…Those who raise busy-bodyness into a chief motive-force of public policy can hardly complain when their officious Frankenstein monster turns on them.”
I may be wrong, but this is my impression of things. You take over the institution then either:
(A) You become the institution – meet the new boss, etc.
(B) You change the institution and you end up killing it, i.e. – the Episcopal Church.
I’m not sure the Episcopal Church is a good analogy here. Sure, it’s as your friend said: The radicals wormed their way in, intimidated the orthodox into not showing them the door, and now they’ve effectively gutted the church and it’s dying. But there was also something faithful Episcopalians had as they saw their church eviscerated: Somewhere to go. Not only other denominations, but also alternative Anglican entities like AmiA and CANA.
Where do we go when the cryptomarxists have taken control of the levers of the central state?
Where do we go when the cryptomarxists have taken control of the levers of the central state?
You hang out on blogs like this one, if you’re anything like me.
Alaska, Jeffersonian.
You hang out on blogs like this one, if you’re anything like me.
Look north of the border to see the future of that idea. Bloggers like Jeff will find themselves brought before a “civil rights” tribunal, denounced and ordered to shut down forthwith in the name of “diversity” or whatever bee busses within the leftist bonnet at the time.
Alaska, Jeffersonian.
I’ve always liked Alaska for some reason. Maybe now I know why.
The greater the constant proximity to death by frostbite, the less red-tape bullshit people will tend to be willing to put up with.
Mikey —
I never said that the gambit would be entirely successful — though I should point out that, once the courts are controlled, all else falls into place.
I didn’t say it ignore it, ducktrapper and JBean.
What I said was don’t panic. If anyone thinks that there is some plan that will work perfectly for anyone, then I would really like to see it.
Seriously, when someone brings up Alinsky or Gramsci I usually hear wailings of doom. These guys were human, they got some things right and they got other things very wrong. How about that Soviet Union? Worked out real well there, didn’t it? Just because they were Marxists and wrote a book doesn’t mean they understood everything they were talking about.
I know I can (and often are) wrong. It galls me to hear people reference them as if they were the absolute true all the time gospel.
Institutions exist for a reason. You radically change that institution away from its reason to exist and it dies, like the Episcopal Church is dying. Like public schools are dying. If you do not change the institution then the institution captures you and you become just like those you supplanted. Or you can capture the institution and create a little part of it that you can make in your image while leaving much of the original institution in place, like the various ‘studies’ courses and departments at universities.
I am not happy that Episcopalian Church is dying (I am an Episcopalian) but it emphasizes, to me, the part that Gramsci, et al. missed. He was a Marxist, and they are materialists. In my opinion, he just saw the power and influence of an institution and failed to realize that it is made up of people. People who can pick up and leave at any time.
The radicals captured the Episcopal Church and watched as the congregations went elsewhere. All that work to capture that establishment institution and its influence and as soon as they do it has none. Yes, I find that very, very funny.
As others mentioned, all of the tactics that Alinsky laid out can be used by any other group at any other time. Same with Gramsci. Nothing is inevitable but that there will be change. I am not saying do nothing, all will be well, and I am equally not saying ‘we’re all doomed!!!!!’
I am saying see it for what it is, realize that their plans have frequently gone wrong, and fight back.
And above all – don’t panic.
Bloggers like Jeff will find themselves brought before a “civil rights†tribunal, denounced and ordered to shut down forthwith in the name of “diversity†or whatever bee busses within the leftist bonnet at the time.
Shh! Community organizers are listening!
You’ve never been to Canada? It’s like Jeffersonian says. We are fighting it but even our conservative government which theoretically opposes this infringement on free speech is reluctant to fight “Human Rights” commissioners. We’re all “for” human rights, aren’t we?
JeffG.:
Nothing is permanent, even if the courts are taken.
I didn’t say it wasn’t a problem – I did say don’t panic, and fight back.
Maybe I’ll blow up some toilets.
Kidding. As far as you know.
What your analysis leaves out Mikey is that a country built around the idea of individual freedoms and live and let live is particularly susceptible to having this type of gambit run on it. Read the link on Gramsci.
As for “not panicking”? I don’t think discussion is panic; and certainly analysis adds to the “fighting back.”
Individual freedom does me or my kid no good if it’s unavailable in our lifetimes. I don’t have the time or inclination to allow the takeover of institutions to deconstruct themselves. I’d rather avoid the problem on the front end by stopping the takeover.
B. Hussein Obama in his own words. (My emphasis) Hyde Park Herald,/i>, Sept. 19, 2001. Swiped from Malkin’s blog today.
Damned tags.
A similar exercise is going on in the Presbyterian Church USA. The last general assembly just voted again to remove the ordination standard as an essential tenet (fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness.) This despite the fact that the membership has voted in ever increasing margins to retain the statute. This happens because the left side of the debate has managed to worm itself in to the management structure of the denominational church and is going about weakening and, when possible, eliminating long held tenets.
What happens is that the more conservative members walk away from the church (reflected by PCUSA’s almost 40% decline in membership over the last forty years.) Many of those who leave form their own offshoots of the denomination, which is why the Presbyterian Church of America and The Evangelical Presbyterian Church (and others) exist and continue to grow.
One of the clearest patterns emerging in church membership (other than the ever so slight yearly drop in overall attendance) is that the significant growth is taking place in non affiliated churches which, for the most part, are conservative and operate on scriptural authority. Thus while the liberal theologies are becoming dominant in the traditional protestant denominations their membership continues to decline while offshoot or non affiliated conservative/evangelical/Pentecostal churches are growing quite rapidly.
These are the sorts of statistical truths that make many progressives’ heads explode.
As others mentioned, all of the tactics that Alinsky laid out can be used by any other group at any other time. Same with Gramsci. Nothing is inevitable but that there will be change. I am not saying do nothing, all will be well, and I am equally not saying ‘we’re all doomed!!!!!’
No, Mikey, we’re not doomed — but we don’t have cause for complacency either. So, um, who’s currently using Alinsky tactics — or updated tactics, as in the case of ACORN and Gamaliel, to fight the good fight, Mikey? Who’s got the reach and the funding they have, right now?
JeffG:
Much of what I have read (and this is my uncitable opinion) whenever someone mentions Gramsci or Alinsky it is with panic, not realizing the concern is that anyone can do this.
I don’t think discussion is panic (by definition); but I do think some people panic over this. Take that for what it is worth. I do agree it is better to stop a bad thing than to wait for it to run its course – that is only commonsense.
I think a country that isn’t particularly free is actually more susceptible to this gambit because the peopole of that country are more dependant on the institutions than in a more free country, and because those institutions have much more power in the less than free country than in the free one.
It has been a long time since I read Gramsci, Alinsky, or Toqueville, but the letter mentioned that one of the strengths of America was how Americans simply went out and made institutions and civic groups. There is something in that, I think, which makes a Gramscian-march more a problem and less the icy specter of doom.
In addition, there is a rigidity in Marxist thought that makes it attractive to those who want a pre-packaged all-in-one answer to evry question, but also makes it woefully inadequate at actually running things. Noam Chomsky may spout this stuff, but he sure as heck doesn’t run his life that way. Not if the rumors I have heard about his net worth are true. Same with Michael Moore.
Well, those are my thoughts on this and my contribution. Hopefully this post will be different than the last few on Gov. Palin.
Although O! says he discarded Alinsky radicalism, what he rejects really is the Alinky-esque notion in the pure grassroots nature of the revolution and Saul’s rejection of the politician or charismatic leader as being the focus of the revolution instead.
Having spent much time in academia, where Marxist/socialist ideology was already institutionalized and effectively force-fed to the student masses, as well as on the south side where just about everyone was amenable to the outcome based, redistributionist, tenets of “the faith“, what he probably surmised that Alinsky was wrong and what the enlightened masses simply needed was a leader; one palatable to the mainstream folks to both rally around and lead them into the utopian promised land. He thought that with all his gifts and allegiance to the ideals underpinning the collectivist ideology of fairness and social justice, that he was the man to take them there…
So you see, while he may have rejected Alinsky’s tactics, per se, Marxism/socialism was such an ingrained part of his universe and worldview that he never rejected the revolution, just the ideas of a particular revolutionary…
Which is also why he, like so many other self-proclaimed liberals, have no problem with the notion of justices relying more on the notions of social justice than the interpretation of the written law; because that written law is fundamentally incongruent with their accepted worldviews
I dunno. I smell Soros is all. You gotsta axe yourself, who wins if Baracky wins and who wins if Baracky loses? Same people. People eager to brand America a racist morally flawed beyond hope basket case. That’s not very coincidental I don’t think, and Soros is super eager to where he sprinkles his own millions all over the project but doesn’t really like anyone to know too many details. Baracky is just a for real tool I think. A hopey changey muppet.
Obama has this weird Oedipus thing about him, especially noticeable in his attempts to “deal with” the nomination of Palin.
“Nothing is inevitable here.”
–John McCain, one week ago.
For real, Soros has been lying way low this cycle. It’s not just cause he ugly.
Jeff wrote: “The Alinsky model has not failed,”
Alinskism took a shot to the head in the 60’s. I remember the scandal when Alinsky’s first group, the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, become a bastion of support for segregationist George Wallace in the 1960s. (Mentioned in the Judis Article.)
In the US, Alinsky hoped to use community organization to build the infra-structure for socialism. That became untenable when Back of the Yards turned out to be “objectively reactionary†The bloom really came off the rose for BHO in the 80’s:
“Joravsky kicked off the discussion by recounting Alinsky’s core principles. Green then brought up a controversial organization, Save our Neighborhoods/Save our City (SON/SOC), that had launched in February 1984 in response to fears that Harold Washington would promote public housing in certain white neighborhoods–leading to an influx of black residents. As Green noted, SON/SOC was organized by Alinsky disciples who were following their mentor’s principle of basing demands on self-interest.â€Â
In a certain sense, the entire history of leftism is an attempt to find the path to true socialism. Marx proposed that his science of history showed that capitalism would collapse and that the proletariat, organized by their experience of working in the capitalist’s manufactories, would then seize power and create communism. By the end of the 19th century, it was clear that was not going to happen. Sorrel advanced the idea of syndicalism and the general strike to replace it. His disciples such as Mussolini and Lenin, based their systems on his theories, but things quickly got ugly.
Obama drew the correct conclusion. Alinskyism would not create socialism. He then followed the same path (although I have no idea how much history he knows) as Mussolini and Lenin. He set out to use the leadership principle (Fuhrerprinzip) to create socialism. He had determined to become the ONE.
Folks: we have got to stop him.
[…] (h/t kelly) […]
The part of the Alinsky, Gramsci model I refer to is the idea of “framing” the ideas appropriately for the middle class.
I think a country that isn’t particularly free is actually more susceptible to this gambit because the peopole of that country are more dependant on the institutions than in a more free country, and because those institutions have much more power in the less than free country than in the free one.
We are free, but we have many, many people who are “dependent on the institutions.” They’ve been trained, cultivated, and subsequently doomed to failure by the Democratic Party — and with the unlimited influx of immigrants from south of the border — also a well-courted constituency of said party — that demographic grows daily.
I guess what frustrates me most about your comments is not that I think we should panic — but your apparent insistence that we are static as a nation — that it will be as it’s been before. Yes, America has a history of rising up to defeat openly leftist candidates — but what happens when the percentage of Americans who can even recognize, or know the implications of leftism — sink below the winning margin? Our kids, increasingly are taught nothing of history (praise be Bill Ayers), our affluence has produced multiple generations that know nothing of sacrifice or want, and that essential requirement — a college degree –now sends our kids to citadels of indoctrination, where, not being as dismissive as you, they get sucked into progressivism.
And your point that “there is a rigidity in Marxist thought that makes it attractive to those who want a pre-packaged all-in-one answer to every question, but also makes it woefully inadequate at actually running things.†Well yes, of course – but when has that inadequacy been historically discovered? After the fact of its institution. Like Jeff, I prefer not to have my kids and grandkids suffer through that particular proof of inadequacy.
The way to stop the Gramscian assault is to counter it. To study it, to organize against it, to infiltrate it, and to make it painful for it to do what it does.
Worked for al-Qaeda-in-Iraq.
It means some things I’ve yammered about before: Conservatives charging J-School, art school, and the cultural-university establishment, making some damn noise already. This has, in several ways, already begun. The fight is not going to be easy, but it’s not doomed.
One of the reasons I come here is Goldstein is a thinker on that level: he’s a perfesser, and although not a conservative, his major idea has to do with the function of the mind in a cultural context. More important than can be imagine.
The alternative, letting them have their Long March, will likely result in bad things: In losing any understanding of what it is to be free, we avail ourselves of whichever tyrant defeats the others. Hail Caeser.
No JBean – far from being static I think we are anything but static.
Marxism (and its off-shoots), I think, is static because it assumes stasis of the target, and offers stasis as the answer, its own stasis. Nothing changes under that.
I think that is demonstrated by history already – the history of the late Soviet Union, the history of the welfare state here and abroad. That history has already been written. The fact that the socialists here are turning their backs on internationalism (globalization) and advocating protectionism of all kinds, advocating the creation of a stasis, tells how rotted their policies actually are. They aren’t looking to the future, but like good little reactionaries they are looking to recreate a golden past that never actually was. (As a snarky example I note that the garb of the street protestors has not changed in about forty years.)
Please do not misunderstand me – I am not advocating surrender or not fighting back. Far from that. I have been saying that they (and their texts) ought to be seen realistically, especially from the basis of the historical record of success/failure. The history of the last seventy years here in America shows victories on their side and failures too. I think more failure recently than success, the reform of the welfare state broke their desired stasis, the decline of labor unions in most sectors (except one sector – curious that one, eh?) broke another stasis. The fact that they have been unsuccessful in preventing this nation from fighting – and they couldn’t prevent Canada and Britain from fighting either, and the low regard the MSM is held in, shows other failures.
If they are concentrating on keeping Wal-Marts out of communities it shows how far they have fallen. They are now not the revolutionary force, they are now the tools of NIMBY reactionism. Far from fighting the plutocrats and the despised bourgeosie they are now their servants.
Its a far cry from the old sandalista days.
Fight them, but they appear (from where I sit) to be on the backslide trying desperately to keep any kind of relevance. And it will be a joy to kick them onto the ash heap where so many of their comrades have already landed on their discarded policies.
I think we are crediting Obama with more thoughtfulness than he is demonstrating. The New Left pioneers may have specifically determined victory would be found by destroying from within but Obama and his ilk are just blithely doing it.
Didn’t Soros buy up a big chunk of Halliburton about a year ago?
Was it ‘cuz he wanted to make America’s #1 nation-building company run more smoothly?
I think we need to be cognizant of how unusual the U.S. (and to some degree the West) is: tyranny is the norm in world history, and if the SecProggs get everything wrapped around the axles, if they manage to turn us into a more “cheerful” version of the Soviet Union, we should not assume that we can ultimately tear all that down and build ourselves back up again.
We were lucky in our Revolution that we did not end up like Latin America or Africa or France. If we must fight another revolution, or if we simply sink down into mediocrity or worse, like the Egyptians, Persians, Mongols, Greeks, and Romans before us, we will be hard-pressed to be that lucky again.
It’s true that Alinsky et al. were not perfect and that not all of their schemes have worked, but there is a kind of “human inertia” that plagues any advanced, wealthy society such as ours. I’d argue that Alinsky and his ilk are just as much the product of that inertia as the perpetrators thereof.
Constant vigilance, folks. You can never sweep the kitchen floor so thoroughly that it never needs sweeping again.
“…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
I read it somewheres.
MikeyNTH:
As for the unrealistic stasis that the neo-Marxists would impose, it is comforting to know that they cannot achieve exactly what they want and maintain it forever, but the damage that they have done to society thus far, despite their lapses and failures, might not lead to an inevitable embrace of socialism, but instead to something much worse and more irrational.
I just finished reading Prayers for the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno, which imagines the Islamic States of America, wherein the social and moral collapse of the U.S. (plus the nuking of NYC, Washington D.C., and Mecca (to frame the Joooos!), sends half the populace rushing into the embrace of Islam, because it offers more certainty than the chaos that preceded it.
Which is how, in the real world, the Taliban got hold of Afghanistan. Post-Soviet Afghanistan was a bloodbath, with warlords running amok (and other rabble-rousers using Pakistani and Saudi money to keep the uproar going), so when the pure-of-heart, orderly Taliban came to the rescue and put down the combatants, the people gave them the keys to the country.
Sort of off-topic (or maybe not), there was an article in the Chi Sun-Times today about a new plan to pay kids in public schools to get good grades: as much as 4K for straight A’s, 1K for straight C’s. My first thought was “ooh, new cottage industry for the smart kids: help someone get good grades and take a cut of their money. Then I thought, ooh this is Chicago, so it’d be more like “help me get good grades and I’ll let you live.” More handiwork of those crazy community activists?
You can’t really capture the institution in the name of the revolution because then it ceases to be the revolution and becomes the establishment. … The machine has a reason to exist as it does.
Yes.
Conservatism is “things are.” Leftism is “things ought.”
“Things are” has a lot going for it: physics and millenia worth of human history, for starters. It’s damned near immovable. “Things ought,” on the other hand, merely can be an engagement of words, of symbols. Which means it’s no match for “things are.” You can make “crippled” become “disabled” become “handi-able” all you want, but a paraplegic still has no legs. You can co-opt the name “Episcopalian,” or “liberal,” but the things those words represented will simply find another way to exist.
“Things ought” cannot keep the sands in the glass from settling into the equilibrium they have to have. All it can do is shake up the glass for a while, make everything all messy and unnatural, and really agitate the sand. But gravity always, ultimately wins.
The “things ought” people, of course and ironically, call themselves “reality based.”
It is children, who do not think things out, who think “things ought.” It is the grownups who know that wishing a pony to show up on the doorstep will not make it appear, and that calling the family dog “a pony” will not make it one.
And when the revolution becomes the establishment?
It becomes the boss-man in the cellphone commercial, telling his flunky that this is his way of sticking it to the man.
To which the flunky says, ‘sir, you are the man’.
Tenured revolutionaries. Plutocratic populists. Whited sepulchures.
Jonas @ #52
Very nice. I’ll be stealing that, if you don’t mind.
[…] a candidate trained in stealth socialism, both a product of — and culmination to — the New Left’s long march through the institutions. Of course, today the “New Left” self-identifies as “liberal” or […]
Its sad to see that people who disagree with Barack Hussein Obama’s policies and his radicalism are branded as bigots or rascist. This is a real shame. Thank you for your perspective on this. its something very close to alot of american’s hearts.