I added a book to my intentional reading list, Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky. It is a short book — I read it on the airplane while on vacation — but I think it is must reading for anyone trying to understand the thinking of our New President , because as a community organizer he cut his teach on the teaching of Saul Alinsky.
Alinsky has been called the father of community organization. While he might prefer to give that honor to his mentor, John L. Lewis, it is safe to say that Saul Alinsky took community organization to a new level.
According to Conservapedia, Saul Alinsky was nicknamed “the Red” for his radicalism. From my reading of his book he was very deserving of this title. If he was not red he was certainly a very dark shade of pink.
His radicalism can also be seen in the fact that he begins his book with an acknowledgement of Lucifer, “the first radical known to man.” I am sure Alinsky was just trying to be provocative and funny — he had a great sense of humor — but there are times when a person reveals his true feelings through humor. Given Alinsky’s clear disdain for “Judeao-religion,” I suspect his acknowledgment of Lucifer may have been one of those occasions.
Alinsky was a major influence on Hillary Clinton, who wrote her senior honors thesis at Wellesley College on him. He was also a major influence on many others now serving in the Obama administration. So in order to understand our President and his administration, and in order to predict what they will do next, one needs to become familiar with the thought of Saul Alinsky.
As you can imagine, I don’t think much of Saul Alinsky, his values or his tactics, but he did say some things I found interesting and a few things I found myself agreeing with. His critique of Christianity is a case in point:
“Here is a Christian civilization where most people have gone to church and have mouthed various Christian doctrines, and yet this is really not part of their experience because they haven’t lived it. Their church experience has been purely a ritualistic decoration.
The New York Time some years ago reported the case of a man who converted to Catholicism at about the age of forty and then, filled with the zeal of a convert, determined to emulate as far as possible the life of St. Francis of Assisi. He withdrew his life’s savings, about $2,300. He took his money in $5 dollar bills. Armed with his bundle of $5 bills, he went down to the poorest section of New York City…and every time a needy-looking man or woman passed by him he would step up and say, ‘Please, take this.”…our friend attempting to live a Christian life found he could only do so for forty minutes before being arrested by a Christian police officer, driven to Bellevue Hospital by a Christian ambulance doctor, and pronounced non compos mentis by a Christian psychiatrist. Christianity is beyond the experience of a Christian-professing-but-not-practicing population.
In mass organization, you can’t go outside of people’s actual experience. I’ve been asked, for example, why I never talk to a Catholic priest or a Protestant minister or a rabbi in terms of Judaeo-Christian ethic or the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. I never talk in those terms. Instead I approach them on the basis of their own-self interest, the welfare of their Church, even its physical property.
If I approached them in a moralistic way, it would be outside their experience, because Christianity and Judaeo-religion are outside the experience of organized religion. They would just listen to me and very sympathetically tell me how noble I was. And the moment I walked out they’d call their secretaries in and say, ‘If that screwball ever shows up again, tell him I’m out.”
After reading this I wrote, “Sad, but too often true,” in the margin.
But,the fact that much of Euro-America is post-Christian,in fact,does not invalidate the Christian message.And then,there were certainly several other major influences on Mrs Clinton and other members of the Obama administration.I’m not quite convinced you will glean much about the direction of the US government by reading Alinsky (I admit that I am yet to read his works).
As to the case of the man who gave away all he had.In the first it could not have been known if he was giving away ‘hot’ money,for example.The motivation for his action simply could not have been known to the casual onlooker.Even in the case of the rich young ruler,the basic lesson to note is that Jesus was testing the man’s heart to matters of God.Giving away all that you have may not be considered an essential test of Christian life and living.
By: tunji on April 11, 2009
at 9:10 am
Certainly I agree with you that the Christian message is not invalidated by the nominality of post-Christian Euro-America. I have been privileged to travel and minister in the developing world, and I have see the power of the Christian message “full-strength” in these places. The gospel is still transforming lives and cultures wherever it is proclaimed and believed.
As far as Alinsky; the interesting thing to me is that Obama and his administration seem to be following his rules for radicals as if it were their Bible.
Some have observed that the Obama administration seems to be in constant campaign mode. I think this is correct; and I think it is a deliberate tactic because the Obamites are see themselves in the process of still acquiring power at the same time they are exercising the power they have already gained.
As far as your comments on Alinsky’s example (the young man), you are right, of course, but there is truth in Alinsky’s observation, at least in this country. In fact, Alinsky/Obama count on the nominality of professing American Christianity.
In true Marxist fashion (he was a dialectician), Alinsky divided the world into three groups: 1. the haves, 2. The have-nots and 3. the have-a-little-want-mores. His stated goal was to take away the power and wealth of the haves and redistribute it to the have-nots. But he recognized that the majority of Americans were in the third category, the have-a little-want-mores. His theory was that radicals like him could succeed in raping the haves as long as the have-a- little-want-mores didn’t feel threatened. The only potential threat to his envisioned radical takeover would come if the nominally-Christian majority felt threatened or started really living like Christians. He felt the former threat could be managed, and he did not anticipate the latter happening. Like all Marxists, Alinsky has nothing but disdain for Judaeo-Christian religion.
By: markcarlton on April 11, 2009
at 5:09 pm