PrintMarch 19, 2011
The Totalitarian Minority
"On top are the Haves with power, money, food, security, and luxury. They suffocate in their surpluses while the Have-Nots starve. Numerically the Haves have always been the fewest. The Haves want to keep things as they are and are opposed to change." Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
It is ironic that the people described as Haves in Saul Alinsky's community organizing primer Rules for Radicals mirror public sector unions so closely. Alinsky had a cluttered view of the world, full of contradictions and conspiracies and moral convolutions to justify his tactics. His wretched little book will probably vex us for a dozen more generations, as it is easy to read and requires little effort to memorize the self-justifying rules. His confused disciples in Wisconsin envisioned themselves as the freedom fighters of old, using words like "justice" and "freedom" and "democracy" as they contradict each of those concepts to protect their right to steal from the taxpayer.
Alinsky was successful in twisting the ethics of his followers, removing the boundaries of civility and honor as long as the cause is loosely "just." Case in point, on Monday a group of school children, presumably accompanied their teacher and with permission from their parents chanted slogans against Wisconsin Governor Walker in the state capital building while a man shouted what sounded like "This is what democracy looks like" as the children finished their chant. Perhaps the man was a union "activist" who had graduated from Wisconsin's schools, which apparently do not teach history or civics, because he confused "special interest intimidation" with the democratic process of elections and legislative debate. Then again, he could have been from Ohio, or Michigan or D.C., as the loudest voices heard in Wisconsin these last weeks were from national unions, using Wisconsin as a battleground in the longer war against American freedoms.
Wisconsin was Democrat political theater at its finest. Milking the civil rights movement for every drop of sympathy, the Rev. Jesse Jackson recited his tired rhyming shtick on the steps of the state house, conflating the conflict there with a time of actual injustice. Ironically and sadly, Students for a Democratic Society demonstrated in solidarity with a privileged minority of "haves" to undermine the democratic process. The courses taught by their well-compensated professors left out critical analysis. A bonus for the unions, they got naïve teenage foot soldiers and bearded graduate students to shout and rampage and shove democracy aside for nothing. Real thugs are so expensive.
"You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments." Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
The mass-produced signs used by demonstrators and the statements used by leftist pundits and political apparatchiks, held the predictable moral rhetoric intended to convince the public that theirs was a fight against tyranny. Yet, the people placed Republicans in power in Wisconsin in a free and fair election. Democrats fled to Illinois when they could not defeat the governor's necessary and long overdue austerity measures, within the rules of a democratic legislature. So beholden to union special interests they abandoned their responsibility to the states citizens, an act of political cowardice that has become the Democrat standard. Their actions show they do not respect or accept the duties and constraints placed upon citizen legislators within the constitutions of the nation and their state.
Elections are either won or lost within our political system, there is no other alternative. Those who win have the approval of the majority of citizens for the policies and legislation they have promised to enact. That reality usually prevents what happened in Wisconsin. It assumes both sides accept that the rule of law is in the best interest of all. A setback means a legislator struggles harder or reassesses, working to bring about the legislation they feel is best for the constituency whose interests they represent. If they lose, they do not refuse to play or unleash foul-mouthed thugs on the institutions they so recently spent into insolvency. No Democratic Republic can operate for long when one side sabotages the process when they do not get their way.
The public sector unions are saying clearly and loudly that they deserve privileges and status denied the vast majority of the citizens whose taxes pay their inflated salaries, and implicit in their violent rhetoric is the threat that if they do not get their way they will burn the statehouse down, even kill their political opponents. They further let us know that their privileges should come off the backs of those whose labors are much greater and whose rewards are far less, peasants to their royal status, "have-not" to their "have." This is the truth of the national debate under the Democrats. President Obama, the great divider, is a stooge of union bosses. The latter care nothing about citizens not members of their union.
This totalitarian minority has no problem with forcing the majority to endure the consequences of their greed. Like all states and cities where union corruption holds sway, those consequences are unemployment, high taxes, insolvency, welfare cultures, crime, high drop-out rates and out-of-state flight. Michigan, New York, Illinois and Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit as well as countless others are cases in point and cautionary tales. But this is not really a political battle, it is an ideological one, where the very foundations of the Republic are at stake.
What happened in Wisconsin was no less than a fascist putsch, their aspiring oppressors lost only because of the dignified and stubborn leadership of their governor. Its failure was not a sure thing. Americans saw the true face of those who want to rule us. It is a vicious, arrogant and voraciously greedy face, full of disdain and contempt for our institutions and the rights of our citizens. It is in its bones anti-Democratic and anti-American. It will do whatever it takes to take and keep power; it will break any law and crush any opponent if it can.
From a death threat, Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald received last week:
"We feel that you and your republican dictators have to die. This is how it is going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it's a matter of public records. We have all planned to assault you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, this isn't enough. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message. So we have built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won't tell you all of them because that's just no fun."
The would-be assassin also threatened the wives and children of Republican legislators in their deluded missive:
"Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die."
The real fight for "justice" has begun where it should have, in the heartland. If we are to keep the ideal of individual freedom alive and our Republic prosperous, the forces that trashed Wisconsin's state capitol and threatened the lives of innocent children must be defeated in every state and city. Wisconsin is America in a microcosm; the same issues afflict the nation at large. We are fighting for democracy and the rule of law against an elite class, in this case public sector extortionists and a Democrat party of co-conspirators.
Plato said that, "One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." In this case, it means one day losing our freedom to unelected power brokers, going through the empty motions of democracy, where legislature's rubber stamp affluence for the elite minority and every taxpayer pays tribute to union dictators and their pet politicians.
For example, since the Haves publicly pose as the custodians of responsibility, morality, law, and justice (which are frequently strangers to each others), they can be constantly pushed to live up to their own book of morality and regulations. No organizations, including organized religion, can live up to the letter of its own book. You can club them to death with their "book" of rules and regulations. This is what that great revolutionary, Paul of Tarsus, knew when he wrote to the Corinthians: "Who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter killeth." -- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, P.152
