Why the Right’s Fixation on ‘Rules For Radicals’ is Absurd

“Rules For Radicals” is one of those books few had heard of before Fox News (specifically, Glenn Beck) started promoting it as a central tenant of modern liberalism, one of many efforts of the Right to define the opposition on their terms (liberals, seeing themselves for the most part as simply the mainstream, do not do this nearly as well). 

It’s been given the name “The Liberal Bible,” ironic given that author Saul Alinsky, according to Forbes’ Ralph Benko, was “an aggressively anti-communist, anti-big government populist with a healthy contempt for liberals. He seemingly would be more at home in the Tea Party than the Democratic Party.”

Ironic, too, that one of Alinksy’s precepts—promoting caricatural enemies to rally groups around a cause—is a central tactic of the Right (immigrants, homosexuals, Muslims, Obama and his supposed secret agenda, etc.).

Lucifer's Way: Alinsky or Cliven Bundy?

Maybe you’ve heard the claim that Saul Alinsky dedicated “Rules For Radicals” to Lucifer. While this is not true (he dedicated the book to his wife, Irene), there is a shout-out to Old Nick written by Alinsky himself on a page of quotations that also includes Thomas Paine and Rabbi Hillel:

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to 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 so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”

In the era of Yippies, W.I.T.C.H. and levitating the Pentagon, this was no doubt meant to be deliberately jarring, and fits right in with the acerbic politics of the day. There’s not too much that needs to be said about this except that the action credited to Lucifer—rebelling against the establishment and winning his own “kingdom”—could just as easily be attributed to Myles Standish, George Washington, Sam Houston and John DeLorean—a pretty un-devilish bunch (though some might disagree about DeLorean). 

It certainly does not describe Barack Obama, who decided to join ‘em rather than beat ‘em. Describes Cliven Bundy pretty well, though. 

A Glimpse Back at SEPTA's 'Dark Days'

For anyone (OK, I know there aren't many) who has ever wondered what the argument was back in the '80s for truncating all those SEPTA regional rail lines, I've finally come across a blog post detailing the thinking back then.

The Souderton Train Station, on the old Bethlehem Branch of the Reading Railroad, has been closed since 1981.

This is the era when the R3 Media/Elwyn, R8 Fox Chase, R6 Cynwyd and R6 Norristown lines were shortened. Passenger service was also discontinued on the Bethlehem Branch north of Lansdale. The principal reason given at the time was that SEPTA wished to discontinue operating diesel railcars, which meant abandoning all passenger service on track without overhead catenary wires for electric trains.

When SEPTA Regional Rail Lines Were Shortened

The Media/Elwyn line ran to West Chester until September 1986, The Fox Chase to Newtown until January 1983, the Cynwyd to Ivy Ridge until October 1986, and the Norristown line extended commuter service all the way up the Schuylkill Valley to Reading and beyond until July 1981.

Most of the discontinued service could not be restored today without major capital funding. The line with the best chance of restoration is the route to West Chester; there are currently plans to extend service beyond Elwyn to a new park-and-ride station at Wawa, which will capitalize on the population boom in Chester County and planned redevelopment of the old Franklin Mint property.

Read more about SEPTA's "dark days" of, um, shrinkage in the Crossing the Lines blog.

The Chronicles of Blarney—Ah!

A quote from C.S. Lewis has been making the rounds on Facebook and right-leaning websites of late. It purports to show Obamacare, and/or welfare policies in general, to be something last century's favorite Christian apologist would have disapproved of. My own comment, left yesterday on the Facebook page of The Independent Institute, follows the Lewis quote, below.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

- C. S. Lewis

Lewis continues, "To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason." Yet I think anyone with reason agrees disease is disease. I doubt Lewis was talking about the NHS (tyrannizing those British dupes for nearly 70 years). Even less likely he's thinking of subsidized private insurance (aka "Obamacare").

Into the Belly of the Beast

Breaking down the comments on a right-wing website.  

If you can stomach a dose of the far-right weltanschauung, check out the comments below “Obama: ‘Islam has Always Been a Part of America’s History,’” from a website called Patriot Update. The article itself is trash, cherry-picking events from history to “prove” wrong a statement Obama made on a trip to Egypt. 

My comment, still the newest in the thread:

There is no controversy here. Obama's statement is simply correct. He does not say Islam was an important force in American history, just that it was a part of American history. There is extensive documentary evidence that Muslim slaves have been in North America since the 1700s. George Washington many not have known any Muslims, but John Quincy Adams did. He freed a West African prince, Abdul Rahman, from captivity in 1828. One can find many other anecdotes involving Muslims throughout our history. So maybe everyone should just calm down and accept this for what it is: a true statement made diplomatically by a president to a Middle Eastern nation who we consider a friend in the region.

Below this (not in response to mine), you have all kind of vitriol. I would put the comments into three groups: The Know Nothings, The Crazies, and The Racists. 

The Know-Nothings

The Know Nothings, whose views are similar to their namesake brethren of the 1850s, are the least awful, relatively speaking. They tend to be the best informed and most articulate on the extreme right, having (to borrow the words of one historian in reference to anti-Lincolnites) read deeply, but not widely. Their views are monolithic and show little appreciation for complexity or context; Islam, a religion of over 1.5 billion followers, is always equated with the words and actions of a radical few. They represent a longstanding American tradition of Nativism and reactionary politics inspired by immigration and peppered with conspiracy theories. In the 1850s, the movement was anti-Rome. Today, it combines anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment. 

Some examples from the comments:

• Islam is not a religion, it is a totalitarian system. Its goal is “Islamize” America, revive the Caliphate, and avenge the Crusades
• Islam is inherently incompatible with American/Western values (aspects of Islam that contradict this, such as secularist movements or the existence of Turkey, are ignored)
• Immigration policy turns a blind eye to foreign threats and infiltration
• Certain groups are legitimately “us” (including, unlike in earlier times, Jews) and others are not
• Islam was not part of any significant American event
• Islam does play a role in American history, but it is all negative, and it is all offshore (e.g. the Barbary Pirates, the slave trade)

The Crazies

This is typical stuff:

• We know nothing about Obama’s life—all his records are concealed
• Obama is a secret Muslim, advancing a secret Muslim agenda
• Obama is a traitor, or, more accurately, a “domestic enemy”  (because “only a citizen can be a traitor”)
• Obama has been brainwashed by the left
• Muslims are taking over demographically
• Obama was sent to America to orchestrate a coup/martial law/dictatorship, supported by socialist dupes
• Obama/The Left is satanic
• Obama is a terrorist and “like Hitler”
• My favorite: Obama was schooled at 8 years old by Bill Ayers, his true lifetime mentor 

The Racists

• Obama is crazy, stupid, ignorant
• Muslims are dirty, child-rapers, like insects
• Black culture has corrupted America
• Yes, whites are racist, but blacks hate whites more than whites hate blacks

And then there is NotYourUsualPolitics—good on you, whoever you are! Trolls hate it when somebody cuts through their crap like a butter knife. 

The Abortion Debate: Purity vs Reality

Remember Jon Kyl's abortion fantasy? In 2011, Kyl (R-Arizona) famously said on the floor of the Senate that Planned Parenthood spends "well over 90 percent" of its time performing abortions. When it was pointed out that the actual number was around 3 percent, Kyl's spokesman responded by saying the comment was "not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions."

Kyl was widely mocked for this, but it did not hurt his standing among pro-lifers. Being right (as in, factual) matters less to them than being in the right—Planned Parenthood is the enemy; providing abortions might as well be all they do. Never mind that it is very little of what they do. The devil is not in the details.

Details, in fact, only get in the way. Cuts to state funding for Planned Parenthood in Texas in 2011 caused 56 clinics to close and over 130,000 women to lose access to health services in a state that already ranks near the bottom in quality of health care. A 2012 Susan J. Komen Foundation plan to cut grants for breast cancer screening at Planned Parenthood would have denied thousands of low-income women access to this life-saving procedure. In subsequent coverage of this issue in the conservative media, the outrage over denying poor women breast screenings is largely edited out; the controversy is framed as an attempt by pro-abortion activists to sabotage Komen for trying to defund an abortion-providing operation.

Why The Lies?

The focus on a pure ideal—abortion is murder—makes it less important to be accurate about what things are than about what they represent. Ideological purity is a great motivator. It strips away doubt and nuance, leaving a clear narrative and focused, single-minded goal. But this is also its greatest weakness, because the real world is full of nuance and complexity, which is why conservatives feel undermined at every turn. Hence the hatred of "mainstream media," "big science" and other culture-war bogeymen, including large swaths of government and academia.

More Impure Thoughts

If abortion is murder, pure and simple, then killing a fetus is equivalent to killing Jews in the Holocaust—a comparison made often by pro-life activists. In reality, this comparison is nonsense. The death of a fetus, however traumatic, is nothing to the death of a sentient, cognizant person. No one, not even the staunchest pro-life supporter, believes a mother should mourn a miscarriage the same way she mourns the death of a child.

In actual practice, purity breaks down.

According to the Old Testament, Exodus 21:22-25, if a woman is killed in the course of a brawl between two people, the one who killed her must be killed. If she is pregnant, and the brawl injures her and causes her to miscarry, the guilty party must pay a fine. Fetuses, in other words, are not equivalent to born people. In this case, for pro-lifers, the purity of an idea must be given precedence over the reality of the Bible.

Given these complications, you would think pro-lifers would have some sympathy for other viewpoints. But purity brooks no quarter for differing positions. It does not allow for heterodoxy, and judges the legitimacy of differing belief systems on their relative similarity to its own. Purity is threatened by change and difference—it's not enough that True Believers are not themselves compelled to support or practice abortion; these practices cannot be tolerated among others, because doing so would taint an inviolable ideal.