OOPS, LET'S TRY THAT REVOLUTION AGAIN

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out?
—John Lennon

"Life is a corrupting process
from the time a child learns to play
his mother off against his father
in the politics of when to go to bed;
he who fears corruption fears life."
—David Saul Alinksy

The function of socialism is to raise
suffering to a higher level.
—Norman Mailer


IT'S A WONDERFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, but don't ask me about the details. That would take too much time away from the problems still at hand. Here's what we have in mind—a nice slice if argumentative heaven, as one rugged individualist to another. As some might say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I..."

Q: But aren't Anarchists just socialists?

A: In a greater sense, yes. Anarchists like Benjamin Tucker and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon were both Anarchists and socialists. Today, however, when one hears another refer to himself as a “socialist,” what the other person usually means is, “state-socialist.”

Though the difference seems to be lost in translation between Anarchists, socialists, and outsiders, it remains an important one to distinguish. As Ernest Lesigne, a French Anarchist of the 19th century, put it, There are two Socialisms and we here at the Two-Fisted Quorum have got both their numbers.

One is communistic, the other solidaritarian.
One is dictatorial, the other libertarian.
One is metaphysical, the other positive.
One is dogmatic, the other scientific.
One is emotional, the other reflective.
One is destructive, the other constructive.
Both are in pursuit of the greatest possible welfare for all.
One aims to establish happiness for all, the other to enable each to be happy in his own way.
The first regards the State as a society sui generis, of an especial essence, the product of a sort of divine right outside of and above all society, with special rights and able to exact special obediences; the second considers the State as an association like any other, generally managed worse than others.
The first proclaims the sovereignty of the State, the second recognizes no sort of sovereign.
One wishes all monopolies to be held by the State; the other wishes the abolition of all monopolies.
One wishes the governed class to become the governing class; the other wishes the disappearance of classes.
Both declare that the existing state of things cannot last.
The first considers revolutions as the indispensable agent of evolutions; the second teaches that repression alone turns evolutions into revolution.
The first has faith in a cataclysm.
The second knows that social progress will result from the free play of individual efforts.
Both understand that we are entering upon a new historic phase.
One wishes that there should be none but proletaires.
The other wishes that there should be no more proletaires.
The first wishes to take everything away from everybody.
The second wishes to leave each in possession of its own.
The one wishes to expropriate everybody.
The other wishes everybody to be a proprietor.
The first says: ‘Do as the government wishes.’
The second says: ‘Do as you wish yourself.’
The former threatens with despotism.
The latter promises liberty.
The former makes the citizen the subject of the State.
The latter makes the State the employee of the citizen.
One proclaims that labor pains will be necessary to the birth of a new world.
The other declares that real progress will not cause suffering to any one.
The first has confidence in social war.
The other believes only in the works of peace.
One aspires to command, to regulate, to legislate.
The other wishes to attain the minimum of command, of regulation, of legislation.
One would be followed by the most atrocious of reactions.
The other opens unlimited horizons to progress.
The first will fail; the other will succeed.
Both desire equality.
One by lowering heads that are too high.
The other by raising heads that are too low.
One sees equality under a common yoke.
The other will secure equality in complete liberty.
One is intolerant, the other tolerant.
One frightens, the other reassures.
The first wishes to instruct everybody.
The second wishes to enable everybody to instruct himself.
The first wishes to support everybody.
The second wishes to enable everybody to support himself.
One says:
The land to the State.
The mine to the State.
The tool to the State.
The product to the State.
The other says:
The land to the cultivator.
The mine to the miner.
The tool to the laborer.
The product to the producer.
There are only these two Socialisms.
One is the infancy of Socialism; the other is its manhood.
One is already the past; the other is the future.
One will give place to the other.
Today each of us must choose for the one or the other of these two Socialisms, or else confess that he is not a Socialist.

SUNSTEIN SAYS AMERICANS TOO RACIST

BUT HEY WAIT, there's more, this Sunstein fellow says that Americans are too racist FOR SOCIALISM. And he defends communism and the welfare state but says that this nation's 'white majority' opposes programs aiding blacks and Hispanics. What about all those obese out of work white folks still clinging to guns and religion? Guess they don't even figure into the race-baiters wealth redistribution strategies.

Methinks, of course, we need a new deck. That race card is so frayed, we can see it coming, and it's ALWAYS coming, from the bottom of the deck, from the top of the deck, from somebody's cuff-linked sleeve, yes, it's always coming from somewhere, no matter how skewered the results...

Socialism? This despite the fact that nearly every former socialist nation, including those in western Europe, are warning the US that socialism isn't all it's cracked up to be, as even they are moving away from the organizing system that suffers from too much rampant idealism and not enough bootstrap periphery.

In "The Second Bill of Rights," WND reported, the self-professed communist Obama aide Cass Sunstein proposed a new "bill of rights" in which he advanced the radical notion that welfare rights, including some controversial inceptions, be granted by the state. Among his mandates:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

The Obama czar's controversial comments were made in his 2004 book "The Second Bill of Rights," which was obtained and reviewed by WND. On one page in his book, Sunstein claims he is "not seriously arguing" his bill of rights be "encompassed by anything in the Constitution," but on the next page he states that "if the nation becomes committed to certain rights, they may migrate into the Constitution itself."

Later in the book, Sunstein argues that "at a minimum, the second bill should be seen as part and parcel of America's constitutive commitments." WND has learned that in April 2005, Sunstein opened up a conference at Yale Law School entitled "The Constitution in 2020," which sought to change the nature and interpretation of the Constitution by that year.

Sunstein has been a main participant in the movement, which openly seeks to create a "progressive" consensus as to what the U.S. Constitution should provide for by the year 2020. It also suggests strategy for how liberal lawyers and judges might bring such a constitutional regime into being.

Just before his appearance at the conference, Sunstein wrote a blog entry in which he explained he "will be urging that it is important to resist, on democratic grounds, the idea that the document should be interpreted to reflect the view of the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party."

That's rich. Notice how Sunstein in his first amendment says that everyone should have the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation. He didn't mention that everyone has the "right" to a publishing contract, or a paying gig in the arts, a cush talking head job, or a gravy train in politics.

Rather, he intends his own brand of segregation touting a system that demands that everyone participate in this new slavery, the new feudalism, enunciated and controlled by the prestigious oligarchy of beautiful and bright, hand-picked elites who know to toe the party line, and are amply rewarded with entry into the gated communities of government from on high.

Notice also, the usage of the word "decent" when describing certain guarantees this new world order claims to represent. Who gets to decide what is decent or just shy of Shantyville? Who tells me that what I choose to attain or acquire or inherit is too extravagant, and what in all this decision-making is based on criteria other than the equalitarian limits of the open marketplace? We've all seen this movie before. From the September 29 issue of New York Times, itself a bastion of liberal pretentions:

"Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II. Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless."

No matter what methodologies these aggressive statists intend to use in cutting the materialistic pie, we are told that we will be guaranteed decent jobs, decent health care, decent wages, decent lives. Meanwhile why are these cut-throat millionaires doing all the talking, doing the deciding for us? As constitutional Americans we are already guaranteed an equal opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, within the realms of moral responsibility. We are not guaranteed a bowl of soup, a box of rocks, a diamond ring, or a job, but we are at liberty to pursue any and all of these things.

But a totalitarian statism is like a skin disease which encompasses all and threatens to spread to every organ in the body, and I respond with a deliberately loud and progressive—NO THANK YOU!

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism', they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
—Norman Thomas, Socialist

As for me, I would rather fail completely while chasing a dream, embrace my aching inner hobo, and take my God-given liberty to my grave than to play with the scorching fires of committed communism. The founding fathers knew what they were talking about as they studied man's history in dealing with other men. We were warned. And now, perhaps, the greatest threat to America as a freedom-seeking nation since the Civil War is upon us.

That peculiar stealth threat is already upon our shores. While Mister Obama signs away our rights of freedom of speech to the OIC-dominated United Nations, we must ponder how quickly and where the enemy may pounce next.

IS EUROPE ABANDONING SOCIALISM?

The following article by Joseph Farah will display what is at work here. The utter ruin of American competitiveness. That's the blueprint these Marxist Democratic party apparatchiks are using to shore up power for themselves and render the United States more pliable for the big takeover they have already begun executing. Paranoia or keen insight? You be the judge now, or history will do it for you.

HOW IRONIC IS IT THAT the U.S. is embracing socialism at the very moment Europe and many other parts of the world are running away from it? Somebody needs to ask Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi about this.

In the past five years, 33 countries, including 20 in socialist Europe, always held up as the example for a new American economic model by Democrats, have cut their personal income taxes, according to a study by KPMG, the giant accounting firm. In the past four years, 60 countries have cut their corporate income tax rates. Why have they done it?

Simple. They want to compete more effectively for capital and human resources. Basically, the world has been turned upside-down—with territories even under Communist control recognizing that low taxes is what drives burgeoning economies.

Read it all.

TWO PARABLES

AFTER READING ARCH-CONSERVATIVE Tony Blankley's syndicated article about the shortcomings of the presumptive Democratic nominee's worldview, two comments left on the site intrigued me even more than Mister Blankley's.

First, the comment by SoxConn:

Obama needs to go back to his sources of "principled diplomacy". One of the underlying principles was internationalizing "liberal capitalism" NOT internationalizing liberal socialism. There is a big difference in who controls the distribution of "fruits of labor", those that earn it or those elitists that want to socially engineer equality. It's been tried before in 1917 and 1924 to 1953 and failed.

Global Warming or Climate Change or whatever it is today is losing it's appeal as revenue (and political power) source because of conflicts with energy problems and a false foundation in consensus science. A goal of reducing "extreme poverty" 50% by 2015 is Miss Congenialty stuff. The guy needs a baseline in reality, not celebrityism.

The comment left by a woman who dubbed herself—Bandai—is even more likely to ring true for many of us:

My late husband and I worked way too hard and made good money. We could have had a great life in our retirement but for the fact that we both tried to help out our families, whose needs were endless, and whose ambition was limited to transferring our "wealth" to support their idleness.

My husband is now gone, and I struggle every month to make ends meet, but I had the good sense to turn off the constant drain on our resources after I was diagnosed with a progressive illness that will eventually be terminal and had to stop working.

Despite their solemn promises to repay the "loans" at the time of request, not one of them has ever repaid a dime. The family has long forgotten all the help they received from us, and I am resented for my necessary decision.

The point is, one working couple most likely cannot support an extended family in comfort in perpetuity; nor can one country sharing their wealth support the world and make everyone wealthy or happy.

And contrary to logic, our generosity will not win us the respect of the world, but rather resentment.

We can still do good in the world, just not by transferring our wealth, which we, as individuals, will eventually need to support ourselves. I volunteer my time to local organizations. Most of us have talents that can benefit others in some way.

MASTER OF CHANGE AND HIS DISCIPLES

The following excerpt of an essay by John Perazzo published at Front Page Mag is a splendid starting point for educating oneself concerning the unsavory tactics of revolutionaries, radicals, and enforcers rising up from both the Left and the Right. Read it all. The link to the full essay, which is rather long and comprehensive, is at the end of this excerpt.

AMERICANS ARE WELL-ACQUAINTED with presidential candidate Barack Obama’s legendary pledges to bring “change” to America’s political and social landscape. (For example, see here and here and here.) Indeed, “Change We Can Believe In” is the slogan that adorns the homepage of his campaign website and so many of the placards displayed by the supporters who attend his speaking engagements.

His Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, is also well practiced at issuing calls for change. Her “Change and Experience” ad campaign was but an outgrowth of her 1993 declaration, as First Lady, that “remolding society is one of the great challenges facing all of us in the West.” Most Americans are unaware, however, that when Obama and Clinton speak of “change,” they mean change in the sense that a profoundly significant, though not widely known, individual—Saul Alinsky —outlined in his writings two generations ago.

Alinsky helped to establish the confrontational political tactics, which he termed “organizing,” that characterized the 1960s and have remained central to all subsequent revolutionary movements in the United States. Both Obama and Clinton are committed disciples of Alinsky’s very specific strategies for “social change.”

...

Alinsky stressed that organizers and their followers needed to take care, when first unveiling their particular crusade for “change,” not to alienate the middle class with any type of crude language, defiant demeanor, or menacing appearance that suggested radicalism or a disrespect for middle class mores and traditions. For this very reason, he disliked the hippies and counterculture activists of the 1960s. As Richard Poe puts it: “Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.”

While his ultimate goal was nothing less than the “radicalization of the middle class,” Alinsky stressed the importance of “learning to talk the language of those with whom one is trying to converse.”[63] “Tactics must begin with the experience of the middle class,” he said, “accepting their aversion to rudeness, vulgarity, and conflict. Start them easy, don’t scare them off.”[64]

To appeal to the middle class, Alinsky continued, “goals must be phrased in general terms like ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’; ‘Of the Common Welfare’; ‘Pursuit of happiness’; or ‘Bread and Peace.’”[65] He suggested, for instance, that an effective organizer “discovers what their [the middle class’] definition of the police is, and their language— [and] he discards the rhetoric that always says ‘pig’ [in reference to police]. Instead of hostile rejection he is seeking bridges of communication and unity over the gaps. He will view with strategic sensitivity the nature of middle-class behavior with its hang-ups over rudeness or aggressive, insulting, profane actions. All this and more must be grasped and used to radicalize parts of the middle class.”[66]

A related principle taught by Alinsky was that radical organizers must not only speak the language of the middle class, but that they also must dress their crusades in the vestments of morality. “Moral rationalization,” he said, “is indispensable to all kinds of action, whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.”[67] “All great leaders,” he added, “invoked ‘moral principles’ to cover naked self-interest in the clothing of ‘freedom,’ ‘equality of mankind,’ ‘a law higher than man-made law,’ and so on.” In short: “All effective actions require the passport of morality.”[68]

This tactic of framing one’s objectives in the rhetoric of morality precisely paralleled a communist device for deception known as “Aesopian language,” which J. Edgar Hoover described as follows:

“Nearly everyone is familiar with the fables of Aesop…. Often the point of the story is not directly stated but must be inferred by the reader. This is a ‘roundabout’ presentation. Lenin and his associates before 1917, while living in exile, made frequent use of ‘Aesopianism.’ Much of their propaganda was written in a ‘roundabout’ and elusive style to pass severe Czarist censorship. They desired revolution but could not say so. They had to resort to hints, theoretical discussions, even substituting words, which, through fooling the censor, were understood by the ‘initiated,’ that is, individuals trained in [Communist] Party terminology….

“The word ‘democracy’ is one of the communists’ favorite Aesopian terms. They say they favor democracy, that communism will bring the fullest democracy in the history of mankind. But, to the communists, democracy does not mean free speech, free elections, or the right of minorities to exist. Democracy means the domination of the communist state, the complete supremacy of the Party. The greater the communist control, the more ‘democracy.’ ‘Full democracy,’ to the communist, will come only when all noncommunist opposition is liquidated.

“Such expressions as ‘democracy,’ ‘equality,’ ‘freedom,’ and ‘justice’ are merely the Party’s Aesopian devices to impress noncommunists. Communists clothe themselves with everything good, noble, and inspiring to exploit those ideals to their own advantage.”[69]

But Alinsky understood that there was a flip side to his strategy of speaking the palatable language of the middle class and the reassuring parlance of morality. Specifically, he said that organizers must be entirely unpredictable and unmistakably willing -—for the sake of the moral principles in whose name they claim to act—to watch society descend into utter chaos and anarchy. He stated that they must be prepared, if necessary, to “go into a state of complete confusion and draw [their] opponent into the vortex of the same confusion.”[70]

One way in which organizers and their disciples can broadcast their preparedness for this possibility is by staging loud, defiant, massive protest rallies expressing deep rage and discontent over one particular injustice or another. Such demonstrations can give onlookers the impression that a mass movement is preparing to shift into high gear, and that its present (already formidable) size is but a fraction of what it eventually will become. “A mass impression,” said Alinsky, “can be lasting and intimidating. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”[71]

“The threat,” he added, “is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”[72] “If your organization is small in numbers,” said Alinsky, “conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does.”[73]

“Wherever possible,” Alinsky counseled, “go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.”[74] Marching mobs of chanting demonstrators accomplishes this objective. The average observer’s reaction to such a display is of a dual nature: First he is afraid. But he also recalls the organizer’s initial articulation of middle-class ideals and morals. Thus he convinces himself that the People’s Organization is surely composed of reasonable people who actually hold values similar to his own, and who seek resolutions that will be beneficial to both sides. This thought process causes him to proffer—in hopes of appeasing the angry mobs—concessions and admissions of guilt, which the organizer in turn exploits to gain still greater moral leverage and to extort further concessions.

In Alinsky’s view, action was more often the catalyst for revolutionary fervor than vice versa. He deemed it essential for the organizer to get people to act first (e.g., participate in a demonstration) and rationalize their actions later. “Get them to move in the right direction first,” said Alinsky. “They’ll explain to themselves later why they moved in that direction.”[75]

Among the most vital tenets of Alinsky’s method were the following:

“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more live up to their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity.”[76]

“No organization, including organized religion, can live up to the letter of its own book. You can club them to death with their ‘book’ of rules and regulations.”[77]

“Practically all people live in a world of contradictions. They espouse a morality which they do not practice.… This dilemma can and should be fully utilized by the organizer in getting individuals and groups involved in a People’s Organization. It is a very definite Achilles’ heel even in the most materialistic person. Caught in the trap of his own contradictions, that person will find it difficult to show satisfactory cause to both the organizer and himself as to why he should not join and participate in the organization. He will be driven either to participation or else to a public and private admission of his own lack of faith in democracy and man.”[78]

We have seen this phenomenon played out many times in recent years. For instance, a case of police brutality against black New Yorker Abner Louima in 1997 was cited repeatedly by critics of the police as emblematic of a widespread pattern of abuse aimed at nonwhite minorities. Similarly, the misconduct of a handful of American soldiers at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 was portrayed as part of a much larger pattern that had been approved by the highest levels of the U.S. government.

And on the battlefields of the Middle East, any American military initiative that has inadvertently killed innocent civilians has been cited by opponents of the war as evidence that U.S. troops are maniacal, bloodthirsty killers. In each of the foregoing examples, the allegedly hypocritical American authorities were accused of having violated their own “book of rules” (rules that are supposed to govern the conduct of the police or the military).

Alinsky taught that in order to most effectively cast themselves as defenders of moral principals and human decency, organizers must react with “shock, horror, and moral outrage” whenever their targeted enemy in any way misspeaks or fails to live up to his “book of rules.”[79]

Moreover, said Alinsky, whenever possible the organizer must deride his enemy and dismiss him as someone unworthy of being taken seriously because he is either intellectually deficient or morally bankrupt. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength,” said Alinsky.[80] He advised organizers to “laugh at the enemy” in an effort to provoke “an irrational anger.”[81] “Ridicule,” said Alinsky, “is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”[82]

According to Alinsky, it was vital that organizers focus on multiple crusades and multiple approaches. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag,” he wrote. “Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time. New issues and crises are always developing.”[83] “Keep the pressure on,” he continued, “with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.”[84]

Toward this end, Alinksy advised organizers to be sure that they always kept more than one “fight in the bank.” In other words, organizers should keep a stockpile of comparatively small crusades which they are already prepared to conduct, and to which they can instantly turn their attention after having won a major victory of some type. These “fights in the bank” serve the dual purpose of keeping the organization’s momentum going, while not allowing its major crusade to get “stale” from excessive public exposure.[85]

Read it all.