Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model
by David Horowitz

In order to understand the political tactics used by Democrats, Conservatives should be familiar with Saul Alinsky and the strategies his followers use. Alinsky was born in Chicago in 1909. He devoted his life to destroying the capitalist system and trying to bring down Western Civilization. Why? He and others like him want to destroy what is, in order to replace it with a perfect utopian society.

Alinsky taught that activists should style themselves to appear to be working within the system in order to obtain enough power to destroy that system. He promoted deception as a weapon. His theories are based on the Marxist class struggle between the "Haves and Have-nots." Alinskyites disregard the tremendous opportunity for social and economic upward mobility in capitalist societies. Instead, they will "use any means necessary" to bring it down.

Horowitz explains that whenever this utopian ideal is tried, it fails. The left wished to build a "welfare utopia" under President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" and in the process "destroyed the inner city black family, spawned millions of faithless black children and created intractable poverty and a violent underclass which is still with us today."

There were also deadly results from the 1960s' Rachel Carson-led ban on DDT and the fight against early AIDS testing and suggested lifestyle changes. Horowitz says, "Radicals are dangerous and that conservatives "pay attention to the consequences of actions including their own, and radicals don't."

Barack Obama is an Alinsky follower. His career has followed Alinsky's suggested route. He became a community organizer, as suggested by Alinsky. He taught Alinsky-method workshops for years. Obama was a top trainer at ACORN, an Alinsky organization, and in 1995 he became ACORN's attorney.

Hillary Clinton is also an Alinskyite. She interviewed Alinsky and wrote her 92-page senior thesis on Alinsky's tactics. Upon graduating from Wellesley, Clinton was offered a job with Alinsky's training institute in Chicago.

Al Sharpton "poses as a civil rights activist." Terrorist Bill Ayers poses as a "patriotic progressive."

Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals: "truth to [the radical organizer] is relative and changing." He continued, "The third rule of the ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means."

Radicals longing for a perfect world attempt to destroy the best the world has to offer: America. Horowitz states: "Until conservatives begin to understand exactly how dishonest radicals are -- and why -- it will be difficult to defend the system under attack."

(The David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2009, 51 pp., $3)