A Goody From Woody

One of my favorite quotes is from C. H. Spurgeon, who said, “The religion of both Old and New Testaments is marked by fervent outspoken testimonies against evil. To speak smooth things in such a case may be sentimentalism, but it is not Christianity. It is a betrayal of the cause of truth and righteousness.”

So, with that in your heart and mind, let me bring up the name of a deceased radical who still reigns in our world—Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was a community organizer from Chicago who traveled the U.S. and gave lectures on college campuses and union halls, to persuade people to follow his socialism. He wrote two books, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (this was dedicated to Lucifer, the first radical), and his second book, Reveille for Radicals.

Rules for Radicals was published in 1972. Alinsky’s favorite word in this book is “change” and his next favorite was a phrase “Community organizer.”

Alinsky wrote, “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the “Haves” on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the “Have-nots” on how to take it away.”

Alinsky was born in 1909 to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. His parents were “strict orthodox Jews” and so was Saul, until he was 12 years old. He said he had kicked the habit of orthodoxy by that time.

What makes Alinsky noteworthy, even though he is dead (1972) is his influence on organizing for more power today.

When Alinsky said he “believed in change,” Brannon Howse stated, “Alinsky means revolution.” “Alinsky said we need to have a socialist communist revolution. We need to do away with private property, free enterprise, free market, capitalism. But we do it over time, by penetrating every institution and changing their worldview.”

Alinsky called for radicals to defend their agenda by ridiculing the opposition. He wrote, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counter attack ridicule. It infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”

Robert Knight said of Alinsky, “he is all about using deception, manipulation, and raw power to bring about a communist future.”

Who has been influenced the most by Alinsky’s writings? Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama are high on the list. Clinton wrote her senior thesis at Wellesley College on Alinsky. The title of her paper was, “There is only the Fight, An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.” She wrote, “If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution.”

President Obama taught at least four years of the Alinsky model as a community organizer in Chicago. Obama did his primary work by building coalitions of black churches.

Interesting to me is that Alinsky’s ideas were not original. They started with a Neo-Marxist in Italy by the name of Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci said a guns and bullets revolution never works but he said “gradualism, infiltration and the dialectic process” was a sure thing.

A final thought on Alinsky. He was deeply influenced by the social science insights of his times, one developed by his professor at Chicago: that the pathologies of the urban poor were not hereditary but environmental. This idea, that people could change their lives by changing their surroundings, led him to take the obscure social science phrase, “the community organization,” and turn it into, in the words of Alinsky’s biographer Sanford Horwitt, “something controversial, important, even romantic.”

Don’t overlook this idea. Change my surroundings and you change me. The Bible tells a different story. God’s Son came to change our hearts even if the environment never changed. We call that salvation from sin, not liberation from a job, community or government.

In case you haven’t paid attention to the TV news or news magazines, the assault on Biblical absolutes and Christian values has been the threat for Alinsky and followers since 1972.

What can you do to change this slide toward socialism? C. H. Spurgeon’s quote at the beginning of this blog says it all. Call it evil!!! Read your Bible every day! Learn to use the Word of God daily to see how
1 Chronicles 12:32 can be used in your life!
1. “Understand the times”
2. “Knowledge of what to do”

God Bless,
Woody

To check out the 11 Rules for Radicals, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals