Rules for Right Wingers
Dave Weigel points out the Right’s “new” fascination with Saul Alinsky on the Washington Independent today. It’s a good article, though I would make two minor clarifications.
First, it’s not that new. Over at the Leadership Institute, we’ve been talking about this book for years to everyone who will listen. College Republicans, libertarians, independent groups, and everyone in between have literally had copies of Rules for Radicals thrown at them (in the link I just found, I’m pretty sure I was the “provocative presentation” mentioned earlier). I was giving a speech to Eagle Forum not long ago singing the praises of Alinksy and heads were nodding all around the room in recognition. The “movement” (such as it is) is not that big, and Alinsky is common knowledge to just about everyone involved. This hasn’t come out of nowhere. More importantly, the connections of mainstream Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Community Organizer in Chief Barack Obama to Alinsky have forced the existence of professional agitation into the awareness of even the most dimwitted conservative.
The second point is the leftist’s claim at the end of the article that conservatives are misinterpreting Alinsky because he wasn’t actually out to destroy the system. This is a complete lie. The idea of overwhelming the system — deliberately — to break it is straight out of Alinsky. Not only that, it was actually executed, and caused enormous damage to this country.
Current day left wing alliances with business and government officials do not show the practical side of the Left. They instead show what I’ve argued before — the Left IS the system and right wingers are starting to get that.
Conservatives are mobilizing, not on behalf of rich corporations (many of whom would gain from Obamacare and who are spending money to defend it) but in defense against a system that actively seeks to economically ruin them and drive them out of political life. It’s simply hilarious that well dressed protesters with wonkish grievances about health care somehow remind our political overlords of the Sturmabteilung. It is infinitely more amusing that unions (!) are complaining about thuggish tactics at meetings, even though it seems to be the unions who are committing actual violence.
Conservatives should take heart from the fear that these actions strike in the Left and ignore the fussing from within their own ranks. As Alinksy himself said, “Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.”
The conservatives who want to somehow win this thing without getting anyone upset should sit down and send angsty emails to Andrew Sullivan. We’ll cut their damn taxes for them when it’s over.
User Comments
Ben Wetmore
August, 2009
This is a shitty article, if for no other reason than, continually, every fucking conservative from Phyllis Schlafly to whatever foreigner writing about America at National Review talks about Alinsky but it is always abundantly clear that they have never read a single word the man says. Quoting bits and pieces out of context is simply insufficient. Hillary wrote her thesis on the man’s tactics, which represents some fundamental familiarity with his actual thoughts, and not just the superficial issues at stake.
For Christ’s sake, if we’re going to keep referencing Alinsky, could we at least get to the point where we’re ever seriously discussing his ideas, tactics and how to put them into action so that ‘conservatives’ can win something for once?