Reading through several emails I received this morning it occurred to me that, though each note addressed a disparate bit of leftist dogma, in the aggregate the emails were essentially talking to one another — combining to draw a picture of the contemporary Democratic Party and its complete usurpation by those historically referred to as the New Left.
To try to make coherent the connectedness of these various strains of leftism, as they manifest in policy, in language, in narrative frameworks and the epistemological infestations those frameworks rely upon to maintain their consensus plausibility, I’m going to begin with a bit from Peter Pappas, who has just completed a new book on Saul Alinsky and describes the work thusly:
In my new book, Fanning the Flames: How Saul Alinsky taught the radical left to use ridicule, slander and intimidation to silence conservatives and advance its radical agenda (Birnham Woods Publishing, 2012) I explore how today’s leftists use accusations of racism, white privilege, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and greed to silence conservatives and marginalize their viewpoints.
In 1972, Saul Alinsky, the father of radical activism, wrote Rules for Radicals which codified the revolutionary tactics he used to organize unions, minorities and the poor to seize power from the “Haves” for redistribution to the “Have-Nots.” Alinsky’s rules have been used by the radical left ever since.
The point of my book is not to prove that Saul Alinsky was a “bad” or “evil” man — I am willing to concede that he was a good father, a good husband and a blast to have a beer with. I am not concerned with Alinsky the man, but rather with what the man taught others to do and the extent to which his teachings are followed today by community organizers and their left-wing followers.
I do not argue that the left is substantively evil — its political viewpoints deserve to and should be given a fair hearing in the marketplace of ideas, which is considerably more than the radical left is willing to concede to conservative viewpoints. However, I do believe that the tactics the left uses to enforce adherence to its substantive view are procedurally evil. They are unethical, immoral and highly destructive of our democracy and our nation.
In Fanning the Flames, I emphasize Alinsky’s oft-repeated instruction to radicals to use any means necessary to achieve their radical ends. “The only question the radical asks of a particular means,” Alinsky said, is “will it work.” My book illustrates through myriad real world examples how deeply today’s left has taken this instruction to heart.
Now, some of you — and I admit to being among those, too — will reject what we may see as a dodge of sorts Mr Pappas’ attempt to appear reasonable and responsible in tone: after all, if you are not willing to admit that the Marxism promoted by the New Left is substantively evil, despite the historical death toll and the trail of gulags that mark its totalitarian fantasies like geopolitical breadcrumbs, than you risk coming off as someone asking permission to play critic only after having first paid necessary tribute to the left. Too, granting that the left’s political viewpoints deserve a fair hearing in the marketplace of ideas presupposes either that the left is offering new political viewpoints beyond its liberal fascist collectivism, which it isn’t; or that we haven’t already given the hoary leftist dogma a “fair hearing” and rejected it, forcing the modern left to rely on the very tactics Alinsky proposed in order to compel Americans, through shame, race-baiting, class warfare, and the long march through the institutions, including now the Democratic Party leadership — tactics that Pappas himself allows are “procedurally evil.” That is to say, I see no way or reason to separate out the allocation of evil. The New Left, and those people who make up its activist base, are desirous of destroying natural rights and replacing them with privileges granted by government and a permanent bureaucratic ruling class; they are desirous of mocking and deconstructing individualism, American exceptionalism, and re-writing the Constitution, bending our history to conform to their anti-foundational philosophical worldview, itself the precise intellectual distillation of the ends justifying the means or might making right. Or, if you prefer, I find it curious that one could be forgiven the evil of the procedures they adopt, particularly when to the left, there is no separation between the personal and the political.
Having said all that, I still believe Pappas’ book is an important one, concentrating as it does on the ways in which Alinsky’s language and tactics direct and mold political discourse. In fact, the book touches specifically on tactics that more generally are borne of ideological kernel assumptions that have become institutionalized such that our politics, on both “sides”, has become infested with leftist tropes that move the country inexorably toward authoritarianism, a theme of my blog for the past decade.
Which brings me to the following bridge, articulated beautifully by Caroline Glick, who provides the historical overview for the New Left’s coup — in which, drawing on Arab influence and the radical chic attitude of the times, the movement began coopting blacks and black separatists, demonizing pro-Israel Jews, and driving a permanent and intentional wedge between the Jew-Black alliance that was largely responsible for driving the civil rights struggle.
I recommend you all go read the Glick column and the comments that follow it. Here, though, I’m going to reprint in full an email from Sarah Rolph, who incorporates Glick’s history into a larger bit of scholarship that provides even more context for the tactics and trajectory that have led to the New Left takeover of our country at the highest levels:
[In Glick’s column she] cites this government document which is quite interesting to read (and summarized in her piece). I was curious about all the redactions [to the document, released under FOIA in 2009, but now, strangely, missing. Go figure!] and wondered if any of the material referred to is online. Some of it is; I found the paper from the referenced December 1969 SDS publication (author redacted) right
here..I wondered who had archived these things, and
it’s them — the hard left still believes in that stuff. I looked around a bit on that site to see who these people are that still think the SDS is of interest, and they are active leftists who still love Angela Davis! There’s a recent piece by someone named Howard Machtinger that’s instructive about what the hard left believes (you will recognize our child president in much of this). I’m providing extensive quotes because the writing is good enough that it’s quite clear what their philosophical premises are — knowing these can help us defeat them.It begins with a note on the recent election:
“Even in defeat, the right may take solace, if Ryan succeeds in promoting his ultra-free market agenda” … “Ryan’s politics, while extreme and mean-spirited, have a long pedigree in American politics and culture. His combination of extreme individualism and a sometime implicit, sometime explicit, appeal to white/male supremacy runs deep in our culture, and not only among the elite. The influence of individualist ideology on the thinking of many Americans has kept the left on the defensive throughout our history. It is at our peril if we depict Ryan as merely a right wing crazy, though he is surely that, if in a ‘nice-guy’ pose. For, as I will try to show, his politics resonate with American political traditions and with average Americans (mainly, but not only whites). The deterioration of the economy will not automatically lead to progressive action or politics. If we want our nation to become a more decent and more democratic society, we need to respond with an alternative vision of equal resonance. This will include an attractive evocation of the communal and social, an analysis of the structural, but also a recognition of parts of the individualist tradition that are not only compatible with, but essential to, progressive politics.”
Emphases added. (If only that “individualist ideology” had done more than keep the left “on the defensive”!) I read on because I was very curious to learn what “parts of the individualist tradition” might be of interest to them (and how much of the rest they are planning to jettison).
Quite a bit later:
“Despite the near collapse of the world economy in 2008, neoliberal individualism remains the litmus test for economic policy and for ‘Americanism’, as well. It has infiltrated the thinking of many Americans. Young activists are hailed as ‘social entrepreneurs’ rather than as grassroots organizers. In the face of widespread and stubborn unemployment, there are countless initiatives, on the Web or in schools, focusing on individual “workplace preparedness” to prepare a resume, or dress for an interview, but little about collective action. Of course, Wisconsin and the Occupy movement are exceptions, but even in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker found a way to undermine public unions and prevail against being recalled, at least for the moment.”
Emphases added (that last one is hilarious!! they think “collective action” will get them a job?!)
The author has a partially clear view of reality, as shown here:
“The right perceives, not without justification, the two generations from Progressivism through the Great Society — which resulted in greater, if insufficient, regulation of business and the framework, if not the substance of a welfare state — as an historical aberration from the general trend of American history. Activists in the Tea Party yearn for a return to an era before income tax, government regulation, or (bizarrely) the direct election of Senators.”
…But is blinded by Marxist assumptions, as shown here:
“Market relations have come to dominate in previously relatively insulated social spaces, including education — which has been reduced to a form of vocational training. While public schools have traditionally prepared our youth for their roles in the capitalist economy — in what has been termed the Fordist or factory model — they functioned at some remove from capitalist logic. Now schools of education are dismissed as founts of (John) Dewey-ite socialism and as relics in the new ‘knowledge-based society’. Teachers are no longer honored as surrogate parents and enablers of economic and social mobility, or even dismissed as amiable non-competitors in the market. Test scores have become profit surrogates as the measure of success; teachers unions are routinely demonized (it being the most unionized occupation); and teachers are subject to Taylorist modes of evaluation, where their work is increasingly surveilled and their time regimented. FOX News pulls no punches in demeaning teachers. However, it is not just right wing shock attacks; a bipartisan consensus has encouraged Democrats to go after teachers unions, one of their most loyal electoral bases. So-called ‘reformers’ in the Democratic Party have sometimes led the attack.”
Emphases added. Apparently progressives consider it crazy to pay attention to whether the kids are getting educated. I guess anything resembling an outcome is part of “capitalist logic.” I find it amazing that the assumption is that teachers unions are being demonized for no reason (whereas the reality of course is that they are being criticized for the dual damage they do, political corruption and ignoring the interests of kids).
This is chilling:
“In truth it is no easy task to rally a country around its decline. Yet, as reality sets in, that is exactly what is needed: a vision of our future not steeped in boosterism or exceptionalism but one which can energetically engage new realities such as economic stagnation or impending environmental crisis, not solvable through the individualist or free market kit bag, or by American unilateralism; and not to be wished away. In fact, the goal of left activism is to actually accelerate this fall from a place of domination to one that is more humane, while cushioning the inevitable blow to our society and others by (re)building strong communities and values of solidarity and connecting our efforts with that of others throughout the world. The Arab Spring is part of our renewal, as well.”
Emphases added. So they think they can “cushion the blow” through sheer solidarity, eh? Pathetic. The reference to the “Arab Spring” is not explained for followed up on. I guess the hard left is unaware that the so-called Arab Spring is taking us in the direction of Nuclear Winter.
The essay rambles on:
“As I have noted, there are other opposing, trends in American history and culture, but these have often fought an uphill battle against crude American individualism.”
This is followed by a paragraph about the inexplicable inability of the left’s rag-tag notions to take the country by storm. Finally we come to the recommendations, and they begin with this — emphasis in original:
“We must help people understand and critique the structure of economic opportunity; to break away from understanding economic mobility as purely a triumph of individual will or economic problems as resulting from individual shortcomings.” This is followed by a very long section of purported facts about “constraints on individual action.”
These are long-winded versions of all the baloney you have already heard from these people; society is to blame, the game is rigged, capitalism is the problem, The Man is trying to keep you down… But eventually he does get to the section on “good individualism”, saying:
“Of course, individual experience and choice matter. In our summoning up of the structural and systematic, we cannot lose sight of the reality that these larger entities are mediated by the individual. There is individual accountability. A goal of political organizing is to convince people that each of them has choice and power.”
Hmm. How to reconcile these things? They admit this much, sheepishly (but with painfully amusing examples–this could only be written by someone who grew up in a free country and doesn’t understand how lucky he is to have done so):
“It must further be admitted that the modern notion of the individual does represent a triumph of freedom. People are now freer to choose their life partners or to leave them. The rights of free speech, association, and assembly enshrined in the Bill of Rights need to be protected and expanded, not curtailed. In fact, these individual rights open up space for forms of group solidarity. It is indicative that the free market view of individual rights is skewed. It opposes reproductive freedom (see Ron Paul34) and wants to control and discipline people’s bodies. Nor is it seriously concerned with government surveillance and intrusive police power.This is because its individualism is rooted in white and male supremacy. Women are not viewed as fully formed individuals and paranoia of the ‘other’ justifies the violations of basic freedoms. So the job for critics of extreme individualism is not to downplay the achievement of individual rights, but to broaden their application. It has become routine for the right to identify progressives with societies who have repressed these hard-won individual rights and we should be capable of a convincing response.”
Emphases added. This person is not stupid, but he is willfully blind. The idea that American individualism is “rooted in white and male supremacy” is really nutty. Where does it come from? It seems like maybe this is a good place to focus the battle of ideas. I hear this all the time, “the Constitution was written by rich white slave-owners” as if that invalidates it. What would it take to demolish this destructive meme? As to the idea that there is something nefarious and incorrect about identifying so-called progressives with societies that have repressed individual rights, and that a convincing response could be made… words fail.
Then comes a section on stamping out rugged individualism by promoting community. Then a section on the future, which includes a lot of painfully naive discussion of foreign policy such as:
“New concepts of security are called for, as well as new standards of international behavior. Wikileaks has opened a window on the dirty workings of US international policy — demonstrating the necessity of a more open policy in sympathy with the struggles of people around the world rather than a fruitless attempt at domination.”
Again, this sort of thing can only be written by someone who has no idea how lucky he is to have been born in a country that has, until recently I guess, had a very appropriate concept of security that protects our lives. And here is the paper’s sad semblance of a summary:
“Democracy is premised on the notion that people should have control over how they are ruled. The market as the arbiter of human worth, as such, is anti-democratic at its core. The collateral damage of what establishment economists call market externalities (like pollution or CO2 emissions or offshoring of jobs), betrays its callousness towards society as a whole, its untrustworthiness. A purely market society is a cold, manipulative place without human warmth or nurturing culture. There are greater romances than that of commodity worship. The economy exists for human purposes, for us; we do not exist to be handmaidens of a rigged and often mean-spirited system. As an alternative, we can connect power to solidarity — rather than hopelessly pleading and lobbying the powers that be — recalling the warning of revolutionary Benjamin Franklin: “”We must hang together…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.” Challenging power is of necessity a group project. Individuals as individuals have little choice, but to accommodate power. Individuals cannot effectively challenge a system; they can only hope to rise in it. Even as fundamental change seems improbable, the task dauntingly formidable; the current self-destructive, dysfunctional, and mean-spirited system is signaling its own impossibility. It is our turn to once more re-ignite ‘the light of freedom’.”
Control over “how we are ruled.” What a dismal vision. The idea of the market as a ruler or arbiter is of course deluded. “A purely market society” is of course an extreme strawman. The market is the market and society is society, they are two different concepts and neither one subsumes existence in the way assumed by progressive loons whose thinking is polluted by Marxist assumptions. “The economy exists for us…. we do not exist to be handmaidens of a … system” shows just how uninformed this person is about the economy–leftists think the economy is an external beast of some kind, not realizing that the economy is another term for the market and those are just terms for *the things we do and charge money for* And that of course is the other concept that needs to be taught to our poor misguided compatriots: what the heck the economy actually is. It goes without saying that the idea that these people are fighting for “freedom” is beyond offensive.
In Sarah’s analysis — and in the text of a kind of recent New Leftist manifesto itself, you can see very clearly all the Alinsky influence — as well as the revisionism and deconstructing of terms that is the stock and trade of leftist narrative peddling.
Sarah notes that the allusion to the Arab Spring and its force as a motivator for the New Left isn’t explained, but I think the connection is fairly simple: when your worldview is predicated on the Rousseavean notion of noble savages and the inherent goodness of the poor or “exploited,” you view revolutionary comeuppance as an end in itself, an instance of form over function — and then are constantly disappointed when the Utopian outcome supposedly presaged by the freeing of the oppressed devolves over time into a new tyranny with a new set of oppressors and oppressed. And that’s because leftism itself as a political model — by way of its ideological assumptions and its enforced collectivism, whereby diminution of the individual into part of some group or class as a way to secure conformity requires a police state mentality — leads inexorably and inevitably toward authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and the reduction of individual humans to masses to be managed by the wise ruling elite. That is, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy of enslavement and economic misery that continues to believe itself, haughtily, and without a clear understanding of the human psyche, a force for moral good and collective bliss.
And each time one of their experiments in perfecting man through the central management of earthly gods — the government and its smothering administrative appendages — fails spectacularly and with a demonstrable history of human suffering, some new attempt, which ignores history, ignores the fundamental trajectory of the kernel assumptions of the philosophy that must always drive collectivism into authoritarianism, totalitarianism, or dictatorship, is proffered by those who, this time, will get it right, their being the smartest of all the wizards of political and social smarts that came before them.
Hubris. And a will to power. All nicely framed for them and by them as the compassionate and moral pursuit of “social justice.”
Which brings me to the next bridge, this time offered by Terry H, who, in introducing an important city journal article from Peter Cove, writes:
Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it. It therefore comes as no surprise that those who willfully ignore history set the stage for an encore. If nothing else the attached article illustrates the degree to which Gramsci’s legions have taken over key societal institutions and use the power of these institutions to rewrite history.
50 years later the schools, media, government, etc go to heroic lengths to gloss over the damage caused by addicting people to other people’s money, and instead dedicate themselves to expanding the addiction as a means to further political agendas that destroy the nation’s economic health. You would think the fiscal cliff drama would bring this into perspective. Instead it serves to illustrate the power of Gramsci’s megaphone to drown out facts and replace them with narrative.
Precisely right. Far from being “fundamentally unserious,” addressing the left’s control not only of the means of disseminating their message, but how that message is packaged and made to work — that is, what linguistic and hermeneutic assumptions they’ve institutionalized to allow their messages to take hold and resonate, and how that resonance is produced and reinforced — is paramount to understanding how to defeat them.
Not only that, but a re-asserting of one of language’s fundamental truisms — interpretation is only that when the object is to understand the signification of author / utterer, which is frozen at the point of signification — is the very remedy for beating off the Gramscian stranglehold on all the things that give leftism its political power: identity politics, political correctness, “authenticity” in speech, meaning (and even “truth”) as a function of an interpretive community’s consensus, of manufactured consent.
It simply must be done. And in order for it to be done, those on the right who cling to the “textualism” that empowers them to use the linguistic tactics of the left to their advantage, must finally reject that incoherent linguistic notion, tied to the idea of “democratizing” a text (a flowery and dishonest description for robbing the individual of his meaning and granting it to the collective, in precise accordance with their economic views, and as a way to reinforce them on the epistemological level).
Intentionalism just is. And it is the key to enacting a massive cultural paradigm shift that will reconnect us to Enlightenment notions of truth and rationality — and lay waste to anti-foundationalism, whose perverse brilliance rests with its absolute claim that there is nothing absolute, freeing its proponents up to argue, as Stanley Fish did, that there is no hypocrisy, there are only the desired results and the ways to attain them.
— Which, if you’ve kept up thus far you’ll note takes us right back to Alinsky, and right back to “the ends justify the means.” And that is a seductive and liberating philosophy, particularly when its coupled with the self-granted belief that all you do is good and right, making the means you use a necessary evil in the culmination of proper and moral and good end: a Utopian collectivism in which the masses are contented and managed effectively and efficiently by their betters in a materialist world ironically built around the idea that materialism itself, as expressed by capitalism and consumerism, is evil.
What is so frightening — but not terribly unexpected — is the growing confidence the New Left has in the success of its takeover of the country. The “post-partisan,” “post-racial” presidency of Barack Obama has been, predictably, the most partisan presidency of our lifetime, with racial division and class division constantly stoked by the very same people who, long ago, cut their radical teeth on what they’ve now learned to package in the parlance of free-market capitalism and American ideals. Phrases like “economic patriotism” and “fair share” and “tolerance” resonate precisely because they pay superficial homage to longtime American sensibilities, even as they are actively working to deconstruct and re-imagine the traditional referents to which they attach themselves: fairness is redefined not as a stable rule of law and an equality of opportunity guaranteed by natural rights, but rather as stealing the fruits of one individual’s labor to transfer it to another individual who hasn’t put in the labor himself; tolerance is no longer defined by our willingness to accept ideas and opinions we may personally find repulsive, but is rather now a form of speech control, whereby any offense given is deemed “intolerant” and worthy of public shame and silencing.
And to that end, we see increasingly bold — and repulsive — attempts at turning Black or Jewish conservatives into “race-traitors” of a sort, while constitutionalists in generally are labeled as extreme and potentially mentally unstable.
Because to the left the personal is the political, the politics of leftists given a platform to reach the public — be they actors or media figures or movie critics or Hollywood producers or newspaper editors — is never far from the surface of anything they do, and in recent years, they are expressed oftentimes with a candor that is jarring.
Take, for instance, this anti-gun screed by a Virginia editorial staff, or this review of Django Unchained from a Boston Globe movie critic, the relevant bits of which are noted by Weasel Zippers and Jonah Goldberg (h/t geoff B):
In “Django Unchained,” Jamie Foxx plays Django, a black slave purchased for about a hundred dollars and freed by a German dentist and bounty hunter named Schultz (Christoph Waltz). A straightforward treatment might have involved having the slave run away north. But the movie Quentin Tarantino has written and directed is corkscrewed, inside-out, upside-down, simultaneously clear-eyed and completely out of its mind.Django is married. He and his wife (Kerry Washington) were savagely lacerated and separately sold. He’s not free until she is. So he works as the bounty hunter’s sidekick, with the bounty hunter agreeing to help him find the wife and rescue her from a Mississippi plantation. . . .
Samuel L. Jackson plays crusty, waxen Stephen as a vision of depraved loyalty and bombastic jive that cuts right past the obvious association with Uncle Tom. The movie is too modern for what Jackson is doing to be limited to 1853. He’s conjuring the house Negro, yes, but playing him as though he were Clarence Thomas or Alan Keyes or Herman Cain or Michael Steele, men whom some black people find embarrassing.
For years, Jackson has been enabling Tarantino to fancy himself this honorary negro. Jackson can deliver the n-word, and other profanities, with ketchup, mustard, and relish. It’s the same here. That word might be fired off more than any bullet. But Jackson is going for something that’s different from the sleazebag he played in Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown.” The white vileness in “Django Unchained” is one thing — it’s stock, even DiCaprio’s psychological version of it — but Jackson’s is what sticks with you. We’ve never seen as life-size a black monster as this, not even in D.W. Griffith. Jackson turns the volume way up on his entire persona to broadcast the nightmare of black self-loathing. It’s a terrifying, fearless, and easily misconstrued performance.
Here, “black self-loathing,” as determined by a presumably more “authentic” black, the critic Wesley Morris, it tethered specifically not only to the trope of Uncle Tom or House Negroes, but to those who are singled out, frozen, and demonized as the real-life objective correlatives to such common literary figures: Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes, Herman Cain, Michael Steele — all, surprise!, either conservatives or Republicans.
By de-authenticating conservative Blacks, Morris, like many of his white liberal intellectual role models, is reducing authentic blackness to a political position — and specifically, adherence to a political party that historically has always tried to keep blacks on the plantation, both literally and figuratively. That is, he is a useful idiot — and one who appears confident and proud in such idiocy.
Which suggests to me that blackness and its definition for Morris is but a tool to separate out and shame those who don’t follow the leftist collectivist agenda — a punishment, an Alinsky move, and a disgusting display of cynical racial-politicking that has less to do with race than it does to do with power and those who desire it and feel they deserve it.
And that brings us full circle.
I find it impossible myself to disconnect the evil of the procedure from the supposed political legitimacy of the ideology. The Left wants to enslave you. To control you. To manage you. To dictate what you are allowed to have, what you “need” and what you don’t, how much of your labor belongs first to them, and so on.
To aid in bringing the United States in line with past attempts at leftist Utopianism, the New Left is using the Cloward-Piven playbook to try to crash the system, create the global crisis that will remove the US as a hyperpower and allow them to step in and reorganize the society around their notion of “fairness.” Which is precisely this: they know what’s best and they will determine how the rest of us live.
It’s about power. And it’s a story as old as man.
Sorry for the length of this piece. I’m off for the rest of the day, but there’s plenty here to fuel discussion. If you find the observations herein valuable, please share the essay on social media, Twitter, etc. Not to stoke my ego, but rather to lend a kind of unified perspective to anyone who may be open to it.
Thanks, and please, discuss.
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To your first point (as I work my way through this)
Now, some of you — and I admit to being among those, too — will reject what we may see as Mr Pappas’ attempt to appear reasonable and responsible in tone as a dodge of sorts:
I noticed something similar this week. Regards David Gregory and Howard Kurtz’ defense, instapundit writes:
I hate to pick on Kurtz, who’s a nice enough guy, but his defense of Gregory has been absurd. And, I have to say, since leaving the Washington Post for the Daily Beast, he seems to have become more of a cheerleader for the press than a critic.
It was that last sentence about his work at the Post that I remembered this:
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/19/kurtz-dont-trust-washington-post-reporting/
In that article Morrissey gives a bunch of hosannas to Kurtz as well. So it would seem this amiable fellow, Kurtz, had a bit of the ole cheerleading in him even when he was with the Post. You’d figure at some point in time, the “reasonable and responsible” folks would realize that Kurtz is a hack, at the very least, and that’s a kind interpretation.
Yeah, but he’s their hack. Because he’s reasonable. And responsible. Just like they are.
Except they aren’t. Because they support the same people, and side the same issues as all the racisist, sexisit bigoted, homophobic bitter clinging rednecks living in Jesusland.
And no amount of good will hunting will ever result in reciprocation. Which is why, when push comes to shove, all too many of the so-called conservative intellectual/media elites will side with their self-selected counterparts on the progressive left, and tell us to shut up and go away. At least until the next election.
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Unless I’m mistaken, this is the Caroline Glick column Sarah Rolph brought to Jeff’s attention.
Add to the Glick column this piece from Jeff G. in Sept. The links he put in and some I put into the comments. I’ll add this one.
Yes, that’s it, Ernst, thanks for adding the link.
Somebody’s got to spell geoffb once in a while.
Since we’re the ones out of power now, we should embrace Alinsky tactics with gusto. Obviously they work. This isn’t high school debate team, its a gutter fight with busted bottles and straight razors where “good guys” occupying “high ground” wind up in the gutter bleeding out.
The difference between us and them, is we can turn it on on/off as needed, and know its just a tactic. The left is so indoctrinated, its become who they are. They know no other way and don’t see it as just a tactic – it infuses their very being. Alinsky tactics are their default, and only, mode of operation.
“And that is a seductive and liberating philosophy. . . ”
Save on the chance that it isn’t a philosophy (or an act or appearance in the world of the behavior of a philosopher) worthy the name at all, and we only happen to mislabel it “in the best modern way” (“the children learn to cipher and to sing, to study reading-books and histories,” he said), rather than calling it what it is — now — and was, when issuing from the mouth of Protagoras: sophistry. Nothing but sophistry, plain and simple.
Sounds good @PurpAv , I just can’t seem to justify the means like a progg can.
‘Bout all I can do is hang in until they give me sufficient reason to shoot’em.
Is why they’re coming for the guns, all pro-active like…
It is indeed sophistry.
Thanks for posting this, Jeff. You’ve encapsulated a number of things that I have thought about our frenemies on the Left.
Lee, they aren’t going to get our guns. There will be massive non-compliance with any attempts at seizure.
Ironically (or not, sdferr), Fish, a major proponent, has called himself a modern day sophist. So yes, you’re right.
Oops. Glick link got lost when I was fixing formatting. Added it back to post. Thanks, Ernst, and sorry, Sarah.
They’re going to try. When the State police show up at your door, what are you going to do?
I think it’s worse than sophistry. It’s a form of cultural programming. It’s a restraint for the mind and the personality generated by a superior. It’s a brain shackle and they are deeply trained that they aren’t allowed to have the key for it because if they dare to take the shackle off they become fair game and outside of the group. Merely questioning their assumptions turns them into what they’ve been taught to hate and blame for all misfortune. It’s cult stuff.
Just look at Juan Williams to see how it works. Juan KNOWS how sick his side is because they got him thrown off of NPR and called a loony just for saying that he gets scared when he sees some middle easterners acting weird on planes. He ran to Fox and they took him in. But he STILL bats for the other side. His Liberal handlers (who are just people he knows acting the way they think liberal people should act) use the privileges of his liberal status as a sort of hostage to keep him in line.
Juan knows that he can and will be demoted and ‘destroyed’ by the people he wants to believe are his friends. He knows that if he says the wrong thing too much they’ll take away his sanity credential and see him as a babbling freak-show, take away his intelligent status and leave him a declared dumb ass, take away his blackness and leave him an uncle tom, take away his enlightened male status and leave him a snarling violent quasi-rapist just like all the other guy pigs, take away his victim status and leave him an oppressor who deserves to be attacked, etc.
Everything he is he thinks can be taken away for bad thoughts and misbehavior, and then he’ll be like all the other dumb and ugly little schnooks he NOW has to work with. He’ll be outside and the door will be locked behind him.
They won’t. You heard it here first.
I don’t find your confidence comforting.
I suggest you search yourself and find an answer to that question, because the game is on and that is a step they must take to complete their plans.
If you’re right, I’m a happy man, and it’s an interesting thought experiment.
If I’m right, you had better have a plan.
The Communists were against the Jews not for genetic reasons but for the same reasons they also were against the Christians too. Both, if they were true believers, they had allegiances to something[s] higher than the Party. God and family coming first is not allowed.
You can be Christian or Jewish [in name only] as long as the Party comes first. The CPUSA had a huge influence with the New Left even as they publicly, for public consumption, fought over angels on the head of a pin.
When the New Left splintered in the 70s it was the CPUSA who worked at and succeeded in putting it back together in the community organizing form we see now. Secular Jews and secular Christians are allowed in as long as they give their first allegiance to the Party.
We might even look closely at the “form” culture, cultural, and etc., in order to once again learn to look at the substances which are presumably underlying these painted on or overwritten “forms” or formalisms. Schnooks, indeed.
Yeah
That Arab Spring thing is progressing nicely in advance of the appointments of Hagel and Kerry.
How anyone can call the rise to power of a bunch of virulently anti semitic Islamic douchebags a success is beyond me.
Not to mention (off topic)
really?
John Kerry?
Chuck Hagel?
Geez. The Israeli’s need to invent a pill that cures self loathing so Hollywood and Manhattan Jewish folks can regain their grasp on reality
link
They won’t. You heard it here first.
They already have in some cities. Registration lists inevitably become confiscation lists. That’s the raison d’etre for registration.
The first thing I’m going to do is ask if they have a warrant. The second thing is to tell them I misplaced my rifles. Third, I’ll call the local press to come and cover the new police state. Fourth, I’ll tell them even if I had guns, which sorry, but I lost them, as far as you know, I wouldn’t hand them over to you because doing so violates a natural and Constitutional right. Fifth, I’ll invite them to rejoin the USA instead of acting as paid gestapo for the Obama Reich.
What Jeff said.
OT: Hillary admitted to hospital with a “blood clot.”
It’s beginning to look like SoS won’t testify anytime soon.
Subdural? Or is this something more akin to phlebitis?
It was read by the newsie on Faux as “a blood clot”. No other information.
I did see that she supposedly has ‘brain cancer’ on the cover of the National Enquirer at the supermarket, though. So there’s that fwiw.
i hope they check the cankles too
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been admitted to a New York hospital after the discovery of a blood clot stemming from the concussion she sustained earlier this month.
Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines says her doctors discovered the clot during a follow-up exam Sunday. Reines says Clinton is being treated with anti-coagulants.
Clinton was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital so doctors can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours.
Reines says doctors will continue to assess Clinton’s condition, “including other issues associated with her concussion.”
Can you condense this to something that will fit in a tweet? Otherwise, I’m afraid it is beyond the attnetion span of about 94% of the population.
And now, for something completely OT:
Better luck next week bh!
(NOT!)
Tempermentally, I’m really uncomfortable with going that route, and here’s why:
I don’t know how long we retain the ability to leap in and out of anti-foundational concensual reality if we’re going to start thinking like they do on a regular basis. What do we win by becoming a alternative anti-foundational concensus based reality of our own? Won’t Alinsky tactics, even if turned to our own ends, infuse our very being, becoming our default mode too?
#proggtards are extremists: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=46282
Thank you for the link to the Dostoevsky piece newrouter. I would have missed it otherwise.
like holding david gregory accountable to the laws he espouses?
Good stuff regarding tactics, this is an excellent piece about targets:
“Just as the industrial revolution broke up the manufacturing guilds, the information revolution today is breaking up the knowledge guilds. “
Walter Russell Mead, here:
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/12/08/the-crisis-of-the-american-intellectual/
Read it all.
i don’t use “espouses” too often and i got it right:)
I agree with Ernst. I’m not going to use Alinsky’s tactics. Others are of course free to do so if they see fit.
Being irrational when dealing with irrational people is only going to end in a bad way. Anyone who has ever gotten screamed at in public by a complete stranger for, say smoking in public, knows that it’s best just to keep a weather eye on that person and not engage them in defensive action as it only emboldens them. Anti-Smoking is a silly example, but one that has become a threshold or gateway bullying technique by would-be do-gooders.
Our society has eroded in many ways (as we talked about the other night on Darleen’s thread regarding childrearing styles) and emboldened the less aggressive to do things like take a drink out of a pregnant woman’s hand at a party, regardless of whether they know each other or not. Something like this would have never been done in the past. Our personal space has become smaller. People overshare and expect us to reciprocate and become angry if we do not. People have a difficult time keeping thier private lives private even if they wish to.
Anyway, I getting way off topic so I’ll stop.
don’t you think it would fun to feed black peeps beans and take them to the symphony to fart?
That’s holding him to our standard (all men equal under the rule of law). Holding Gregory to Gregory’s standard (special privilege to the special (re)born) is what Howard Kurtz is doing.
If David Gregory were just a guy in DC, he’d be in jail trying to make bond before he went to trial and then to prison for possession of contriband.
don’t you think holding the “elites” accountable using alinsky tactics(pick the target, freeze the target..) is doable here with gregory? what i’m noticing is that our “side” peters out after a hack like kurtz dismisses our argument. if our side had gonads every white house press event should have the question: is david gregory above the law in dc?
no david gregory is just a guy in dc.
Yes he is. Only he’s more equal than we are.
so that fits in with the dostoevsky quote posted above. perhaps we should be disabusing the proggtards of that notion?
Yes we should and that is why they aren’t getting our guns.
That’s when they interrupt and say yes we do have a warrant (because they know you purchased an outlawed gun from records), now think of your family and hand them over so we don’t have to arrest you and search your house.
Now what.
I’m not trying to be an asshole here, I think we all need to have a real plan for the eventuality.
Me, being an old cowboy with nothing but revolvers and such (unless they want my auto load Winchester Super X 12, which I’ll hand over with a smile), I doubt I’ll be a target straight off. But when it happens, I’ll see myself as a criminal none the less, form a militia, and ask Senor Sanchez to get me a full on M-16, and a thousand rounds of vest penetrating ammunition. They won’t take that from me alive.
If I’m going to be declared a criminal, against the laws of God and the constitution, I’m going to be a competent one…
Michael Steele *is* embarrassing
Here in Georgia, if the state police come to enforce a gun law it’ll be to make sure I have the minimum number and variety required by law.
Okay, I see where you’re going now. You can’t use the hold them to their own standards rule –they haven’t any to hold them to.
Which is why the exercise is futile, if you’re looking to make the Gregorys of the world repent of their doings.
On the other hand, if your goal is to point out the absurdities of the world view espoused by the Gregorys, there’s some merit in denouncing the privileged double-standard of the declared enemies of “privilege.”
But that runs you into another intractable problem. We’re Michael trying to tell Fredo Corleone to smarten up. And they’re Johnny Ola telling Fredo how smart he is, how important to the family, and how Michael ought to show more respect.
No, Lee, they’ll know I purchased a legal weapon that they’ve since decided to make illegal and confiscate. That’s theft. And I won’t have the guns in my house if that’s the case. They’ll have to get a much broader warrant.
But I’m with you. If they decide that in retrospect it’s either I surrender legally purchased (expensive) items to them or become a felon — while they are permitted to keep theirs — I’m going full-on outlaw. And I know a lot of people who also have that plan.
Shit. Next week I’m going to get the Gadsden flag tattooed on my neck and molon labe on my wrist.
i don’t think our side is part of a “crime” family. for example: when the baracky drones on about “million/ billioaires paying their fair share” someone on our side should ask baracky when the fed gov’t is going to collect the billions in unpaid taxes that the fed gov’t employees owe.
Here in Georgia, if the state police come to enforce a gun law it’ll be to make sure I have the minimum number and variety required by law.
Same here or they need to borrow a shoulder rig.
i would venture this: if the nytwapoabccbsnbcpbsmsnbc are saying nice things about you; you ain’t doing the job we elected you to do. “bad press coverage” should be a badge of honor
I’ll also let them know they are little functionaries of a tyrannical government, that they are violating their own Constitution, and that they should be fucking ashamed of themselves. I’ll make fun of their crisp, pressed uniforms and their shiny little badges. I’ll ask them if enslaving fellow citizens who had not broken the law until the law committed them to felonies is a good trade-off for their fucking pensions. And then I’ll tell them that Rock and Roll Never Forgets.
“Just following orders” doesn’t cut it.
Still. Do you think most people are just going to hand over their weapons? Do you think they’re going to allow Feinstein to require them to register and pay $200 a piece for anything semi-auto?
I don’t see it. I see a revolt. But then, I also thought Romney would win, so who’s to say? Maybe we no longer have the stones to fight for our natural rights.
here’s an example of our side being stupid
This Is How Congress Is Trying to Avert $7 a Gallon Milk Prices in 2013
if orangeman was a person with principles he’d be trying to get the fed gov’t out of the way of producers and consumers. but no a deal needs done. idiots.
Jeff, I expect they’ll link gun ownership to being a fit parent and try to take your kids away if you give them too much shit about handing over your guns. Ruthless people generally know where to hit you. They’ll try to ruin your reputation officially and get your wife fired, etc. They are sick bastards.
They are making themselves enemies of the domestic persuasion. Tin star or not.
Why does congress want to artificially deflate the price of milk? Dairy farmers have been getting hosed for decades.
I expect they might try that, palaeomerus, but when I go to court to ask how I was granted a CCW as an unfit parent, I’d be terribly interested in their response vis-a-vis my suing the city / county for liability, their having credentialed an unfit parent to not only own but carry a weapon.
They’ll take whatever you are proud of and try to make it into the next equivalent of a post WW2 Swastika. Then they will take their own “Swastika”, their own appropriated wordless symbol slogan, and try to put it where the US flag is now. Some people think we may have already been set up for that with the stupid Obama “Pepsi” campaign symbol.
why is congress involved in the matter at all? next they can do beef jerky prices?
it is not about the price of milk. it is about the food stamps. why is our orangeman doing that?
FDA pure food laws from 100 years ago, I suspect, nr.
Because he’s a pimp.
They can try. But as I’ve said here for ages, I don’t shame easy. They might just have to put me down. I’m one of those “not live on your knees” types.
I’m proud that I don’t need them or care what they think. I believe they’re currently reaching for heterosexuality being equal to Nazism and all I can say to that is that they can suck my dick.
I was thinking along the lines of making them afraid to turn the ignition switch on their cars, but OK.
Court? Sue?
Gun confiscation has to be the bright red line. A drippy, sticky, thick red. On the far side of that line there is only chains.
I am Randy Weaver. YMMV.
We are all Randy Weaver.
Stolen from another blog:
Bet she can convince SCJ Roberts.
These people who will try to turn you into demonic child molesters and murderers and whatever else they can think of, are the same sort of people who bring up the Salem witch trials when talking about Christianity BTW. Look at how easily Slippery lies and “misunderstands” everything anybody says if he thinks it can be sold as an “opening” to some other fellow traveller dumb-ass . He is a fucking amateur imitator of the very lowest order. He is the vague little shadow cast by the real thing. If the light cannot be put out then it will be twisted so that it aids the darkness by sowing confusion.
i call them “proggtards” for a reason. these clowns ain’t that “brite/bright”(or some such nonsense they were calling themselves a few years back).
“Bet she can convince SCJ Roberts.”
I think Roberts can almost hold the dems AND Tea party’s aims as hostages for the next four years since he is now magic and needs not work to scry what he can more easily conjure.
Will he? I dunno. I doubt it. He seems to flinch when glared at and sigh when stroked. But who knows? Carrots and sticks can keep a mule in line. But if Roberts had a philosophical bone in his protean slug-mass or a mercenary one even, and could find a way to tame Kennedy, Roberts could wield it as the biggest political stick EVER.
I think the other three conservative votes would need to play along just to keep the leftist tidal wave at bay.
And while Obama would start out sounding strong he seems to get Chicago style messages when they are laid on him. Roberts could make Obama look like a pussy (three slaps in a row ought to get the point across that “Fuck your mob. I own their nuts Barry. I can make them illegal again and send them all right back to freakville, cold, empty handed, and grumbling YOUR NAME and the word loser alongside it.
After a few artfully reversed cases and no sign of blinking or even caring who’s made about it, the dems would have to fall in line and start ordering him pizzas and cocktails, and before long Roberts could portray the likes of the New York Times like tired old douche bags that no one ever listens to any more and suddenly that’s exactly what they’d be. Because people who read the New York Times don’t seem to get their way in the Supreme Court very often. It’s funny. They must just be a bunch of losers or something. Best if the world not sit too close to them. It might rub off.
Yeah, I doubt he will. But he damned well could if he wanted to. And it would be scary for both sides. There has never been a whip hand such as his would be. He would hold a magic veto on anything and everything that anybody felt like suing for and could get appealed to the Supremes. He would be in a position to hold a populist auction for anything and everything and anyone who wants anything done EVER won’t dare make any but the most careful and token unhappy noises about it.
He could let it be known subtly that he doesn’t particularly respect radicals or leftists or anyone, that what was given can be taken back, and that if they ever wish the winds to press again upon their suddenly limp sails that Obama and Reid or must make their prostrations very humbly and publicly indeed from now on.
Artemis’ stag (the constitution) has been wounded by an eagle(the press and the left) and she has let Roberts know that she is quite thirsty and would like to shotgun a six pack of 40 oz Iphigenia’s for starters (better squeeze a few more out Clytemnestra!) or the pretty little “hope” boats will moulder on political “and change” beaches till they rot and the walls of Troy on the opposite shore shall be decorated with waggling full moons. So we can do business and nothing is cheap but going home in shame with nothing when you started the year with almost everything is free.
Remember, George and Dim became police. They are the ones who will be sent to take your weapons, not your local police.
it’ll be them. they be “federalized”. take fed gov’t money you be tainted.
this why we need 57 states saying fu to baracky. for the children.
Prediction: within one year, Justice Ginsburg finally turns to dust and is lost down a heating vent. Obama nominates a totally unacceptable candidate that the republicans promptly accept.
The transformation will be complete.
That’s still 4/Sometimes Kennedy + Magic Roberts/3
Changing out one of the 4 on the left is just replacing a bulb.
or at least pikachus
“http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/girding-for-2013/”
Pragmatists kind of asking for a second chance maybe… but not sure yet…but maybe? 2010 was fun right guys? Right? We all had fun right?
“Obama nominates a totally unacceptable candidate that the republicans promptly accept.”
BTW the word on the e-street is that Reid thinks filibusters are for sissies now. Real men swing dat nuke option these days.
ot somewhat
Mark Levin Audience Helped Defeat Boehner Plan B
i know there are many targets but remember to
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
this ahole is perfect. hey harry you like guns?
I just noticed something strange trend-wise in my eating habits.
Assuming equal portions overall:
silver dollar pancakes > full size pancakes
mini-oreos > full size oreos
fun-size snickers > full size snickers
mini-corn dogs > full size corndogs
bite size saltine crackers > normal size saltine crackers.
wing drum-ettes = drums sticks
Judging from discussions I have been having with my more moderate lefty acquaintances on some other forums I think the underlying plan is a money grab rather than banning. I know, shocker, right?
They are talking more about registration and tracking and inventory control and registering sales and forcing folks to register as dealers if the buy and sell certain amounts of guns- basically a very similar system to what we have with cars.
Which would make sense as a revenue enhancement scheme but won’t do jack shit to keep the guns out of the hands of the criminal and the crazy.
Leftist to the fucking core.
OBAMAGUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNN! Keep him in president okay? NRA sucks!
just remember: the communist party in chitown are stupid mfers. bill ayers/baracky couldn’t run a effin’ popsicle stand
chitown communists no? it works so well now in illinois or californpickachu
Registration is confiscation delayed.
With one of them new squiggly ones.
I’m sure it will be fine…
“You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down—[up] man’s old—old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
”
link
Lessons Learned from the Public Smoking Debate
So what’s post-Ginsberg going to do that Ginsberg wouldn’t ? Write really extra-hard hitting opinions in radioactive devil blood?
start ignoring the stupid with their “living thing/constitution”?
Celebrities send mixed messages about gun violence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxRlpRcorEU
If David Gregory is above the law, so am I.
“just remember: the communist party in chitown are stupid mfers. bill ayers/baracky couldn’t run a effin’ popsicle stand”
And yet here he is, ready to be sworn in as POTUS for the second time.
WRT SCOTUS, it’s hard to imagine anyone “bader” than Ginsburg, but I’m sure Obama will rise to the occasion. Van Jones? Hey, Bernardine Dohrn has a law degree, right?
Our society has eroded in many ways (as we talked about the other night on Darleen’s thread regarding childrearing styles) and emboldened the less aggressive to do things like take a drink out of a pregnant woman’s hand at a party, regardless of whether they know each other or not.
Whoa.
Snatching a wine glass from a woman’s hand for the sake of her baby is okay; sonograms before an abortion aren’t?
the fu???
They’ve painted themselves into the “choice” corner on abortion, but if they have to allow choice there it has to be as uninformed as possible.
It’s all about the livestock.
Or consider that electronic communications – something easily considered a person’s ‘effects’ – are systematically being excluded from usual notions of privacy because they are sent through third parties; yet a ‘medical procedure’ that may involve multiple other parties, including intrusive state licensing and inspection processes, are deemed inviolate over a woman’s right to ‘privacy.’
Black is indeed white.
To those of you too timorous to “stoop” to using Alinsky’s tactics in defense of the Republic, I recommend you watch the Warner Brother’s 2010 movie The Clash of the Titans to buck you up. To wit, its antagonists, protagonists and bit players all boast surrogates in today’s modern America, and its plot, settings and climax all warrant your consideration as you decide your tack in the political battles to come.
First, let’s name the Greek tragedy’s actors as they would call themselves today. Argos is America. Andromeda, with the face so beautiful it makes the Gods jealous, is American Democracy. The lovely, counseling Ios, nurturing while warning us, is our warning device, and a voice for temperance; she represents what’s left of America’s functioning free press. Argos’ vain King and Queen, despising of the Gods but yearning for their power, is today’s vain Democratic Party. And Medusa, raped on “a cold floor,” and despised by Athena (the Goddess of vanity), is Alinsky’s tactics. Used by the Left Alinsky-ite accusations of racism, homophobia or “insanity” turn men to stone in their tracks. And, of course, Perseus,the child of Zeus who used Medussa’s head to kill the Krakken, is you! And Hades, who feeds selectively off of our fear, is the incessant human wants, from free housing to free healthcare and free cell phones, that fuels the international Left.
As to the ‘bit-players’ in the film, there are so many of import that I must condense the list to the essentials only. The religious bloviating priest calling for ‘sacrifice’ of Andromeda to appease Hades must be MSNBC. Al Sharpton’s “Rich must feel the pain so the poor can feel the rain” encapsulates this character’s alms. The Djinn are harder to define. They may be Middle Easterners who understand the ages old conflict, but who live outside of the Greco-Roman societies but are allies none-the-less. Or, they may represent today’s Soviets and Communist leaders whose apathy and lack of a free press make them immune to Medussa’s powers, but who still relish taking the fight to her. And soldiers like Draco, who long to laugh in the faces of the Gods, are our blue collar patriots, and enlightened noblemen who fight to assist us Demi-Gods in our counter-revolution – both certain of their fates and honored to live them in revolt.
As we prepare to cross the River Styx (in fact, the ferryman has accepted our bribe (witness the uptick in gold prices lately?) and is already paddling us to our fates on the distant shore), it is essential that those with us have the guts and stamina to enter Medusa’s lair to steal her power for ourselves to use. Those who fear the darkened corners, fallen columns and labrynthine halls may choose to stay in the village with the women. But those true demi-gods with an innate love for Democracy and for our Andromeda back home, must, must, must cross together. There is simply no going back!
Who will be Perseus? Who will help him carry Alinsky’s head to the site of sacrifice to prevent the impending sacrifice of American Democracy? And who dares call himself ‘brave,’ ‘committed’ and ‘devoted’ and yet will not help deploy Medussa’s head to stop the Krakken’s ravaging of America? If, after watching the movie, you are not asking yourself these questions with an adamant “I will!”, then you should remain with the women at the hearth plucking chickens and humming Koom-Bay-Ya, and leave the fighting to the real men.
If you answer with an “I’m in!,” though, then you are a Draco, an allied Djinn, a willing, dependable Io, or even a demi-god like Perseus.
Me? I’m in!
It’s not about being timorous. It’s about taking up the Ring of Power with the best of intentions and then waking up one morning to find out you’re the Ring’s bitch.
Ernst,
Tolkien wrote an excellent trilogy and his ring-metaphor is a powerful one, BUT…
His books represent only one modern distillation of Mankind’s classical tragic condition. And that is Tokien’s books’ only flaw: diminution in the face of a cavalcade of thousands of classic writs that came before him – writs, BTW, that influenced Tolkien in his liberal dissection of good from evil.
I like Tolkien’s books, don’t get me wrong, but the metophorical eye or Mordor peering evilly over a factionalized circus of protagonists longing for or worrying over the power of a ‘ring’ derives its poignancy from a thousand classics before it.
I prefer to dig deeper…go to the root, and that root is classical literature from the Greco-Roman era.
BTW: the Christian God can be deconstructed into his/her seperate ‘humors.’ This Constantine and Charlemagne understood very well: the pedestal of Catholicism’s “God” is fabricated out of the Greco-Roman panoply of Gods. To understand this is to comprehend the invulnerability of the modern Christian God: He is like a bundled fag of willowy switches – hard to snap and even tougher to cut.
I do not have the wisdom that others claim to have about the ways of the Almighty.
Ernst, (cont’d)
I prefer to dig deeper…go to the root, and that root is classical literature from the Greco-Roman era. And in The Clash of the Titans Perseus needed only to use Medussa’s head ONCE.
It was discarded after that. I think we can handle the temporary power just as Perseus does.
So can you.
I think in mythology (which is kraken free, what with Kraken’s being a drunken scandi sailor’s bigfoot type of thing) Medusa’s head was mounted on the Aegis shield and kept by Athena.
So the JC God is like a fasces? Swung by metaphorical lictors at the command of a figurative tribune no doubt.
“Ernst Schreiber says December 31, 2012 at 2:00 pm
It’s not about being timorous. It’s about taking up the Ring of Power with the best of intentions and then waking up one morning to find out you’re the Ring’s bitch.”
Yes, you can give yourself temporary license to transcend morality in a moral cause in times of desperation. But beware. If you’ll do it in an emergency the odds are good that you’ll eventually see reason to do it in a ‘not emergency’ too. Will to power is habit forming.
It is….a gift!
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080608142439/lotr/images/8/84/Boromir2.jpg
Yeah, I know it’s the movie version.
Whoops!
http://robrimes.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/boromir-255×300.jpg
Paleaomerus,
My memory parallels yours: I thought, too, that the Kraken was a foreign addition to the movie I allude to.
Still, The Clash offers an excellent paradigm for understanding the concept that one must brandish his enemies’ weapons to achieve one’s own victories. This is the lesson that I think Jeff wants to relay with regards to Alinsky’s Rules: we need to coopt them for our own, strategic use.
Further, the movie left me with the notion that we don’t have much choice in the matter – which renders mute any opposition to using the tactics for ourselves. And nothing said in the comments above refutes this.
We’ve got to muster the courage to give it a go, temerity, hesitation, and “the Ring making us her Bitch” (per E.C.) be damned.
As for “God’s” resemblence to a fasces, some might favor the comparison, others might not. I think that purely structurally, the comparison is a good one, though. A bundle of wirey sticks is a very durable lash…but one stick alone, not so much.
Mute?
Moot!
Your analogy fails in my opinion because Progressives are reflexive. You can pick a target, but you can’t freeze it, fix it, shame it by holding it to it’s won standards etc., because the only permanent standard they hold to is will to power.
Now, maybe you can mock the target into revealing it’s true nature, but then you’ll have to convince low information voters to believe their lying eyes.
I also seem to remember something about the gorgon’s head dripping poison all over the place.
I understood Alinsky’s “freeze it, etc.” to be about creating an impression of the target in the minds of the public. That can certainly be done to proggs as effectively as it can be done to non-proggs.
The thing to remember is that non-proggs include a vast sea of people who vote for proggs because they don’t know any better.
Using Alinsky tactics to educate those non-proggs might be worth doing — though within limits the proggs would never observe. Because we like having souls.
Oh, you mean the weapons I sold for cash a few years ago? When your law didn’t exist? Oh, and BTW, come on in. No illegal weapons at this location.
Of course, if I’m not the one actually being arrested, I might just be the one who saw Jeff being arrested, found out from the court documents where Officer Friendly works, and then used any of several methods to track him down…. or just track down one or more of his political masters….
When a sitting US Senator can be accosted in a pizza parlor in Nebraska, anyone can be traced.
The point of my book is not to prove that Saul Alinsky was a “bad” or “evil” man — I am willing to concede that he was a good father, a good husband and a blast to have a beer with.
WHY do people keep doing this? Alinsky was a philanderer and didn’t care who knew it, which made it impossible to shame him on those grounds.
Too bad the pub is down: I covered that in the series.
Brilliant, Jeff.
Some thoughts…
-How one acts and what one believes are manifestations of the individual Soul they come from. If the philosophy is Evil, the person espousing it has made a covenant with Evil and is, therefore, Evil.
-The Left are so insecure in their beliefs that, it seems, they need the validation of their victims. One is reminded of how Oceania operates in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where those deemed criminals [ie: traitors to the state] are not murdered until they, of their own Free Will, say ‘I love Big Brother’.
–Ernst, palaeomerus, and McGehee understand exactly why we cannot afford to adopt Alinsky’s tactics. We do, indeed, risk losing our Souls…and the American Idea.
One need but look to the last decades of The Roman Republic, when dictatorial powers, which had once been granted so rarely in times of grave threat, began to be granted for lesser and lesser threats to The Republic.
The Ring had to be destroyed because it held too much temptation for Man – being a fallen creature, he could never be trusted with the kind of power that only gods had the [potential] strength to wield. And the age that was dawning in Middle Earth was The Age Of Man.
-We now live in a world where, sure, A is A – sometimes. A civilization built on such supports will crumble.
Forgive me: Happy New Year to One and All.
“One is reminded of how Oceania operates in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where those deemed criminals [ie: traitors to the state] are not murdered until they, of their own Free Will, say ‘I love Big Brother’.”
Winston was only FANTASIZING about being shot while downing gin in the cafe after his rehabilitation. For his submission he got promoted to a dumber more useless but cushier job trimming harmful words out of the lexicon,and was watched more carefully by the party. He was fixed and returned to being a confused muddled slave. So was Julia. He met her and they both confessed to betraying the other and agree that they should not meet again. He imagines his public confession and execution because it allows him to feel love for Big Brother. It may well be a mental exercise they taught him at the Ministry of Love. Whether he will be shot at some future date is not really explored. Being shot may not be necessary and Winston may have more value as a broken living example of the power of the Ministry of Love than he would as an executed criminal.
I didn’t read it that way, but it’s certainly a reasonable theory.
Mr. Orwell was in possession of knowledge of how Stalin and his minions operated and knew they had tried this way of handling situations like Winston’s and Julia’s. It was more Stalin’s minions like Beria who favored such experiments. I suspect some did because it is a very cruel and prolonged torture and others becaause they were true believers [of course, I have no doubt the latter met their ends a lot sooner than the former, what with Stalin being a rather impatient monster].
The Party shoots everybody in the end.
Happy New Year Ernst. Did the Kinder avoid the Belsnickel this year?
My kids believe in coal elves, so I’ve left dead old world traditions to die in the old world, leigh.
No need to abandon the tried and true, Ernst. I wish I’d known about these coal elves when my kids were small.
How were your kids going to believe in something that hadn’t been seen on TV until a year or two ago?
I said “I wish . . . ”
I did, however have them convinced that I had Santa on speed-dial. So there’s that.
In real life, yes the party shoots everybody until they can’t make bullets anymore or the vikings arrive or the mob and the suddenly powerful and independent police takes them down realizing that they can no longer expect reinforcements (Romania).
In 1984 however, as I interpret it, the party taught Winston to shoot himself ( “An Ocurrance at Owl Creek Bridge” escape style ) so he could find the one happiness allowed him gazing up stupidly at Big Brother’s image every day day for the rest of his useless gin-scented language-mangling life.
His new cushy job was to work with a lot of other broken party members helping mini-true gut the remainder of the language so it could not support anti-party thought.
They describe him as a rotting alcoholic spending an exile in the corner of the Chestnut Tree cafe.
“He had grown fatter since they released him, and had regained his old colour — indeed, more than regained it. His features had thickened, the skin on nose and cheekbones was coarsely red, even the bald scalp was too deep a pink.
A waiter, again unbidden, brought the chessboard and the current issue of the Times, with the page turned down at the chess problem. Then, seeing that Winston’s glass was empty, he brought the gin bottle and filled it.
There was no need to give orders. They knew his habits. The chessboard was always waiting for him, his corner table was always reserved; even when the place was full he had it to himself, since nobody cared to be seen sitting too close to him. He never even bothered to count his drinks. At irregular intervals they presented him with a dirty slip of paper which they said was the bill, but he had the impression that they always undercharged him.
It would have made no difference if it had been the other way about. He had always plenty of money nowadays. He even had a job, a sinecure, more highly-paid than his old job had been.”
You know that he is still slumped in the Chestnut Tree drinking, instead of back in the Ministry of Love catching a fatal bullet, because he looks up at the huge image of Big Brother in the pub, and cries Gin-scented tears as he suddenly comes to truly love Big Brother.
“The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight slanting through a window fell on dusty table-tops. It was the lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from the telescreens.
Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty glass. Now and again he glanced up at a vast face which eyed him from the opposite wall. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU the caption said. ”
It is the same image that he sees when fooling with the chess problem in the cafe/pub. And seeing himself deposed and shot in the fantasy he has won the battle against himself and his reason that the ministry forced him to fight. Once you shoot your reason, nullify your self, once you are empty, then then 2+2 =5. You are proof ever after that 2+2=5 over in your corner smelling of gin and weeping and fooling with chess pieces. The party hollows you out and fills you with themselves.
Prep & Landing elves scouting the terrain in advance of Christmas is slightly less totalitarian than Santa Claus is Watching You.
Slightly.
Amazing how pointillist this thread is!
The highlight of my Christmas season? The Jewish kid in my daughter’s class telling everyone Santa Claus isn’t real.
The runner-up was Kwaanza for kindergarteners.
“The runner-up was Kwaanza for kindergarteners.”
Sleazy 60’s separatist counter culture stuff is now mainstream enough for little ones. Great.
Santa just doesn’t bring gifts to Jewish kids. They get 8 nights of Chanukah. That should be sufficient.
Kwaanza is still alive and kicking?
The other thread got to popping and I never checked back.
“[So and so] keeps saying that Santa Claus isn’t real. But how would he know? He’s Jewish and doesn’t believe in Christmas.”
More paraphrase than quote. But it was chuckleworthy.
The kwaanza thing was mostly about various holiday traditions. They made Deridels too, I think. Or maybe they just learned the song.
I doubt very much the Ethopian and Sudanese immigrants that comprise a fair portion (I don’t know if I can say majority or not) of the local black populace had ever heard of Kwaanza before enrolling in our public schools.