Archive for: September 2008

In no particular order, or in fact any rhyme or reason, here’s a look at some of the books on my shelf and on my nightstand:

Rampant Raider- An A-4 Skyhawk Pilot in Vietnam (interesting …

Pelosi, Dems want to avoid a “witch hunt,” by which they mean they don’t want to investigate what caused this financial crisis:
[Rahm] Emanuel, who served as a board member for Freddie Mac, one of the agencies that precipitated the …

I just got Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky in the mail (Vintage Books Edition, 1989). I would like to do a brief little series on what this mighty tome (196 pp) contains, thus to bring to light what might be going through the heads of our ideological opponents on the Far Left. And I won’t always be Fisking this book; I’ll spend some time in plain old analysis of the ideas therein. But the phonetics of “Fisking Alinsky” were too good to pass up. And in the quotes provided, all emphases are mine.

Prologue

The first problem I encounter is rhetorical. Can I use the phrase “Alinsky believes [concept]” in my analysis? Given that RfR is a “how to” manual, and given that the purpose of how-to manuals is to persuade, and given that Alinsky is trying to persuade the youth and the disadvantaged to do thus and so, it’s difficult for me to attribute all of his words to his actual beliefs.

So I will settle for “Alinsky says” or “declares” or “avers” or any other verb that expresses what he says without trying to get into his head. I cannot divine the depths of his heart, but his purpose in using words is clear enough, as will be seen in a later chapter.

RfR was written in 1971, and what struck me was how many of the ideas expressed in the prologue are no longer part of the Far Left in America today. Others are depressingly familiar. And so is the tone of some of his words. “Few of us survived the Joe McCarthy holocaust of the early 1950s,” he whines. (xiii)

But other statements belong to the “disappeared” ideas of the Far Left:
The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible. (xxiv)

Foreign currencies.  Victory Garden.  Uranium and hops futures.

Dual use technology.

Just In: Doctors at the prestigious Washington DC Center for Unnatural Life Extension working to save the ailing mortgage industry discover that patient is carrying a “Do Not Resuscitate” card and suspend all efforts . Time of death recorded …

Beldar
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the number two House Democrat in authority (behind only Speaker Nancy Pelosi), in defending his party from responsibility for the defeat of the financial stability bill today, delivered the all-time lamest excuse I’ve ever …

At American Thinker, who point out that Warner contributions are going almost exclusively to Democrats this time around.  You can see the video at several sites mentioned in the comments to that post, still.

Here are YouTube videos of …

Suspending the mark-to-market rule would allow banks and accountants to revalue their assets based on more sound criteria than the euphoria or panic that pervades the floor of the New York Stock Exchange minute-by-minute. Sub-prime …

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photo care of Theo Sparkcrossed from home

Police searching for Wario.