Democrats, slavery, Irish, and Indians

[ilbegone]

Continuation from post #46

The next chapter of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals is entitled Of Means And Ends, which really needs to be read by one's self to get the full meaning.

However, in short I interpret it to say to use whatever means you have at hand that works to achieve the ends which are possible and the nuclear option is open if you're about to be defeated.

"The man of action views the issue of ends and means in pragmatic and strategic terms... he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action... He asks only of ends if they are achievable and worth the cost, of means only if they will work..."

"Conscience is the virtue of observers and not agents of action"

He says that people who pile up heaps of discussion and literature concerning the ethics of means and ends rarely write about their own struggles with life and change. "They can be recognized by one of two verbal brands: 'we agree with the ends but not the means," or 'this is not the time'. The means and ends moralists or non doers always end up on their ends without any means"

Rules:

1) One's concerns with ends and means varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue... One's concerns with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's distance from the scene of conflict.

2) The judgement of the ethics of means and ends is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgement

[Alinsky follows with a passage about the Nazi occupiers of France and the French resistance essentially stating "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". He also cites our founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence as dwelling on the wrongs but not benefits derived from the British Empire - on the one side the omission of the good was justified, on the other it was deceit. Most examples in this chapter are long winded.]

"History is made up on "moral" judgements based on politics".

[Alinsky launches into a discussion of temporary convenience of the moment concerning allies and enemies, essentially "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", but the former enemy is a "friend" only until the mutual enemy has been vanquished then the "friends" revert back to being enemies. The example is the relationship between the Soviets and the United States before, during and after WWII]

3) In war the end justifies almost any means.

[Alinsky discusses Churchill cozying up to the Soviet Union against the Nazis, and Abraham Lincoln's extra-legal executive decision establishing military tribunals to judge anti-Union instigators civil courts couldn't touch: "must I shoot a simple minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert..."]

4) The ethics of means and ends must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.

[Alinsky says that by today's ethics we may now agree with the British of the Revolutionary war that there may have been some underhanded propaganda set ups and other propagandistic dirty tricks by the colonial revolutionaries but we must remember that we are no longer involved in a revolution against the British empire (concerning judgements we may render over two hundred years later). He contrasts our traditional position of freedom of the high seas (cites 1812 and 1917) with the 1962 blockade of Cuba. Numerous further examples.]

5) The concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.

[Alinsky describes an attempt to blackmail him concerning sex with a woman not his spouse but the plot failed because Alinsky said to go ahead and make the information public because he likes women and he's not embarrassed about the tryst. Someone then came to Alinsky with with evidence of pedophilia against the original blackmailer but Alinsky rejected using the material to neutralize the opponent. However, if he were losing his objective he would have nuked the blackmailer with it.]

6) The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluation of means.

7) Generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics.

"The judgement of history... spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.

8) The morality of a means depends on whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.

[Alinsky describes his long winded belief that using the nuclear bomb on Japan was immoral because Japan was essentially defeated.
**My take is that the Japanese were not defeated, that they would have continued to fight until every last one of them died and that (as a result of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima) Emperor Hirohito saved his people by commanding them to stop fighting. Those Japanese officers signing the war's end on the deck of the USS Missouri were not afraid of American military power and neither were the general population - the bombings saved many more total sum Japanese and American lives than they cost.]

9] Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.

10) You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.

[Long, long, long discussion that if Ghandi had access to firearms and the Indian population were not so passive, the break from Britain would have been a bloody one. After the British left, the new Indian government did much of what was previously stated (before independence) to be objectionable by the colonial empire to their own people. Some discussion about the impossibility of the American civil rights movement being both violent and successful.
** My take on Cesar Chavez and his labor movement (not mentioned by Alinsky): Chavez made the personally unpalatable choice to call in the Border Patrol on the illegals the employers used as strike breakers because that was the means beyond striking to achieve the end of forcing labor concessions from agricultural employers. The employers had and still use oversupply of labor in the form of illegal workers as a means to the end of avoiding labor concessions. Chavez used the morality of "economic justice", the employers used the morality of "reasonably priced produce at the market while making a 'reasonable' profit", because in self interest consumers are only going to pay so much while it is in the employer's self interest to milk all possible profit out of a product. In the end it's all about the self interest of who pockets what proportion of the cash among labor, employers and consumers - morality argument is a justification of a means to an end.]

"All effective actions require the passport of morality".

11) Goals must be phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", "Of the common welfare", "Pursuit of happiness", or "Bread and Peace".

"The goal once named cannot be countermanded".

"...frequently in the stream of action of means towards ends, whole new and unexpected ends are among the major results of the actions. From a Civil War fought as a means to preserve the Union came the end of slavery."

To be continued...

[ilbegone]

A short diversion from Saul Alinski and the road map in his book Rules for Radicals used by community organizer Obama and a whole host of far leftists and a broad spectrum of minority racists. Besides, I'm away from home and don't have the book at hand.

Today I was in in a fairly well to do community on a hill overlooking a black slum in Los Angeles. It is west of the 110 along the line of Vernon (st, ave, blvd, what have you). The houses are spacious, and are high dollar enough I couldn't afford them on dirt cheap land. There were masses of residents jogging between 7:30 and 9:00 this morning just like any upper middle class to lower wealthy class people might do, and I didn't see any apparent low life among them - there were no bandanas, tats, color flying, no drug dealers or hookers hanging out on the corner...

It was an extremely clean, well groomed, all black community.

The only white people I know who were there today were myself, a friend, and an inspector (none who could have afforded those houses), there was construction work by three groups of Mexicans . Everyone else was black.

The point?

There are so many, like socialist race baiter Maya Wiley (from the Center of Social Inclusion - a very innocuous sounding name for a race baiting organization - and Maya can make a simple issue such as a white person tunelessly whistling while driving down an empty road with an empty mind into a maliciously racist affair), carry on that white people leave the inner city taking all the businesses with them, which leaves black people in what becomes a slum with no employment (version of the spin here http://www.centerforsocialinclusion....cial-inequity/ ). However, not one person who can escape what is becoming or is currently a slum will fail to do so, doesn't matter the color of the escapee. If the ghetto below begins encroaching on the wealthy black community on the hill, those black people on the hill will pack their wagons, hitch up and get the hell out of Dodge just as fast or faster than any white flight to the suburbs.

Check out CIS http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org/

A biting 2012 opinion piece by Matthew Vadum incredibly published in the Washington Times:

A George Soros-funded pressure group is behind a new drive to teach Democratic congressmen how to smear their opponents as racist.

Last week House Democrats were tutored by the radical, left-wing, racial spoils group known as the Center for Social Inclusion. The group was brought in “to address the issue of race to defend government programs,” Joel Gehrke reported in the Washington Examiner...

...Facts don’t matter in Ms. Wiley’s estimation. “It’s emotional connection, not rational connection that we need,” she said...

...The Center for Social Inclusion is caught up in the toxic brew of Marxism coupled with identity politics. This pabulum that passes for serious thought on the nation’s university campuses holds that America is a morally depraved, structurally racist country that systematically oppresses everyone who is not Caucasian...

...The Center for Social Inclusion may also be hiding something. The group’s tax returns, which are supposed to be publicly available at the GuideStar disclosure website, are not available. This is highly irregular at least and a violation of federal law at worst [where's the IRS?]

It has long been axiomatic that when liberals are fretting about possibly losing power they scream “racist!” repeatedly at the top of their lungs as if sheer repetition of the smear will somehow make it true.

But teaching sitting representatives of the people whose salaries are paid by the taxpayers how to deploy malicious slanders to shut down open debate over government spending is surely a new low...

Full column http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...the-race-card/

A much wealthier black guy (Russell Simmons) than those living on the hill above the slum who hosted one of Maya Wiley's "Race in American" events in his Beverly Hills home and who also seems to prefer that taxes are increased for everyone else in lieu of giving away his fortune to help thos in need http://www.centerforsocialinclusion....ly-hills-home/

Russell Simmons http://www.biography.com/people/russell-simmons-307186

[ilbegone]

To continue from posts 46 and 47 concerning Saul Alinsky and his book Rules for Radicals...

I haven cracked the book open again yet, nor do I now feel like writing a full fledged book report. However:

Further along in the book, Alinsky says that there have to be polarization to achieve goals for community change, that there has to be hatred. You can't on the one hand call a school district superintendent a "racist bastard" on the one hand, then describe him as a decent family man and good neighbor on the other. The horns, hooves, tail, lizard tongue, evil leer, and the devil's trident all have to be painted into the picture. In other words, completely dehumanized.

That is probably a large part of why we just can't seem to have a respectful, two way discussion in America any more, unless it's among people who just happen to 100% agree among themselves.

Also, the threat of an action is often worse in the perception of the target than the action itself. For example, to reach a goal Alinsky threatened to bring in a large number of people to clog up the restrooms in a busy airport. They would form perpetual lines and take up space in front of urinals and on top of toilets. Both the airport management and city hall were terrified of the vision of travelers doing the pee pee dance or crapping their pants in public and caved without a fight. Could Alinsky have pulled off the stunt if City Hall gave him the finger? We'll never know, and Alinsky won without a fight.

Alinsky says it's a mistake see his books as a linear guide as to what to do next, that every situation is different and requires its own tactic. Which seems to exclude the trump card "YOU'RE A RACIST!!!". Thank god that card is wearing out, maybe soon even the believers might be saying "Bah!" due to blanket overuse for about 60 years.

The book is an eye opener, and led me to understand much more about the political arena and "community activist" race baiters than I did before.

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Thank you so much for posting these insights to that book. It really gives an understanding to much of what is happening.

[ilbegone]

Originally Posted by Jeanfromfillmore

Thank you so much for posting these insights to that book. It really gives an understanding to much of what is happening.

You're more than welcome.

I think that smearing, slandering, redirection, and clever (and not so clever) propaganda have worked the most.

I kept thinking about Alinsky's airport scenario where the threat was to clog up the restrooms and the statement that often the threat of an action is often worse than the action itself...

If the authorities had been quiet and Alinsky decided to go beyond bluff and bluster, innocent travelers would have been targeted instead of city hall and if the source of the disturbance became known, I believe it would have been counterproductive to Alinsky's goal.

Consider the knuckleheads who blocked "rush hour" traffic on Wilshire Blvd a couple of years ago to lobby for amnesty. All they did was piss off people who may not have been all that sympathetic to begin with.

Or the "Day without a Mexican", May Day", "Mexican labor day" (about 2008?) where the proponents ditched work and school and joined Mexican flag waving marches. There was a huge backlash on that one, from people who were fired to boycott of businesses who supported it.

The kids who were wanting to make a pro amnesty statement by hiking from Sacramento to Bakersfield a few months ago http://saveourstate.info/showthread.php?t=8263. They disappeared from the public radar quicker than a small fart in a brisk wind.

The clowns not too long ago who insultingly disrupted a governmental meeting, were tossed out, then considered themselves to have conducted "civil disobedience" on the scale of Rosa Parks. All they did was piss off the crowd they disrespected with no personal cost to themselves.

For some reason, they have traditionally had much more success in getting concessions from the educational infrastructure, particularly university level. Rather than having trespassers "occupying" buildings and grounds arrested and prosecuted in addition to expelling them, the various administrations caved. Currently students are now propagandized by the school systems.

The 1968 LAUSD Chicano walk outs are considered to be a great success by those who either directly participated or nostalgically rifle through shoe boxes full of yellowed newspaper clippings from the old school Chicano Movement glory days. However, all it did was to change the racial composition of the LAUSD school board from an exclusively white male board to nearly all Latina members - after more than 40 years the dismal Latino LAUSD graduation rate and educational underachievement remains about the same. In fact, those school board Latinas are now fighting amongst themselves over just whose campuses get what portion of the LAUSD financial pie with no progress on the education front.

[A thread of commentary about the 1968 walkout, drop out rates, LAUSD school board, LA Raza Unida takeover of the school system in Zavala county Texas, education in America, victimization claim, activism, etc here http://www.fightbackinsac.com/forums...ad.php?t=2788]

So, smearing, slandering, redirection, disinformation and fomenting racial polarization while working within the political structure is the avenue which has paid off from minority racist agenda to numerous incredible events within Obama's presidency.

[ilbegone]

After reading a number of books concerning colonial America and period English history (including the contemporary and difficult to read - for me - Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith) I become increasingly convinced that the Revolutionary war was as much about money as it was about English notions of personal liberty being asserted in the colonies (the American Bill of Rights seems to be a partial restatement of the 1689 English bill of rights http://www.constitution.org/bor/eng_bor.htm)

King George III had a professional army built up from the French wars he wanted to keep, yet it was not his right to keep a standing army in England in time of peace. So, much of it wound up originally in the western parts of the colonies. George needed to pay his soldiers (Stamp Act of 1765) as well as recoup the expense of the American part of the Franco / British 7 years war (known in America as the French and Indian war). Thus the various successive and progressively harsh tax schemes and increasingly punitive collection measures which so enraged the American colonists.

George Washington was a tobacco farmer and land speculator. The British mercantile monopoly on colonial trade squeezed tobacco farmers to sell low then saddled them with high interest rate loans. The Crown desired that colonization move towards Canada and Florida rather than west, which was the direction preferred by the rowdy, late arriving border peoples (Sots-Irish) from northern Ireland, southern Scotland and northern England. So, the British soldiers were originally stationed west of the Appalachian ridge in a futile attempt to stem the western tide. The Scots - Irish tended to squat wherever they pleased in the west (and return after being burned out by British soldiers or Indians) and British policy frustrated seaboard based land speculation.

The various import taxes (such as the molasses and sugar acts) combined with British trade monopoly led to smuggling. John Hancock, the man who signed his name so large on the Declaration of Independence so that King George wouldn't have to wear glasses to read the signature, was a smuggler who had at least one warrant out for his arrest. One British response to colonial smuggling was the infamous use of Writs of Assistance, which were perpetual, blanket search warrants which allowed British investigators to rifle and sift through whole neighborhoods and towns in order to find either contraband or evidence of smuggling via written records. Hence the 4th amendment concerning unreasonable search and seizure.

And, since no American court would convict a smuggler, the British began packing up suspects to be tried in England, therefore the American right trial in front of a jury of one's peers.

The list goes on and on.

The Mexican War of Independence was set off by the inept revolutionary priest Miguel Hidalgo, who read books banned by the Inquisition and was incensed by the Spanish authority which uprooted his olive trees, grape vines, and mulberry trees (leaves to feed silk worms). Spanish monopoly insisted that the Spanish colonies buy high priced olive oil, wine, and silk from the Royal monopoly on trade.

I'm not sure, but I think the French Revolution originally had to do with peasants being excessively taxed to refill a treasury depleted by a number of wars with England. The unrest was usurped by and turned into The Terror of the French Revolution by Robespierre and his henchmen, who eventually succumbed to the guillotine themselves. The Revolution eventually became the immensely destructive Napoleonic wars.

What sort of unrest did Lenin exploit in Czarist Russia? Did it originally have to do with economic grievances rather than Marxist dogma? I'll eventually check it out...

[ilbegone]

Great Ferguson video, it speaks the inconvenient truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f0mVn0HH6U