Faith, Family & Freedom: Part 18‏ of 21

Good day friends!

Welcome back.

The news that the United States has become a two-class society, i.e., half of Americans pay federal income taxes and half do not, has bounced around the media and shocked Americans. Most people had no knowledge of this appalling economic fact.  Even worse is the reality that 40 percent of Americans receive federal government handouts of cash and valuable benefits. Those handouts are financed by the people who do pay federal income taxes and create a tremendous bloc of people who depend on the government for their living expenses. The Tax Foundation reports that 20 percent of Americans now get 75 percent of their income from the federal government, and another 20 percent get 45 percent of their income from the government.

The 2009 Stimulus law will add nearly $800 billion in new means-tested welfare spending over the next decade. That means about $22,500 for every poor person in the United States, which will cost over $10,000 for each family that pays federal income taxes. According to the Tax Foundation, married taxpayers pay three-fourths of all federal income taxes, whereas two-thirds of single parents who file as head-of-household pay no income tax at all. According to a Heritage Foundation report taxpayers (mostly those who are married) will spend more than $300 billion providing welfare aid to single parents (mostly women).

In this segment we will learn of the source from whom the mantra of "change" was inspired and became the cry of a new American leader...

"Faith, Family & Freedom: Our American Values Under Fire"

Saul Alinsky

(1909-1972)

A Young Italian Marxist by the name of Antonio Gramsci advised World War II dictator Mussolini that violence from behind a gun was not the way to bring about a lasting revolution that people would embrace and maintain. Gramsci wrote eloquently of a “quiet” revolution – one that would transform a culture from within by changing the basic worldview of each and every institution in society. He also cautioned that this revolution would be “a long march through the institutions,” not a blitzkrieg of change. So clear was his strategic thinking that Gramsci targeted Christianity specifically as the greatest philosophical adversary along the way.

Later in the twentieth century, Gramsci’s vision captivated another rising neo-Marxist who codified the Gramsci dream in a 1971 book, Rules for Radical: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. There, Saul Alinsky detailed the need to penetrate the middle-class and reorganize from within. Alinsky articulated tactics for infiltrating every conceivable social institution – including churches.

Phyllis Schlafly connected current events to the Alinsky program in her timely and insightful February 2, 2009 Investor’s Business Daily article, “Alinsky’s Rules: Must Reading in Obama Era”:

Alinsky’s worldview was that mankind is divided into three parts: “the haves", the "haves-nots" and the "have-a-little, want mores.” His purpose was to teach the have-nots how to take power and money away from the haves by creating mass organizations to seize power, and he admitted “this means revolution.” He wanted a radical change of America’s social and economic structure, and he planned to achieve that through creating public discontent and moral confusion. Alinsky developed strategies to achieve power through mass organization, and organizing was his word for revolution.

He wanted to move the U.S. from capitalism to socialism, where the means of production would be owned by all the people (i.e., the government). A believer in economic determinism, he viewed unemployment, disease, crime and bigotry as byproducts of capitalism. “Change” was Alinsky’s favorite word, used on page after page. “I will argue,” he wrote, “that man’s hopes lie in the acceptance in the great law of change.”

Class envy, race-baiting, anti-Christian bigotry, and redistribution of wealth describe the change for which Alinsky was calling. It would not be a stretch – and in fact it is Schlafly’s point – to suggest that Alinsky was the source for candidate Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan. Yet Scripture warns of the wrong kinds of change: “He shall speak pompous words against the Most High, shall persecute the saints of the Most High, and shall intend to change times and law” (Daniel 9:25).

Saul Alinsky has no compunction about speaking “against the Most High” because his allegiance lay elsewhere. The depth of Alinsky’s evil intent is clear from the dedication page of his book:

Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical; from all our legends, mythology, and history… the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.

Here you see a rare, forthright declaration of the basic force behind all the thinkers described in this series. Alinsky betrays the secret that the globalist vision is threaded through a diverse assembly of influencers thanks to a strategy created by the devil himself. It explains succinctly the hatred of Christians and the Biblical worldview. It also affirms the point made from the beginning of this series: we are in a spiritual battle, and the prize is hearts, minds and souls.

Many national leaders have adopted Alinsky’s worldview over the years and I want to make it crystal clear exactly what Alinsky’s worldview was all about. Here are a few excerpts from Rules for Radical:

A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage… the political paradise of communism. (p. 10)

An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth… truth to him is relative and changing… To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations… (pp. 10-11)

From the moment the organizer enters a community he lives, dreams… only one thing and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. Until he has developed the mass power base, he confronts no major issues... Until he has those means and power instruments, his “tactics” are very different from power tactics. Therefore, every move revolves around one central point: how many recruits will this bring into the organization, whether by means of local organizations, churches, service groups, labor unions, corner gangs, or as individuals… Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. (p 113)

The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displaced by new patterns… All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new. (p 116)

An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent… He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises… The job then is getting the people to move, to act, to participate; in short, to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the prevailing patterns and change them. When those prominent in the status quo turn and label you an “agitator” they are completely correct, for that is, in a word, your function – to agitate to the point of conflict. (p. 117)

Again, Alinsky has influenced many of our nation’s leaders, and now you can see where they desire to take our nation – to becoming a socialist state. Hillary Clinton wrote her senior thesis at Wellesly College on Alinsky’s strategies. President Obama, while at Harvard, attended the Industrial Areas Foundation, a group founded by Alinsky, and when he returned to Chicago, Obama taught Saul Alinsky’s worldview and strategies.

Alinsky’s influence extends beyond elected officials to radical activists and college professors. After studying Alinsky, for instance, Professor Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Piven wrote an article in the May 2, 1966, far-left magazine, The Nation. This husband-and-wife pair of radical socialists from Columbia University developed the Cloward-Piven strategy, which advocates implementing socialism by swamping the welfare system of states as well as the federal government with new recipients.

Clowrd and Piven also called for a protest movement, marches, and rallies to put extreme pressure on politicians to create new benefits. Once the resulting financial crisis becomes reality, the collapse of state and federal budgets would spawn a socialist state and the nationalizing of failed financial institutions such as mortgage lenders.

Among their many accomplishments, Cloward and Piven inspired an activist named George Wiley to found a liberal organization that set in motion a startling chain reaction. Wiley’s work influenced Wade Rathke, who, along with Bill Ayers, was a member of the Radical Student for a Democratic Society. Rathkey, in turn, started Arkansas Community for Reform Now to employ the Clowrd-Piven strategy. He was so successful in Arkansas that the organization expanded and changed the “A” in its name from Arkansas to Association, and it became known as the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now – the infamous ACORN.  In recent weeks we now have come to learn that ACORN will be changing it's name in an attempt to set up camp under the guise of yet another "organized" group.

James Simpson, writing for worldviewtimes.com, noted:

As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act authority. In addition to making it easier fro ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior to package mortgages as investments, and for the government-sponsored enterprise Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them.

The financial housing crisis that made headlines in 2007 was brought on through Saul Alinsky’s ideas, via the Cloward-Piven strategy of implementing socialism through big government destruction of contract law and free market principles. This “economic sabotage” was first tried in New York City, and by 1975, the city was on verge of financial devastation. Although NewYork had a manageable 150,000 welfare cases in 1960, a decade later the number had soared past the 1.5 million mark.

Barack Obama was a community organizer with Project Vote, an affiliate of ACORN, before he entered public service. His “organizing” was built on the model of Saul Alinsky. Obama’s activities come right from the Alinsky playbook. In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky describes his purpose:

In this book, we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace… “Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” This means revolution. (p. 3)

In an obvious plug for socialism, Alinsky said radicals “hope for a future… where the means of production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful.” In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky admitted that his goal was to “present an arrangement of certain facts and general concepts of change, a step toward a science of revolution.” He also reflected on the book The Prince which he said “was written by Machiavelli for the ‘Haves’ on how to hold onto power. Rules for Radicals is written for the ‘Have-Nots’ on how to take it away.”

Many conservatives have joked that President Obama thinks himself to be God. Alinsky probably wouldn’t argue since he thinks that of any community organizer. According to Alinsky's own words, an organizer “is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which man can reach – to create, to be ‘great creator,’ to play God.”

Fortunately, not everyone goes along with the Alinsky revolution, and the result is revolutionary thinking in the other direction. Ellis Goodwin reported in The Express-Star and August 2009 town hall meeting with Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe:

In late August of 2009, U.S. Senator from Oklahoma Jim Inhofe, speaking at a town hall meeting on the actions of the Obama Administration, said that, “People are not buying these concepts that are completely foreign to America,” Inhofe said. “We’re almost reaching a revolution in this country.”

Some experts believe America is experiencing the revolution called for by Saul Alinsky. Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as special assistant to the director of Central Intelligence and vice chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. He holds the U.S. National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the intelligence community’s highest honor. In a May 2009 article, Mr. Meyer wrote that America is experiencing a revolution, even if most Americans don’t recognize what is happening. Even though there is no civil war in progress, Mr. Meyer explains that a revolution occurs when leaders change the laws to suit themselves and garner power otherwise not allowed by the U.S. Constitution:

…you cannot claim to have the rule of law if the government can set aside the rule of law when it decides that “special circumstances” have arisen that warrant illegality. When the President and his aides handed ownership of Chrysler Corp. to the United Auto Workers union, they tried to avoid sending that beleaguered company into bankruptcy by muscling its bondholders into accepting less money for their assets than the law entitled them to collect. These contracts, and the law under which they were signed, were mere obstacles to a thuggish President Obama bent on paying off his political supporters.  

Mr. Meyers supports a point made through out this series, and that is Democrats have not destroyed our nation alone. Many Republicans have helped simply by “going along” or by not standing up for the truth. You can either socialist party R or socialist party D. They’re moving at different speeds, but the direction is the same. The reality of an Alinsky-inspired revolution, is that is does not end pretty for dissenters. The few true conservatives in the Republican Party or elsewhere are often characterized and marginalized by their own party. And it could get much worse.

In one final observation, I have to tip my hat to Saul Alinsky. He knew what he believed, why he believed it, and he made disciples. As Alinsky demonstrates, the radical, godless left is often more committed to making disciples than are conservatives and Christians. And regrettably, Alinsky’s disciples have ended up in some very high places.

Sources:

Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals,” (New York: Vintage Books, 1971)

Saul Alinsky, “Revile for Radicals,” (New York: Vintage Books, 1946)

James Simpson, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis (worldviewtimes.com, March 9, 2009

Heather Heidelbaugh, “Obama Is Governing as a Community Organizer,” (Washington Examiner.com, August 21, 2009)

Richard Lawrence Poe, “Hilary, Obama and the Cult of Alinsky” (www.freepublic.com, November 26, 2007)

Herbert E. Meyer, “A Revolution”, (www.americanthinker.com, May 20, 2009)

Ellis Goodwin, “Inhofe Slams Health Reform” (The Express-Star, August 28, 2009)

Brannon Howse, Grave Influence (Worldview Publishing, 2009)

Even children are known by the way they act, whether their conduct is pure, and whether it is right - Proverbs 20:11

Blessings on your success! 
Shane <><

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