Posted on 09/06/2008 9:04:24 AM PDT by mojito
...But his campaign has taken the point a step further, implying that Obama the politician is a direct descendant of Obama the organizer--that he has carried the practices and principles of community organizing into his campaign, and would carry them into the White House as well. This is the version of Obama's biography that most journalists have accepted.
In truth, however, if you examine carefully how Obama conducted himself as an organizer and how he has conducted himself as a politician, if you consider what he said about organizing to his fellow organizers, and if you look at the reasons he gave friends and colleagues for abandoning organizing, then a very different picture emerges: that of a disillusioned activist who fashioned his political identity not as an extension of community organizing but as a wholesale rejection of it. Indeed, the most important thing to know about Barack Obama's time as a community organizer in Chicago may not be what he gained from the experience--but rather why, in late 1987, he decided to quit.
...Obama had worked briefly as an organizer in Harlem, but, in Chicago, he learned the principles of community organizing from Kellman, Kruglik, and other disciples of Saul Alinsky...
(Excerpt) Read more at tnr.com ...
It contains a lot of information, all of it pretty worrisome. Essentially, Obama gave up community organizing because he wanted to transform himself into the Messiah.
Sounds like he was playing his Jesse Jackson card.
It’s funny how seriously the author treats the ‘profession’ of ‘community organizer’
...
Interesting that the only criticism of Obama you kind find is in a small-circulation, liberal magazine.
This man truly is scary.
“Community organizer” equals outside agitator, rabble rouser. To think that now qualifies you to be President of the United States. Americans need to know what a dangerous man the Democrats are foisting on us.
Seems to me they’re missing the point with all this “community organizing”. The root cause of the problems they’re trying to fix is, in this case, the collapse of the steel industry.
I’m just guessing since I don’t know the details but I’m thinking that the cost of labor and the taxes in the US were not competitive with the foreign manufacturers. So maybe the unions and the Congress could have avoided the entire need for “community organizers” to try to create something when there is no viable economic reason to do so.
Problem is, apparently Obama still doesn’t see the bottom line on economic problems - he thinks you can just tax the golden goose and hand out more to the “victims” and it will all be fine.
These people can’t see the forest for the trees.
Obama wanted to bring back jobs, stores, churches, but realized after several years that “organizing” wasn’t going to do it.
So instead of realizing basic economic reasons why businesses have left, Obama seems to have come to the conclusion that he needed more power and left-wing agitation at a higher level to make change. If only he could squeeze the stone harder, he could eventually get blood out of it!
Now he wants to be President and take his ridiculous ideas to a much higher level. SCARY!
No, there is something more at play here. Manufacturing jobs have disappeared in small towns across the US. I have been in many of them and they look NOTHING like Altgeld Gardens. Decrepit and empty, yes, but not dangerous or gang-infested.
Why are the residents of Obama's old communities unwilling or unable to find something productive to do with their lives? Why do they constantly demand more and more concessions from the taxpayers instead of getting things done on their own?
While TNR - a left publication - is arguing that Obama's political strategy is different from his strategy as a community organizer and not the same as he claims, this is an abstruse point that the average voter could care less about.
However, TNR does point out that Obama was a complete failure as a community organizer. None of his projects were successful and the only project that showed any return was someone else's project that he took credit for.
TNR is a left publication that does not want to see McCain/Palin elected - but even they admit that community organizer Barack Obama was a terrible community organizer who got nothing done.
Now he wants to be President and take his ridiculous ideas to a much higher level. SCARY!
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He really is his father’s son! His father said there is no reason in theory why the government could not take one hundred percent of income in taxes provided the benefits provided by the government were sufficient to justify it. This shows that his father lived in a dream world with little understanding of the basic reality of human life, Barack is no different. Those who are truly superior never say so and those who clearly think themselves superior as Barack Obama does never are, usually they are very substandard in their logic and Barack certainly demonstrates very muddled thinking regardless of how many in the media tell us he is brilliant.
It illustrates Hussein's deep-seeded cult leader/Marxist messiah complex. The goal of the Alisky model seems to be to create a large group of people who are in a perpetual state of agitation. Unlike the standard Democrat model which tries to agitate blacks every election cycle, the Alinsky model wants them perpetually agitated. Their negative energy is then used to gain power by others behind the scene.
Hussein wants to control this energy but he wants to be the focus of it, in front of it. He does not want to be behind the scenes. He wants adoration from a mass army of agitated “organized” community members.
I think we misunderestimate just how dangerous he is. He has the personality which requires adoration. The fact that he does not try to head off the “messiah” talk and actually tries to foster it (Greek temple in Denver) perfectly illustrates his desire to be adored and worshiped. Someone like this as the president would be disastrous.
THat was my reaction... What? Community Organizing a profession???? You gotta be kidding me! If you want to help an inner city neighborhood you start a biz and employ people. That will bring in capital and banks. If nobody wants to work, go find someplace where people do want to work. Cut off the government cheese and I guarantee you they will want to work.
I too have seen the same things in other towns and cities, where people just pick up the pieces and start things anew.
During the oil bust and bank-saving & loan bust of the eighties, Texas just moved on. Oh, there was plenty of bitching and moaning, but shortly almost everyone found a new method of making money.
I thought this was an excellent article. It fleshes out how Obama’s political philosophy differs from that of Alinsky.
I understand now at bit better why some radical leftists have claimed that Alinsky was a CIA operative. His style of organizing emphasized, small-scale, practical solutions, oriented around a neighborhood’s perceived self-interest rather than “social solidarity” within a race or class stratum. Alinsky was anti-utopian, and distrustful of political solutions. This approach rejects revolutionary change as unworkable.
In this sense, Alinsky exhibited conservative philosophical traits. He emphasized achieving goals of “our little platoon” over movements centered around charismatic leaders. And the SON/SOC example cited is one where the community being organized by the Alinksyites was seeking a reactionary goal. But the Alinskyites didn’t reject it as ideologically invalid.
Thoughhe was a communist, Alinsky rejected Stalinism because of the horrors it produced. Obama rejected Alinskyism because it would prevent him from bringing Stalinism to the US. Or so it seems.
I would call TNR “center-left”. They are more closely aligned with the DNC than the Obamabots. also, Andrew Sullivan used to be the managing editor of the magazine, back in the 90s- before he became a raving moonbat.
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