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Environmental Madness

If one needed any further evidence of Federal government incompetence and the death grip environmental radicals have on every aspect of our life today, reading this story should supply it. Notice the utter inability of the EPA and the Corps of Engineers to establish priorities. They worry not about the oil hitting the beaches, but rather the environmental impact of removing the dikes meant to stop the oil and the quality of the clean water going back into the sea. All government devolves into absurdity at some point and the higher the level of the government, the greater the degree of absurdity.

Radical Power

I submitted the following piece to the Urgent Agenda website subscriber forum and it was published there in 2009:

Obama - The Pragmatic Radical

Does no one understand Barack Obama? Too many are making excuses for his behavior. Some say he’s taking on too much at once. Others suggest he is arrogant, incompetent or surrounded by incompetents. Still others believe he has somehow got off track or is tone-deaf or manipulative. Yet, none of these explanations satisfy. Barack Obama is a very uncomplicated individual, not difficult at all to grasp if one examines his history. It’s what he believes, stupid!

Obama is a “community organizer” by trade, a disciple of Saul Alinsky. Obama taught Alinsk’s organizing methods to the staff of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) for several years. Alinsky’s philosophy, one of gaining power over others to remedy perceived wrongs, appealed to a young Obama abandoned by both his parents for their own interests and raised under the tutelage of radical grandparents and communist activist Frank Davis. Alinsky offered Obama a rationalization and a road map for striking back in anger and simultaneously achieving the acceptance denied him in youth. Anyone wanting to understand Obama need only read Alinsky, in particular Rules For Radicals.

Written in 1971, Rules For Radicals is subtitled “A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.” Obama trained in Alinsky's methods, later taught them to other students (see picture) and is, himself, the epitome of the pragmatic or realistic radical. His entire life history, his campaign and his Presidency to date are all easily explained by any reader of Rules For Radicals, which, almost too incredible to be true, is dedicated in part to Lucifer, “the first radical know to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom.” Alinsky is a marvelously smooth writer and the book is captivating to anyone who fails to ponder its implications. It is, simply put, an appeal to power over truth. It is an epistle to moral relativism, envy and pride. Finally, it is guide for “a pragmatic attack on the system.”

Consider the following from Rules For Radicals:

“Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing t let go go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to revolution.”

“...man’s hope lies in the acceptance of the great law of change.”

“...the failure to use power for a more equitable distribution of the means of life for all people signals the end of the revolution and the start of the counterrevolution.”

“One man’s positive is another man’s negative. The description of any procedure as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ is the mark of a political illiterate.”

“(Man) is beginning to learn that he will either share part of his wealth or lose all all of it.”

“He who fears corruption fears life.”

“Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times.”

“In the politics of human life, consistency is not a virtue.”

“Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or use of ends or means.”

“Ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego.”

“The organizer has a personal identity of his on that cannt be lost by absorption or acceptance of any kind of group discipline or organization … the organizer to be part of all can be part of none.”

“The organizer should know and accept that the right reason is only introduced as a moral rationalization after the right end has been achieved, although it may have been achieved for the wrong reasons – therefore he should search for and use the wrong reasons to achieve the right goals.”

“Before men can act and issue must be polarized.”

“It is only when the other party is concerned or feels threatened that he will listen – in the arena of action, a threat or a crisis becomes almost a precondition to communication.”

“He (the organizer) will not ever seem to tell the community what to do; instead he will use loaded questions...while the organizer proceeds on the basis of questions, the community leaders always regard his judgment above their own. They believe that he knows his job, he knows the right tactics, that’s why he is their organizer.”

“Power means strength, whereas love is a human frailty the people mistrust. It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.”

“The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will attack him as a ‘dangerous enemy’,”

“The organizer’s job is to inseminate an invitation for himself, to agitate, introduce ideas, get people pregnant with hope and a desire for change and to identify you as the person most qualified for this purpose.”

“The first step in community organization is community disorganization...An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent; provide a channel into which the people can angrily pour their frustrations.”

“No one can negotiate with the power to compel negotiation.”

“...our concern is with the tactic of taking, how the “Have-nots can take power from the Haves.”

“Power is not static; it cannot be frozen and preserved like food; it must grow or die.”

“Once the battle is joined and a tactic is employed, it is important that the conflict not be carried on over too long a time...a conflict that drags on too long becomes a drag.”

“Large parts of the middle class , the ‘silent majority,’ must be activated; action and articulation are as one, as are silence and surrender...our activists and radicals are products of and rebels against our middle-class society. All rebels must attack the power states in their society. Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values of and way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized, and corrupt. They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the big middle-class majority...He (the organizer) will view with strategic sensitivity the nature of middle-class behavior with its hangups over rudeness or aggressive, insulting, profane actions. All this must be grasped and used to radicalize parts of the middle class...they are a fearful people, who feel threatened from all sides…their bitterness is compounded by their also paying taxes...insecure in this fast-changing world, they cling to illusory fixed points – which are very real to them...if you cannot win over the lower middle class, at least parts of them must be persuaded to where there is at least communication, then to a series of partial agreements and a willngness to abstain from hard opposition as changes take place...Start with them easy, don’t scare them off. The opposition’s reactions will provide the ‘education’ or radicalization of the middle class.”

“We must believe that it is the darkness before the dawn of a beautiful world; we will see it when we believe it.”

One is easily moved to add, to this last quote, Obama’s own words that “we are the change we’ve been waiting for.” The discerning reader, however, needs no further explanation to understand why Rules For Radicals is Obama’s life manual. It defines everything about the man and why behaves as he does, talking moderately while acting radically, pulling down while he argues for lifting up, even-tempered while he seethes with contempt. Sadly, he is a shallow man, though able to deliver good lines when equipped with a teleprompter. He adopts Alinsky’s philosophy because it is tailor-made for the shallow, appealing to higher values (“better angels”) while simultaneously denying there are any. advancing power as the elixir for every ill, while rejecting all truth.

The remedy, the way to fight back, as several have noted is with truth. We must speak it, however alone we may be in doing so, as Churchill did during the 1930’s. We are reliving the 1930’s today and we must identify Obama as the chameleon and pragmatic radical he is. It’s not what he does at any given moment that is dangerous – it’s what he believes.

Turning Around

Yesterday, March 21, 2010, was a very dark day in the history of this nation, as socialism made another tremendous advance. Nevertheless, the war must continue. There are several things that can be done to turn this defeat into victory. American is, as often said, the last best hope for mankind. Moreover, our human experience tells us great nations can disappear quickly when apathetic citizens take their freedom and their status as givens. Therefore, the stakes are high. If we cannot turn around this nation's direction toward ever more government, our descendants will know a tyranny we dare not imagine.

Yet, the desire for freedom as compared to the false security government offers still stirs the human heart and always will. Movies such Brave Heart and books such as the Gulag Archipelago never cease to move us, liberty being one of the foundations of natural law and our God given lives. We must not wallow in self-pity but, rather, rise to the opportunity presented. This means fighting back in several ways. We must take the offensive to call for a broad-based real reduction in the size and reach of government at all levels. More to the point, we must advocate a replacement of government with individual responsibility. We cannot win by only calling for repeal or rollback. We must also propose a different way, one history has repeatedly told us works, that of self-governance.

This means taking several courses simultaneously. We must, first of all, take the initiative away from our opponents and put them on the defensive. The best way to do this is to go to the states and get 38 or more of them to follow the examples of Texas and Virginia, both of whom have passed laws to challenge the Federal government's authority with respect to health care mandates and assert their own under the 10th Amendment. This requires challenging our existing and would-be state officeholders to tell us where they stand. We must demand they assert our rights through the states to stop the ever encroaching Federal takeover of every aspect of human life, from light bulbs to toilets to the health care insurance we must purchase. This will force a reckoning that is long overdue.

We must also find a way to bring back citizen legislatures. There are several ways to do this but none of them have worked well to date because they haven't caught the popular imagination. They have also have been too easily obstructed by the self-perpetuating political class. The best approach may be to call for the end of all pensions for elected public employees. Politicians as a class are reviled and this kind of measure would largely avoid the pro and con arguments over term limits and the worthiness of the "my representative versus the rest of them." A prohibition of pensions for elected officials would be challenged by politicians arguing it prevented public service by less wealthy individuals, but that argument will not resonate when the facts show most are already wealthy and enjoy absurdly generous pensions. Also, there is no way for an individual politician to make the argument for his pension without sounding whiney. A campaign for this kind of measure would have popular appeal and force the politicians to the wall regardless of the final outcome. It is a classic offensive battle strategy and should be pursued.

Thirdly, we must engage in the kind of guerilla warfare our opponents have used by becoming active in every way we can with the goal of undermining the left at every turn. This means we must, as citizens, write letters to the editor, hold demonstrations and otherwise expose the sinister nature of leftist philosophies whenever we have the opportunity to do so. We cannot stand back and say nothing or merely grumble to friends. It is not enough. We must demand those elected representatives who are supposedly on our side demonstrate it. We must demand they do nothing less than fight every appointment to every new position in the health care bureaucracy, fight every appropriation of money to fund the new programs and fight every new regulation that comes from this initiative. We need, in other words, to fight this exactly the way our opponents have fought us. We cannot allow our friends to play ball with the enemy or give respect to our enemies when they give none in return. Unfortunately, far too many on our side have done that for far too long under the banner of civility. It has brought us only defeat. We are now in the trenches and hand to hand battle is required, not giving so much as an inch.

Finally, of course, we need to win in November and win so conclusively our opponents are scared to death and vote to preserve themselves for a battle another day by voting for repeal of this legislation in numbers sufficient to override a veto. This is unlikely, to be sure, but a combination of a big win, with many states challenging the authority of the Feds at the same time and a few seniors beating a few Congressman with their canes like they did many years ago could easily be enough to get the job done. Even if it doesn't work exactly as intended it will send a strong message to the Supreme Court, which is more political than it would like to admit, and yield a victory there. This is what me must seek and we must do it with every ounce of energy we can spare and every dollar we can muster.

Keep Out the Keepers

There has, in recent years, been an explosion in the number of "Riverkeepers," "Mountainkeepers" and sundry other self-appointed demagogues who have arrogated to themselves a supposed responsibility to protect the playgrounds of the rich and famous from the people who actually live in those places. This article is a perfect illustration of how they gather untoward influence. Several "keepers," none of whom have any official authority are quoted as if they exuded it and their opinions were sacrosanct, while the one party with authority, the MDE, is reduced to having to defend "putting science first." The "keepers," by contrast, suggest MDE seeks to "strike a balance between the polluter and protection," as if these were the only two choices and nothing other than environmental protection were important. To do so, of course, is to say no balancing at all is needed. While this is, of course, the view of all absolutists, it is hardly fair and surely not the basis of sound policy. Rather, it is the language of totalitarians. We need to keep the keepers out of our public policy debates.

Fishing for Power

Power hungry utopians are now focusing their attention on fishing. This article provides the latest evidence of just how far-reaching the environmental special interest agenda extends. They aim to control every aspect of our lives and exclude any considerations but their own from all decision making. Worse, their own considerations are based not on science or facts but, rather, feelings, prejudices and, especially, a complete confidence in the superiority of their own consciences, which they seek to forcefully substitute for those of everyone else through the power of government coercion. This is anything but sound planning or responsible governing. It is, instead, simply more evidence of a soft despotism into which we are rapidly descending until we grab back the reins and limit government, once again, to its essential functions.

Government Taxies Out of Control

One of the realities of dealing with government is that laws designed to regulate one activity or another in the public interest are invariably twisted at some point to protect the regulated, typically at the expense of the those who counted on the regulation to protect them.

No better example is provided than that of Quincy, Illinois, detailed in this story. The story speaks for itself, but illustrates what happens when politicians and bureaucrats decide their election or appointment invests them with the superior wisdom to regulate all aspects of life and not merely those to which a regulation is directed. The law loses all sight of itself and becomes the tool of those it was intended to control.

It is an all too common problem. Once we gain the reigns of any power we are inclined to use it to impose our own visions of fairness and justice. The intent of the law goes out the window and we become obsessed with arbitrating the activities and needs of others. This is why I always advise my local government clients who are writing zoning laws to ask themselves, for every provision they draft, why are they doing this and what is their public purpose. It is amazing how often that leads them to conclude they don't need it. If only...