Posted on 03/16/2009 8:09:13 PM PDT by marshall_t
I have felt like conservatives need a set of rules to counter the "Rules for Radicals" written by Saul Alinsky. This is my first draft. Comments and ideas are solicited.
1. Conservative principles (e.g. liberty, fiscal responsibility, promoting national morality, and ensuring our national security) are derived from the Constitution and are not negotiable. Because these principles transcend political cycles, once defined they do not need to be constantly updated. They must form the bedrock of our core beliefs. Anyone who rejects any of these principles should not be recognized as a conservative. This is especially true when someone changes their mind on core conservative beliefs but still wants to be considered a conservative. Pragmatism is one of our greatest enemies. Far more damage is done to the conservative movement (and our country) by compromising our principles and backing liberal policies than by standing firm but failing to win the immediate battle. The only reason liberals want bipartisanship is to give them political cover when their ideas eventually crash and burn.
2. While conservatives should respect our courts, bad decisions that violate the constitution and common sense must be opposed and strongly criticized. Offensive rulings should initiate thousands of letters to the editor and scholarly legal papers which identify the judge(s) by name and how their ruling is wrong and hurts our country. In particular, the notion of a "living constitution" must be firmly rejected and treated with the derision it deserves. We must demand that the constitution only be changed through the amendment process not judicial fiat.
3. Those who claim to be conservatives, but talk and act more like liberals must be the recipients of our constant ridicle. It is better that they leave our ranks and declare themselves to be the liberals they truly are than allow them to dilute and poison our message. That goes double for mavericks.
4. Always remind the press whenever they are attacking a conservative for a moral lapse, that you understand why liberals are rarely investigated in the same manner. When you have no moral values to follow, you have none to break. Make it sting!
5. Conservatives must be fearless and mercilessly attack - with facts - the illogical positions liberals invariably take on the issues. Keep bringing the focus of the debate back to the fundamental issue and its violation of common sense (and usually the constitution as well). Aways attach the name of the liberal supporter(s) to these positions, for example, "The Durbin Censorship Doctrine". Never refer to it by any other name. Repetition of this theme will eventually reach and influence those who still have an open and rational mind. Liberals assume the voters are not capable of understanding the issues and require their enlightened help to make good decisions. Use their arrogance as a weapon against them. Conservatives can and do trust the voters when they are provided with unbiased facts. Make sure that voters know what liberals really think about them.
6. Because liberals start their indoctrination process on our children from the first day of school, conservatives must regain control of our schools and universities to reinstitute balance. Because this will take a long time (decades at least) in the interim, we should create a parallel education system that eliminates this liberal monopoly. Failure to vigorously challenge liberals in this area will cede our children to liberal philosophy that gets more difficult to counter as they get older.
7. Conservative principles naturally appeal to common sense, therefore it is never necessary to hide or water them down to win converts to our cause. We should never apologize for being conservatives. If we can clearly articulate conservative positions on the issues and why we believe in them, we will win converts and elections. The "big tent" approach for expanding the conservative ranks will only result in multiple disputing factions that prevent philosophical unity and sends mixed messages to the voters. As such it will fail and eventually destroy us from within.
8. Today, we must recognize that the mainstream media is the open enemy of conservatives. Therefore, we cannot trust them to report our message in an unbiased manner. In the short term, conservatives must develop and exploit alternative media avenues like the internet. We must be prepared to aggressively challenge the media on those occasions when they stoop to interview one of us. We should force them into a position of having to scrap an interview because it carries a clear coherent conservative message than allow them a "got you" moment that reflects poorly on our movement. We should not hesitate to get up and walk out on an interview that turns biased and hostile. It is better to have no coverage in the mainstream media than uniformly bad coverage. It is common for the media to pick people who they claim are "moderates" to represent the conservative position. We cannot accept this situation since it misrepresents and poisons our message. Conservatives must loudly say "they do not speak for us!" whenever this happens.
9. Conservatives must identify, promote and groom conservatives at an early age for public office. As part of this process, the conservative candidate needs to be philosophically prepared to play hardball with liberals. Conservatives should never hesitate to replace current office holders who have betrayed our trust by compromising our core principles. In a similar manner, conservatives should also be encouraged to enter fields that are currently dominated by liberals, like education, the media and entertainment industries. This will take special people who are willing to accept that their advancement may be hampered by their beliefs. We have to start now if we ever want to change these systems from within. Eventually, these fields can be pried loose from liberals as we make advances in all areas of society.
10. Liberals are not our friends, nor can they be made our friends by compromising our core principles while helping them implement their agenda. They uniformly despise conservatives and will smile at you as they stab you in the back. Since liberals rarely have any ideas worthy of serious consideration by conservatives, do not waste any time or effort to try to appease them. Liberals only respect power. Compromising with them will only confirm their belief that conservatives are weak and impotent. Therefore, we can make more inroads by giving them humiliating defeats than by trying to be pragmatic. We should cultivate their fear of us rather than seeking their respect.
11. When in power, conservatives must make the most of our opportunities to reverse the damage done to our government and institutions by liberals. It is not easy to do and faces many legislative hurdles. However, just making the effort helps define those policies that conservatives consider harmful to our prosperity. These policies must be demonized and given no respect. Needless to say, it should be clearly advertised that these policies are the failed and misbegotten offspring of liberals. Whenever possible, laws and constitutional amendments should be passed that impede future liberal administrations from reinstituting these failed policies. Finally, given the importance of the judiciary, only conservative judges (i.e. proven strict constructionists) should be nominated and appointed to the bench. Any attempt by liberals to block these appointments should cause conservatives to shutdown all legislative business (even to the point of shutting down government) until their resistance is broken.
12. Limited government must be a core value of any elected conservative. A valuable side benefit of shrinking the government to its constitutional boundaries, besides reducing its cost, is that it is less able to violate our rights and infringe in our everyday lives. Conservatives should review the powers delegated to the various federal and state entities by the constitution and rigidly restrict the government to just those powers. Any areas that have expanded beyond their legal scope should be chopped off without apology (or anesthesia). It will cause liberals pain to see this happen, but consider it tough love.
13. Gridlock can be our best friend. Our economy works best when government gets out of the way. If you do not believe in capitalism, you are living in the wrong country. When liberals are in power and trying to pass bad legislation, often the best thing conservatives can do is gum-up the works to delay or prevent the bad policies from being enacted. There is no benefit in trying to amend their legislation to make it less offensive, just work to kill it and propose a better conservative alternative. Gridlock is brinkmanship to be sure, but is almost always better than letting liberal policies be enacted without resistance. Other conservatives will understand and support your principled actions. If the liberals manage to overcome the gridlock and implement their policies anyway, they will unquestionably own them. This message of liberal ownership should be the first thing out of a conservative's mouth when speaking to the media. It requires consistent repetition until even the mainstream media cannot give political cover for the disaster liberal policies invariably cause.
14. Avoid getting sucked into the latest alarmist issue. It has become a trend for liberals to push their policies as the solution to emergencies that must be addressed quickly (i.e. without normal debate). Short of a foreign invasion, such situations are extremely rare. Conservatives must resist the temptation to act hastily since good decisions are almost impossible to make with limited information. These situations often become less threatening when the facts are examined. Unfortunately, policies developed in haste are often difficult to undo once enacted even when determined to be the wrong approach to the problem. No action is better than risky action without all of the facts. Solutions that violate or compromise our constitution must be rejected.
15. A conservative should never vote for any legislation that they have not read and completely understand. No legislation deserves our support without this minimal due diligence.
Good idea, Marshall_t, but I would condense your thoughts a little.
Some good things in there. Thank God you didn’t have our own version of “Rules for Radicals”. That is a hideous, immoral blueprint for governing ones behavior.
BUMP....good stuff
Agreed. We'll adopt a big tent, when the Democrats do likewise. : )
A good beginning, Mt!
Nevertheless it should be read and incorporated into our tactics for fighting liberals.
Very good marshall_t!
Your first sentence sums it up: Conservative principals shall not be compromised.
How about using the 10 Commandants?
good start.
the u.s. constititution and bill of rights are my rules.
The Constitution of the United States should be sufficient.
THE Marshall Thompson died years ago.
Bump. Good start. We need to start thinking long term.
The “10 Commandants”. Are they all Officers?
or did you mean the Ten Commandments?
I don’t want to incorporate anything from it.
I read it to understand them, then realized I had no reason to do so, I already understood them far too well.
Did you know the book is dedicated, amongst others, to Lucifer? That is not a joke.
Any apology is taken as a sign of weakness by Liberals and apologies must be given sparingly if at all!
For another idea of not taking a step back, see Rocy Marciano's fights were he did not take a step back and he wore his opponents down.
The really sad part is how effective "hideous and immoral" can be.
There is more, but I haven't had time to finish the book and distill the principles. Make no mistake, Alinsky is a hard core Marxist. I'm studying his methods, not embracing his objectives.
We do strongly need to develop tactics for countering Alinsky's approach, though. It has proven to be highly effective and its use is growing on a daily basis. It's not being effectively countered at the moment.
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