Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Smiley-faced neofascism
From the RoundTable blog
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Donald Stadler
Stadler is a retired management consultant and lives in Roanoke County.
"There's another reason for working inside the system ... 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 to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system."
-- Saul Alinski, Rules For Radicals
"He [Alinski] believed he could change the system only from the outside. I didn't."
-- Hillary Clinton, Living History
For a woman who wrote her gushing senior thesis about this "community organizer," Hillary seems to be clueless about his methods. Either that or, as she has demonstrated so ably in the past, she can simply make up what ever factoid serves the moment. Hillary's memory problems aside, the more basic and troubling issue is her and Barack Obama's admiration of his strategy. Both fell under the Alinski spell early and the key to understanding the candidates is to understand the "change" both imagine for America.
To do that you have to understand what community organizing is all about. Obama, we are told, worked as a community organizer. The basic job description revolves around "social justice" and "empowering the people." Wow! Can you make money at that? Apparently you can. Look at Alinski.
Alinski's rise to prominence among the American Left began in the 1930s in the same Chicago neighborhood made famous by Upton Sinclair's novel, "The Jungle." He went on to found the Industrial Areas Foundation in 1940. Often imagined as fighting the big corporations, IAF is a big corporation itself. There are currently 57 IAF affiliates in 21 states, Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany. Its first board of directors included Catholic bishop Bernard Sheil, Kathryn Lewis (daughter of coal miners union leader John L. Lewis) and philanthropist Marshall Field III. It thrives through donations and grants, largely from big corporations, such as Midas Muffler.
IAF does not so much fight corporations as work with them in a cooperative effort. Occasionally this means some new government regulation, like occurred in the meat industry strangling the weaker competition.
Alinski has been called a leftist for so long it is difficult to believe his core philosophy is far different from actual communism. Alinski's politics grew out of radical European political thought of the '20s and is still with us today in the form once called Bill Clinton's "Third Way." The Third Way -- neither left nor right, blandly calls for the cooperative effort of government and business to improve the common good. If that sounds good, it's meant to. However, The Third Way, as it did in Italy in the '20s and Germany in the '30s, leaves behind the old notions of liberalism for an active, intrusive and smothering government. Here's what we can look forward to under Clinton or Obama, Alinski believers both:
De-emphasis of individual rights: The "people" referred to in the Constitution will not be considered as individuals but as a group. In effect, the "people" only have the rights enumerated in the first 10 amendments when they are purposefully and collectively acting in accordance with the wishes of the state. In other words, say good-bye to the Second Amendment. Free speech, already severely curtailed by McCain-Feingold, is bound to take another hit.
Management by crisis, demonizing the other, indoctrination of youth: This sounds like a hodgepodge, but the concepts go together. Think: global warming, rich white men and greedy corporations and an educational system dealing more in propaganda (social and environmental justice) than classical education and starting earlier and earlier.
Higher taxes, government involvement in the private sector and increased regulation: Hillary's promise to take some things away for the common good will become a reality as a new maternal bureaucracy enforces strict rules about our schools, our food and our workplaces. Fairness will replace accountability as equality of outcomes become more important than equality of opportunity.
In short, the neoconservatism will give way to neofascism, not the jackboot kind but the smiley-face kind. The Great Society will be replaced by the Feel Good Society. True classical fascism, as has been proven, cannot sustain itself without a strong, charismatic leader. This is not Hillary. Watch out for Obama.
