What are those Rules for Radicals you hear about?

"Obama learned his lessons well. I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday." in a letter from L. David Alinsky son of Marxist Saul Alinsky in the Boston Globe.

Okay, unless we have been living under a rock, or are a candidate for Leno's "Jay Walking" we have heard of Saul Alinsky and his "Rules for Radicals" by now. However, who was he, what are they, what do they mean, and why are they important today?

Alinsky is considered the founder of the Community Organizers, he set up shop in the Southside of Chicago to train his organizers. One of his early benefactors was Eugene Meyer, a Wall Street investment banker, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post, and used their newspaper to promote Alinsky. Agnes's series called 'The Orderly Revolution,' made Alinsky famous.

Alinsky taught that "True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, they cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within." Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions, and political parties.

The very first radical: "From all our legends, mythology, and history...the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it effectively that he at least won his own kingdom was Lucifer." Saul Alinsky.

Saul Alinsky's crowning achievement was his recruitment of a young high school student named Hillary Rodham. She met Alinsky through a radical church group. Hillary wrote an analysis of Alinsky's methods for her senior thesis at Wellesley College. Today, many leftists believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a sell out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Alinsky's counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power. When you hear the tactics that Alinsky taught, you will realize that the infamous Clinton political machine of personal destruction they applied to their political opponents was straight from Alinsky.

Barrack Obama is also an Alinskyite, he spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project, camouflage is a key to Alinsky style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He instantly became a churchgoer. Remember Obama out Alinskyed Hillary in the primary. This amazed everyone in the political arena, because the Clinton's brought Alinskyism to the body politic in America.

What are those Tactics?

Saul Alinsky tells us; "Tactics are those conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them. Here are concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power from the Haves."

1. "Power is not only what you have, but what your enemy thinks you have."

2. "Never go outside the expertise of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat and the collapse of communication."

3. "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address."

4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage."

6. "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."

7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Men can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time."

8. "Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose."

9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."

10. " The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressures upon the opposition. It is unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign."

11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside... every positive has its negative."

12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."

13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict there are certain rules that should be regarded as universities. One is that the opposition must be singled out s the target and frozen. Any target can always say, 'Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?' When you freeze the target, you disregard these rational but distracting arguments, then as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the others come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target." "One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and the devils on the other."

In Alinsky's second chapter, called Of Means and Ends, he craftily poses many difficult moral dilemmas, and his 10th Rule of the Ethics of Means and Ends is "You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments." He doesn't ignore traditional moral standards or dismiss them as unnecessary. He is much more devious, he teaches his followers that "Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection of the use of ends or means."

The qualities Alinsky looked for in a good organizer were:

1. Ego, reaching for the highest level for which man can reach, to create, to be a great creator to play God.

2. Curiosity, raising questions that agitate, that break through the accepted pattern.

3. Irreverence, nothing is sacred, the organizer detests dogma, defies any finite definition or morality.

4. Imagination, the fuel for the force that keeps an organizer organizing.

5. Sense of Humor, the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.

6. Confidence, in presenting the right reason for his actions only as moral rationalization after the right end has been achieved.

"The organizer's first job is to create the issues of problems, and organizations must be based on many issues, the organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people, of the community. Fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent."

Does any of this sound familiar to what we see every day?