Free Republic

The National Education Association, the organization most identified as the voice of established educators in the United States, is recommending that its members read -- and promote the reading of -- two books by Progressive radical Saul Alinsky: Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals. The recommendation appears in the organizations website under, "Tools & Ideas>Association Representative Resources>Articles & Multimedia>Recommended Reading: Saul Alinsky, The American Organizer." The NEA has insisted over the course of its existence that it is a non-partisan organization that champions the education of America's children while advocating for the professional advancement of its educator membership. Their...

Look what crap can be found on the NEA's website: Recommended Reading: Saul Alinsky, The American OrganizerAn inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer! Saul Alinsky wrote the book on American radicalism - two books, in fact: a 1945 best-seller, "Reveille for Radicals" and "Rules for Radicals" in 1971. The "Reveille" title page quotes Thomas Paine... "Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul." Saul Alinsky, who was a labor and civil-rights activist...

Thus Saul Alinsky begins Rules for Radicals, his impassioned 1971 missive to the political counterculture which had been galvanized into protest mode during the Vietnam War. I was one of the radicals for whom the book was written, though now I am a conservative mom and grateful American. I began blogging of the Obama-Alinsky connection during the 2008 presidential campaign, and given Obama’s history and his surrounding himself with characters from that Chicago/community organizing/dirty politics nexus, it was difficult for someone with my roots to think anything but the worst about the subtext of his message and his methodology. And...

Don't be deceived by the honeyed baritone voice and big smile. Bluffs, bully plays, and head fakes are the means by which President Obama tries to get his way. He learned the technique from Saul Alinsky. The best answer is to use Alinsky against them. We know their rule book, and we can use their rules just as well as they can. The aggressor sets the rules. Obama constantly uses Alinsky's principle of head-faking: "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have." For Obama, "the enemy" is us, the American people. We have to...

Don't be deceived by the honeyed baritone voice and big smile. Bluffs, bully plays, and head fakes are the means by which President Obama tries to get his way. He learned the technique from Saul Alinsky. The best answer is to use Alinsky against them. We know their rule book, and we can use their rules just as well as they can. The aggressor sets the rules. Obama constantly uses Alinsky's principle of head-faking: "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have."  For Obama, "the enemy" is us, the American people. We have to understand --...

Return to the Article October 25, 2009The Slander NetworkBy J.R. Dunn It's a rare pleasure to see that Going Rogue doing so well ahead of publication. (Even though rescheduling the publishing date delayed my book -- but I forgive you, lass). When it appears, there's little doubt it will go through the roof.  Along with fits from the Olbermanns and Courics of the world, we can look forward to seeing a few myths definitively punctured -- the "I can see Russia" story, the shooting wolves from a helicopter narrative, or alternately, the "she can't shoot a gun" claim. (Really,...

MIDI - NO MILK TODAY No FOX today, the White House says no way They're gonna be shut out...that's what it's all about No FOX today, that's how the fascists play With them you must agree, or trouble you will see What happened to the noble fourth estate They drank KoolAide, they're swallowing the bait Tyrannies thrive when leaders go unchecked That is the way our country can be wrecked No FOX today, the White House says no way They are not on their knees like MSNBC Just what has happened to our Constitution Each day they're shredding it...

Rules for Radicals Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat. Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat. Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage. Rule 6: A good tactic is one your...

Blogger Donald Sensing has a fascinating analysis of President Obama's war against Fox News. He describes the effort as "directly out of the Saul Alinsky playbook." Alinsky was the author of "Rules for Radicals," bible of left-wing community organizers. One of his rules, or "power tactics": "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Sensing analyzes how Obama is carrying out this advice.... It's hard to see any way in which the White House's war on Fox makes sense. The aim of the effort seems to be to contain the political damage from stories like the Van Jones...

From Naval Aviator, Commander Jerry Wilson We lived in California during the winters of 2007 and 2008. We became addicted to Fox News and watched O’Reilly and Hannity and Colmes every night. When we got back home, we upgraded our cable to get Fox. I watched the Presidential campaign very closely. Initially, because I thought the Democrats would nominate Hillary Clinton and then in astonishment when they chose an even more hard-left candidate. All of last year I told everyone I could that Obama was not a Democrat, he is a Marxist. He is far to the left of any...

The White House’s extraordinary assault on the Fox News Channel will end in tears – and not for Rupert Murdoch, Fox’s owner. The Obama administration has embarked on a high-risk strategy of shooting the messenger, in effect blaming its plummeting poll ratings on alleged political bias at the number one 24-hour cable news network. As Anita Dunn, the Mao-quoting White House communications director put it in an interview with The New York Times: “We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent. As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t...

"President Obama is working systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party, setting loose top White House officials to undermine conservatives in the media, business and lobbying worlds. With a series of private meetings and public taunts, the White House has targeted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest-spending pro-business lobbying group in the country; Rush Limbaugh, the country’s most-listened-to conservative commentator; and now, with a new volley of combative rhetoric in recent days, the insurance industry, Wall Street executives and Fox News"

Empowering People, Not Elites Interview with Saul Alinsky Saul Alinsky is, along with Thomas Paine, Henry George, and Dorothy Day, one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left. Response to our earlier article dealing with Alinsky has been so great that we worked to obtain this extensive interview with him, conducted by Playboy magazine in 1972. It is, by far, the most detailed conversation with Alinsky that we know of. The interview will be appearing in weekly installments here at The Progress Report. Part One For the past 35 years, the American establishment has come under relentless attack...

Return to the Article October 20, 2009Alinskyite in Chief Is a Master PolarizerBy Kyle-Anne Shiver The thirteenth rule of radical tactics: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. - Saul Alinsky, the Father of Community Organizing     Rules for Radicals; p. 128 There's a whole lot of polarizing going on in Obama's America.  Unity is out, apparently.  Polarization is still in.  And Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are the new Bush.  One would need to be a complete ninny outfitted with blinders and earplugs not to know this by now. One blaring truth rears its ugly head...

There's a great deal of irony in the connection between Saul Alinsky and the Tea Parties. If you were to take a random poll of tea party gatherers, most would have heard of Alinsky. Most of those folks would view Alinsky unfavorably. Yet, knowingly or not, the tea parties owe much of their success to the exact same principles that Alinsky verbalized when he was organizing on the streets of Chicago.

It's been just shy of a year since the 2008 elections, Barack Obama has been in office for a little over nine months, and what are those on the Left and the Right talking about? Sarah Palin.

This is an AP story so I will chop up an excerpted quote. Note that the organizers of this so-called grass-roots phenomenon are handing out copies of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Fired up? ... Obama's grass-roots supporters ... drowned out.... communities ... Obama organizers ... "silent majority," ... a government run plan to compete with private insurers.... opponents of ... health care revamp ... controlled the image war ... rowdy town halls ... Obama supporters ... mobilizing.... erroneous "death panel" accusations.... Organizer Geoff Berman.... Howard Dean.... tea party protests largely organized by FreedomWorks.... Spokesman Adam Brandon said all staffers...

This is a war if there ever was one. Barack Hussein Obama and the socialist leadership in Congress are working furiously to change America and to transform our nation in a way no one would have ever believed. They’re spending trillions of our tax dollars to do it. I am not talking about the type of miserable change Jimmy Carter inflicted on our nation. Thanks to Ronald Reagan we were able to reverse much of the course Carter had put us on, but what we’re seeing today isn’t like anything you and I have ever seen before! I’m talking about...

Yesterday a video was unveiled where members of the Gamaliel Foundation seemed to be praying to Obama. After you read this overview you will not only realize that they were praying to the POTUS, but WHY. It was the Gamaliel Foundation, NOT ACORN, where the President got his Alinsky/ Community organizing training. Obama in fact worked for a subsidiary of the radical Gamaliel Foundation, a Chicago-based Alinsky group, and he was paid by the radical Woods Fund, which supports Gamaliel. Gamaliel's Web site and history page make plain that it evolved from the Alinsky school of organizing. Its training methods...

A theomachist is one who works against God; hates God in fact. Theomachism is the political belief and practice of hating or destroying God. Unlike atheists who merely deny the existence of God, perhaps the most disgusting set of ideas known to the world is the active hatred of God. Not new to history it has become a major part of the ideological landscape in the last century with the rise of materialism and positivist science. Those who practice this detestable belief do so under the cover of other political ideals which are compatible with their belief.

The best thing about Saul Alinsky is he didn’t breed so we won’t see his poisonous offspring organizing illegal aliens or strikes. We’ve heard about Alinsky’s rules for radicals almost constantly since Barack Obama’s nomination. We’ve been warned how they were going to end America and make us a socialist gulag. But the “rules” are smacking up against new realities and losing: We’re not afraid. Different times a different America Alinsky wrote his “Rules for Radicals” before his death in 1972. The world and our nation have become far different places since then. Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet....

Dawns on this poster -- that the ultimate "turnabout is fair play" would be to humiliate and bring down the one person who *invented* the left's politics of personal destruction: Saul Alinsky.

In 2009, Saul Alinsky has been discussed in such a matter-of-fact way that many casual observers have heard of him. The following is a list of Alinsky’s 12 rules for upheaval: RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” RULE...

October 20, 2008 By Kyle-Anne Shiver "A People's Organization is dedicated to an eternal war...A war is not an intellectual debate, and in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play." - Saul Alinsky; Reveille for Radicals; p. 133 Rules? What rules? Laws? What laws? Clearly, Alinsky's acolytes take him at his word. When one is fighting a war "against social evils," one is above the law. Rules and laws are for the other people. I'm stunned by the irony here. For the past eight years, Americans have been bombarded nearly nonstop by cries of "Bush...

Baltimore, Nov 11, 2008 (CNA).- The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) has not yet been able to determine if grants made to ACORN were used for fraudulent voter registration, but has cut off all funding to the community organizing group, Bishop Robert Morin announced on Tuesday. Shortly after addressing the full assembly of U.S. Catholic bishops, Bishop Morin spoke to reporters about what the bishops had learned concerning the use of grants from the CCHD to the group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which is currently under investigation in 13 states for voter fraud. CCHD originally...

Conservatives are coming for the Democrats on their blind side — the left. The evidence is everywhere. At tea parties and town halls, conservative demonstrators oppose health care reform with signs bearing the abortion-rights slogan “Keep your laws off my body” or the line “Obama lies, Grandma dies” — an echo of the “Bush lied, they died” T-shirts worn to protest the Iraq war. Conservative activists are yelling “Nazi!” and “Big Brother!” where they used to shout, “Nanny state!” and “Big Government!” And the 1971 agitator’s handbook “Rules for Radicals” — written by Saul Alinsky, the Chicago community organizer who...

It was only a week ago SEIU members lamented that conservatives learned the rules so fast. Indeed. Jim Geraghty over at “The Campaign Spot” has a partial transcript.Big Government’s James O’Keefe, doing the work 60 Minutes just won’t do anymore, is now back with Part 4 … and this involves a California ACORN office, murder and prostitution. Watch it all.

Oversight: As the Senate votes to de-fund Acorn, add pimping, tax evasion and human trafficking to voter fraud paid for with taxpayer dollars and you have an organized criminal enterprise. It's time to investigate.After Acorn workers were caught on tape in three cities allegedly abetting what they believed was a fraudulent-mortgage and sex-trafficking scheme, the Senate has voted overwhelmingly to strip the group of funding in the Transportation/Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. The amendment, offered by Nebraska Republican Sen. Mike Johanns, passed by an 83-to-7 margin and marked the third time this year that Republicans have tried to block...

Alinsky Rule #10, “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.”This Alinsky rule is much like Chinese water torture.Drip. Drip. Drip. Steady. Unrelenting. Drip. Drip. Drip. The festering sore first came to light in Baltimore. Those tapes were released on Thursday September 10th.Then, on Friday, it broke out in Washington, DC.Now, the pus filled, red, oozy spot has erupted in New York.[VIDEO AT SITE] Damn those isolated incidents. Second video from New York below the...

At a packed town meeting of over 1,000 people hosted by Democrat Sen. Mark Warner in Fredericksburg, Virginia, a woman prefaced her question by expressing a broader concern: “For the first time I don’t believe the President we have is a patriot. I think a lot of the concern and discontent is less about health care than trusting the agenda of this administration.” Sen. Warner harshly rebuked her, calling the remark offensive and declaring Obama “a great patriot.” Yet judging by the storm of applause that greeted her comment, she echoed the feelings of many others in the hall. What...

Comedy actress Tina Fey has won an Emmy Award for her satirical portrayal of Republican vice-presidential contender Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. Fey was honoured at the Creative Arts Primetime Emmys, which recognise technical and other achievements. Pop star Justin Timberlake, who did not attend, won for playing various characters on Saturday Night Live. There were also wins for Ellen Burstyn for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Michael J Fox for Rescue Me. "I always wanted one of these," Burstyn said, winning her first Emmy after being nominated five times. 'Living my dream' In winning her award,...

Radicalism and rebellion can be vilified or canonized without much thought. In the context of the American Revolution, we view the radicalism and rebellion of our founding fathers as good, even sacred. Yet we often use the terms radical and rebel as pejoratives in a modern context. Why is that? Radicalism and rebellion are healthy when the system rebelled against acts to deprive free men of their natural rights. But radicalism and rebellion can also be used against a system which recognizes and preserves those rights. This is the situation we find ourselves in today, with radicals rebelling against the...

Parents do not trust the Educator-in-Chief and his "comrades." You can take Obama from the radicals in Chicago. But you can't take the Chicago radicalism out of Obama. – Michelle Malkin On Tuesday the President of the United States will speak to school children across the nation in a television address. A large number of parents will keep their children home in the belief that this is an inappropriate use of the bully pulpit. But what did they expect from a community organizer whose playbook is Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky? (To understand Rules for Radicals, see my previous...

Do We Really Need A Green Job Czar? The Spanish government's renewable energy initiatives have destroyed 2.2 jobs for every new "green" job created, concludes a new study by economics professor Gabriel Calzada of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. Calzada says American jobs will suffer the same fate if the United States similarly attempts to promote renewable energy at the expense of conventional energy sources.

Exactly what did Barack Obama "inherit?" Our president is fond of laying blame at the feet of his predecessor. Do the facts, however, support the rhetoric? They might but for the inconvenient truth that his party has enjoyed majorities in both chambers of Congress since the 2006 elections. Can any individual or party feign "inheritance" when they have controlled the legislative agenda for over two years? I think not. While much has rightly been made of the contributions to the current recession from "The Fed," the SEC, risk assessors, banks, insurers, and private mortgage lenders, little scrutiny has been applied...

True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.... Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Alinsky’s counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power.

Here's an FR thread from when Mark Lloyd's article on the "Structural Imbalance in Broadcast Talk Radio" first appeared.

VETERANS RIGHTS ADVOCATES UNDER ATTACK BY SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS AND MEMBERS [Snip]Article... What vets don't know is how the American Legion, VFW and other groups have advised the DVA and Congress, led us, every step of the way, to the total failure and utter disaster we have now. These groups "played" at helping vets but became a home for political extremists or dimwits addicted more [sic] grandstanding than the hard work required by informed veterans advocacy.

1st Amendment: Mark Lloyd, a disciple of Saul Alinsky and fan of Hugo Chavez, wants to destroy talk radio and says free speech is a distraction. The new FCC diversity "czar" says Venezuela is an example we should follow.When Mark Lloyd was appointed July 29 as the chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission, a nation focused on ObamaCare and a deteriorating economy took little notice. But as angry constituents flood town hall meetings and call in to talk radio, a man dedicated to silencing them sits at the right hand of the president. They share a common hero...

Stating the obvious passes for folk wisdom in remote tribal areas such as the Southside of Chicago and since we now live in the Chicago-on- the-Potomac perhaps we should start to take some of this obvious wisdom into account. Take statistics, here is a science that’s used to make judgments and to justify actions. And what’s statistics just numbers and what’s in a number? And as the Chicagoism goes, “Figures don’t lie but liars figure.” How does this help us understand our new Omerica? Contrary to popular belief as nurtured by the Mainstream Media, President Obama is not the most...

~ EXCERPT ~ Throughout Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House, he never tired of referring to the three years he spent as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side and its relevance to his life since then. However generic the term may sound to the average ear, it had a very specific meaning to young Barack Obama. It was a term of art used by the self-described Marxist tactician Saul Alinsky, author of “Rules for Radicals” and erstwhile mentor of Obama. As an organizer with the Developing Communities Project in the mid-1980s, the young Obama learned Alinsky’s tactics, and...

For the past several days, FOX News' Glenn Beck has been exhorting his viewers to lay aside their ideologies and ask themselves, with open minds, whether what they are witnessing in the Obama administration is congruent with what they would expect of a President governing from somewhere near the center of the political spectrum rather than from the extreme left. A key figure upon whom Beck has focused his attention is Van Jones, Obama’s "Green Jobs Czar." Jones is one of approximately 32 czars whom Obama has appointed thus far. These czars have been described as "super aides" who work...

Where in the world is Sarah Barracuda Palin? Alaska's sultry superstar has once again mysteriously disappeared right before she was scheduled to speak at one of her very important fundraisers, this one so slutty teenagers who get knocked up have no choice but to have the baby unless they want to get the ol' parental approval for an abortion. Now normally Sarah's habit of shirking her duties is limited to elected terms in office, but ever since becoming an unemployed publicity hound and Facebook junkie, Palin's erratic behavior has instead metamorphosed into canceling paid speaking engagements at the very last...

My September Foundation Watch is up on the Capital Research Center website. It's called "Left-Wing Radicalism in the Church: The Catholic Campaign for Human Development." Here's a summary: Each November around Thanksgiving every Roman Catholic parish takes up a collection for the nonprofit Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), a program run under the auspices of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Last November, under intense pressure from Catholic parishioners, CCHD finally stopped collecting money for the fraud-ridden radical group ACORN. But the Bishops’ Conference continues to support other radical community activist groups with similar goals, such as...

The Golden Rule of Socialism, from each according to their ability and to each according to their need, has an emotional appeal despite its severe logical flaws and unstated assumptions. One of those never stated but obvious assumptions is that ability and need must be determined by arbiters acting for the collective. These arbiters must make decisions about individual abilities based on collective needs and about individual needs based on collective abilities. If the arbiters decide the collective needs less music and more iron, it will reason, for example that anyone capable of playing a guitar can just as well...

Have you met our newly appointed, Obama stamp approved, "Diversity" Czar for the FCC? No? Well...check him out. Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), called for a “confrontational movement” to combat what he claimed was control of the media by international corporations and to re-establish the regulatory power of government through robust public broadcasting and a more powerful FCC. Lloyd expressed his regulatory call to arms in his 2006 book, “Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America” (University of Illinois Press). In the book, Lloyd also said that public broadcasting should be funded...

So Terry Krepel over at ConWebBlog is mad at me for trying to explain why it might not be too outlandish to connect Obama administration tactics to those employed by Mafia Gangsters: What seems to be happening here is that Swindle is justifying the gangster reference as an Alinsky-esque tactic, but failing to acknowledge his own embrace of it. Here’s a question for Swindle: Obama is clearly in your way of wanting to “liberate” Americans from the evil of liberalism. How far would he go to embarrass and discredit him? Would you smear him by calling him a gangster, then...

In spite of the fact that there is no movement in Congress to re-implement the 'Fairness Doctrine' that would silence conservative talk radio, the Obama administration and Democrats on The Hill are working behind the scenes to accomplish that very goal without the Doctrine. With the appointment of Mark Loyd to the FCC as the nation's very first 'Chief Diversity Officer,' Obama hopes to accomplish the very things that the Fairness Doctrine would mandate.

Inspired by Saul Alinsky, FCC 'Diversity' Chief Calls for ‘Confrontational Movement’ to Give Public Broadcasting Dominant Role in Communications Wednesday, August 26, 2009 By Matt Cover (CNSNews.com) – Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), called for a “confrontational movement” to combat what he claimed was control of the media by international corporations and to re-establish the regulatory power of government through robust public broadcasting and a more powerful FCC. Lloyd expressed his regulatory call to arms in his 2006 book, “Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America” (University of Illinois Press). In the...

I've read all I need to read of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. It's a cute book, in the same manner in which a ferral cat at a distance is cute until it gets closer and you see the froth dripping from its mouth and the odd stare in its eyes, when the limp you thought was a war wound from living in the woods turns out to be a unscathed rear leg it is dragging because its synapses ain't firing like they used to. Your conclusion is immediate and without emotion: Everyone and everything will be better if you...