An Analysis of Alinsky and the Ethics of Means and Ends

Forward: As a student in social work I was educated on how to disrupt political rallies; if you can believe they would even teach a thing like that at a higher learning institution. We were shown a video of a Scott Walker rally after he won the Governor's race in Wisconsin. Left wing protestors, like the ones discussed in the article below, were shown jumping up and down on the tables while shouting disrespectful and derogatory epithets at the newly elected governor, and we were supposed to admire this. The funny thing is, I didn't even know what they were protesting and neither did anyone else, because I asked several times what the point of the video was. This was during the section on community organizing in which Saul Alinsky was a big part of the curriculum. This was around the time Obama was elected for his first term and very few people knew who Alinsky was. He was presented as a hero even though it was never mentioned that he wrote a book called Rules for Radicals. One day I decided the students needed to know who Alinsky really was so when my left wing professor started discussing him I pulled out the book and started reading. If you can believe it, my professor, after class actually told me I wasn't supposed to know about Saul Alinsky and Rules for Radicals.

The word is out. Barack Obama is working to undermine President Trump at every turn by creating a thirty thousand strong army of community activists. The plan is to disrupt town hall meetings and give congressional Republicans the impression that Trump's agenda is not popular. In fact, according to the New York Post's Paul Sperry, they even have a script advising them to suggest  President Trump's agenda equals the advancement of racism and authoritarianism. This is nothing new, the left screams racism every time someone disagrees with them. Throughout the Obama presidency Republican lawmakers were shaking in their boots, afraid to stand against Obama's agenda out of a fear of being labeled racist. The goal here is the same, create the illusion that the repealing of Obamacare for example, is not popular among the masses. In the past, they have accused Republicans of not caring about sick people in order to demonize them for not supporting Obamacare. The left is intent on getting their way and they have no intention of slowing down. If they are to be stopped then it must be understood that they are employing Alinsky like tactics and are operating on an entirely different level of morality than most of us. They operate on an "ends justify the means" principle which means they are willing to do anything to advance their agenda.

How do you describe an "ends justify the means" mentality? In Rules For Radicals Alinsky discusses social change and the means in which activists can bring it about. The goal is to remake the world the way they think it should be. In other words, they are pursuing an Utopia. A man of action, according to Alinsky, is only concerned with achieving his end goal and the means in which he does is viewed only from the perspective of whether or not it is achievable, not moral. To Alinsky, the end goal is a better world and he, like his followers, believe that their vision for this better world is better for everyone; therefore, there is nothing immoral or unethical about the actions they take. The ends, a perfect world-justify the means, whatever they may be.

To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. (Alinsky, Rules for Radicals. pp24)

A willingness to corrupt themselves is almost viewed as a higher level of morality because they are convinced that their vision is best for everyone, so they are corrupting themselves for a greater good. It is the same as Virtue Ethics and the idea of Modern Moral Philosophy. To the hard left, everything about America and capitalism represents oppression, racism, imperialism and poverty. They have a moral obligation to do what is right, according to their ideas of what is right, not what is considered moral or legal based on existing law or codes of morality. To further elaborate, they believe that the current moral code and social structure exists to protect the wealthy class and ensure that they retain their means to oppress the poor. However misguided this may be it reinforces their belief that they are right in taking social action in an attempt to bring the system down in pursuit of their Utopia.

In action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal salvation. He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of "personal salvation"; he doesn't care enough for people to be "corrupted" for them. (Alinsky, Rules for Radicals. pp. 25)

Alinsky goes on to say that an unwillingness to pursue change in this manner makes an activist a passive ally of the so called "haves" in the game of haves vs. have nots. He is suggesting that anything short of applying an ends justify the means mentality will leave the activists with no means in which to pursue his end goal because he is clinging to the morality and ethics of the system he seeks to change. He compares those he called "means and end moralists" to the Jews who didn't fight back against the Nazi's. Indeed, he has a point that would be hard to argue, there was a moral obligation to fight back against such evil; however, Alinsky was a leftist and an admirer of Lenin who was also rounding up political dissidents. Today's left, unbeknownst to them, are fighting for issues that Communists and Socialists would also advocate for. Universal health care, abortion, civilian disarmament and open borders. The reason Alinsky abhorred Hitler was because of his fierce nationalism, not because he rounded up those that disagreed with him. As mentioned above, Alinsky was an admirer of Lenin who deceptively advocated for peace until he obtained the means to wage war, then he became ruthless against his political enemies murdering millions.

In Rules for Radicals there are two rules discussed that explain the type of action being taken by Obama's activists. One is a rule on the ethics of means and ends which states the following- You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments. The left, as it has long been known, operates on pure emotion and there is little in the way of fact in any of their arguments. Whether it is a push for gun control or universal health care they know their facts don't paint a pretty picture for their cause so they mask them with moral arguments stating that "it's just the right thing to do." The issue of racism is also another big one, any time they are faced with facts they can't dispute they resort to accusations of racism. This is a very effective tool that all too often silences people because they don't know how to fight back. They are doing what they can with the tools they have and if silencing opposition is all they achieve then so be it, it's a victory.

The second is a rule of tactics which states-Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purposes. We are being bombarded by different protests across the nation and they are using every issue they can think of to start a new social movement. The latest example is the no black targets movement. Researchers at the University of Illinois are actually claiming a study they conducted proves white people are more trigger happy on black silhouette targets. No matter how ridiculous this sounds, this reinforces not only the racism narrative but also that shooting and gun ownership itself is motivated by a fear of black people. They are using the tools at their disposal (racism accusations) and utilizing the events of our period (police shootings against blacks).

These activists are not going anywhere and in the event their planned town hall infiltrations are not successful you can bet they will be back with new tactics. They are determined to change America's governing structure and as demonstrated in this article, are following a completely different set of moral standards than most of us. They will lie cheat and steal in an effort to undermine anything they view as being in the way of their agenda and they will not have any second thoughts on their actions because they are doing it for the greater good. They are corrupting themselves for the betterment of man.

Immigration, The 9th Circuit Court and Virtue Ethics

Forward: As a student in a social work program I found myself involved in many debates concerning immigration. I could never wrap my head around the idea that the students around me actually believed people had the right to immigrate here while foregoing any responsibility to assimilate to our culture. This however is exactly what they believe because our entire system of morality and philosophical thought is being changed from within, and it is affecting the way laws are passed. One day a professor of mine, a left wing zealot mind you, acknowledged the fact that if you cross into Mexico you will not be treated the way we treat immigrants when they come here. She asked a simple question: "What kind of country do you want to be?" At this point it dawned on me that students are being trained to argue from an emotional standpoint and their ability to reason is being replaced by a thought process based on feelings as opposed to fact. The students did not want to feel like they were prohibiting people from being able to pursue better lives so they became advocates for open borders because it made them feel good.

American's continue to watch in absolute bewilderment as the left fights tooth and nail to put a wrench in the Trump administration's agenda. The recent ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has shown that they are firmly committed to carrying on with the Obama agenda insofar as attempting to change the demographics of our nation. Rush Limbaugh often points out that labeling the left as hypocrites has little to no affect as no one seems willing to take them to task. Not only were the seven countries in question regarding Trumps ban identified as terrorist hotspots by the Obama administration, the former president himself is on record saying illegal immigration will hurt the wages of blue collar workers in our country. How was it that Obama had such a shift in immigration policy, and what basis does the developing narrative on the President's authority to issue executive orders regarding immigration have to do with actual law? The right is arguing that the court's ruling ignored the constitution as well as an established precedent and the left; well, as usual the left is arguing from a position of moral superiority while claiming the presidents order is unconstitutional. Some on the left even believe that people have the right to immigrate to the United States.  Unfortunately, when it comes to illegal immigration not many are familiar with what the law really is; nor are they prepared to fight back against the alleged moral superiority argument so often played by the those on the left.

According to Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution the powers over naturalization rest exclusively in congress. In 1965 the U.S. congress passed a law, which was signed by Lyndon B. Johnson, that drastically changed immigration and set America on a course that would change her demographics forever. This law was known as the Immigration Act of 1965. Up until this law was passed immigration was based on a quota system. Immigrants from around the world were let in based on the percentage of people from that part of the world already in the U.S. This was known as the National Origins Quota and was passed into law in 1924 in order to slow the massive migration into the United States and protect our cultural identity. This was later considered a racist policy as most of the immigrants were coming from European countries. The Immigration Act of 1965 was written to change the demographics of America by opening immigration up to the third world.

The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, abolished an earlier quota system based on national origin and established a new immigration policy based on reuniting immigrant families and attracting skilled labor to the United States. Over the next four decades, the policies put into effect in 1965 would greatly change the demographic makeup of the American population, as immigrants entering the United States under the new legislation came increasingly from countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as opposed to Europe.

This bill grew out of the growing civil rights movement. Whereas new laws preventing discrimination based on skin color were being passed, pressure was also mounting to change the laws related to how America took in immigrants. Immigration to America literally became a human rights issue. According to Lawrence Auster, author of The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism, the new immigration law was the manifestation of the civil rights movement on the world stage. Opponents of this bill were labeled as racist and bigoted for standing in opposition because the bill itself was an extension of the civil rights laws being passed in the U.S. Edward Kennedy, who was serving as the chair for the senate subcommittee hearing this bill claimed that the number of immigrants coming into the country would not increase and that our country's demographic make up would not change, as opponents of the bill argued they would. According to the Center of Immigration Studies the number of immigrants coming into the country tripled over three decades with over 18 million coming from Latin American and Asian countries. Furthermore, the education gap between native born Americans and those immigrating also widened significantly. This created a strain on the system because America is a high tech society who now had a large population of people unable to compete in those jobs and therefore; live their lives courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. This 18 million does not represent the untold millions of illegal immigrants who have also crossed our borders and take advantage of the system.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is most likely basing it's ruling on the immigration act of 1965. They call it unconstitutional because the law itself made the issue of immigration one of universal human rights; people now have the right to immigrate to the United States. This is ridiculous, there is no human right to immigrate to the U.S. and live off of the taxpayer. The left, arguing from an emotional standpoint, believe they have a superior "moral virtue" and that they are more compassionate than the rest of us. They are basing their argument for unfettered immigration on virtue ethics.

Virtue ethics is based purely on the idea that it is the intentions behind an action that are more important than the consequences. This is why the left so effortlessly gets away with anything because the intentions behind their actions are based on the superior virtue of their character, they acted out of love and compassion therefore consequences don't matter. Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe was a British philosopher who argued that philosophical thought should do away with making decisions based on what was once understood as morally correct. Her argument suggested that morals were derived from an established law made by legislatures and that this was an outdated system that should be done away with. Instead, Anscombe's idea on virtue ethics suggested that the good of man should come first. A concept known as eudaimonia , which translates as human flourishing or the highest human good has replaced traditional moral thinking with a moral code that is based purely on what makes those making the rules feel good. In other words, it doesn't matter if there are potential terrorists in the midst of refugees and other immigrants, it is for the greater good of mankind that borders be eliminated and people move freely with no responsibility to their host nation. To the liberals, the idea that people have to assimilate and follow a legal process of becoming a citizen flies in the face of their morally superior belief that all people have the right to immigrate here. In the end, any victims of potential terrorist attacks are but a statistic in the never ending quest for Utopia.

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Source: Lawrence Auster, The Path to National Suicide
Source: G.E.M. Anscombe, Modern Moral Philosophy
Source: Center for Immigration Studies
Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Stimulus-Response, Associationism and Fake Rightwing Extremism

The left is at it again. Let's face it, this new communist movement is not going away and despite the election of Donald Trump, they still have the full support of the media and a heavy influence in education. The riots at UC Berkeley have reminded America that there is indeed, a hard core, militant left wing movement intent on tearing down America's institutions and implementing a socialist type government. They justify their violence by claiming they are in a fight against rightwing extremism and in some cases, such as the Robert Reich interview on CNN, they even suggest  the right wing is responsible for this violence. This is nothing new, the left has long tried to portray the right as extremist in nature and has even referred to them as Nazi's. This is ridiculous because Nazism is National Socialism which is really no different than Communism. Communists tend to think globally; in other words, Communism is National Socialism on a global scale with no single nation at the lead. Besides, Adolph Hitler's ideas on governing were way more in line with todays left wing ideologies than the right's, which promotes human freedom and dignity. What's happening here is a full blown effort to completely discredit American Conservatism and create the impression in people's minds that rightwing extremism is the biggest threat the nation faces.

At the beginning of the Obama Administration the Department of Homeland Security, headed by Janet Napolitano, who just happens now to be the president at UC Berkeley, released a report entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. This report referred to everyone of a rightwing leaning as a potential extremist and was deliberately released in an effort to discredit all opposition to the Obama agenda. Gun owners, returning war veterans, pro lifers and anyone who stood in defiance of expanding government power was targeted in this report. The reasons given were in and of  themselves proof that this report served an agenda to silence opposition. Gun owners were listed because of fears of increased gun control and restrictions on their rights. Remember, this report was released at the very start of Obama's first term, before any mention of gun control. Returning veterans, as another example, were listed as potential extremists because they would be returning home to no jobs and lowered living standards. How did they know, unless they had a specific agenda, that there would be no jobs? Essentially, this report was released to silence and discredit those that would stand in opposition to this agenda. All throughout the Obama years the so called right wing was referred to as extreme and angry while excuses were made for the radical Islamists who were actually committing acts of terror. No where in this report is there any mention of Islamic terrorism or leftwing radicalism for that matter.

In truth, the issue of Islamic terrorism has served the former administration well in creating an association of ideas between acts of violence committed by radical Islamists and opposition to government they attempt to portray as rightwing extremism. The association of ideas, otherwise known as Associationism, or associative theories of learning, suggests that people's idea's are shaped and guided by past experiences. In other words, if the constant shock of Islamic terror has the right effect on the psyche of the population then it will not be difficult to create a mental connection between those memories of terror and the attitudes portrayed as rightwing extremism. Another way to explain this is through the stimulus response mechanisms discovered by Ivan Pavlov. Classical conditioning is the process in which an organism is trained to respond to a certain stimulus. In Pavlov's experiment it was found that the organism in question, a dog, would salivate every time meat was present and it was fed. Slowly, a bell was introduced at feeding time and eventually the salivation would occur simply with the sound of the bell even though the original stimulus was removed. The dog began to associate the sound of the bell with the presentation of food which at this point, his response became a conditioned behavior. Over the past eight years we have seen a refusal on the part of the Obama administration to refer to Islamic terrorism as Islamic in nature. Instead, it has been referred to as a type of hateful ideology that leads to violence. The shock of constantly being fed images of terrorism while hearing the words "hateful ideology" has led to the masses reacting to those same words in much the same way Pavlov's dog reacted to the bell. In other words, fake rightwing extremism is being created through mental trickery and the association of ideas. Through the stimulus-response mechanisms people are being conditioned to react with emotion and fear as opposed to reason. The fear of rightwing extremism is being created through the images of actual terrorist events and the refusal to label them what they are while at the same time, gradually connecting words like hateful and racist with the rightwing movement.

Many people will question this theory because after all, we are human beings not dogs. What they fail to understand is that the left has been in pursuit of mastering human behavior for over a century and fields like psychology and psychiatry are firmly in their control. Truthfully,  human beings can be conditioned in much the same way as a dog but first they have to be demoralized and brought to believe that everything they thought they knew was wrong. For decades the left, firmly in control of America's educational institutions, have been programming students to believe that America is the world's biggest problem. Concepts like white privilege and feminism have broke down the idea that America is the greatest country in the world and replaced it with one that suggests we are nothing but a bunch of racist, sexist Islamaphobes and that our founding documents are rooted in rightwing extremism.

In the book Brainwashing-A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics Laventia Beria, former KGB agent and instructor at Lenin University, states that the stimulus response mechanisms of man have long been used to bring about an acceptable behavior within any given population. He goes on to explain the stimulus response mechanism by stating that a person's experience in response to a traumatic event, such as the constant exposure to Islamic terrorism for example, will manifest itself when the proper command is given. For example, after years of witnessing the horrors of Isis and the replacing of words like Islamic terrorism with terms like hateful ideologies, the association between such a term and attitudes identified as rightwing extremism produce the same response demonstrated by the original stimulus; Islamic terrorism. Furthermore, Beria goes on to suggest that the pain of the traumatic event is greatly alleviated by simply following the commands of the new stimulus. So, it is easier for people to simply go along with the idea that rightwing extremism poses the same danger as Islamic terrorism or leftwing radicalism for that matter than it is for them to admit the truth. This is partly due to the fact that they would feel as if they were displaying a racist, Islamophobic attitude by admitting radical Islam poses a real and viable threat to their safety. This of course is due to the education they are receiving which is based in stimulus response mechanisms itself.

In order to fully grasp this idea it is important to understand that the left does not view man in the same way we do. The rightwing, for the most part, believes in God and is rooted in Christian morality. The left, on the other hand has been developing it's scientific approach to understanding human behavior based on stimulus response mechanisms and the way human beings respond to the environment around them; which of course can be manipulated to serve as a stimulus. Consider B.F. Skinners explanation of pre and post scientific man and how it applies to what we are witnessing today in the way we are being governed.

In what we may call the pre-scientific view (and the word is not necessarily pejorative) a person's behavior is at least to some extent his own achievement. He is free to deliberate, decide, and act, possibly in original ways, and he is to be given credit for his successes and blamed for his failures. In the scientific view (and the word is not necessarily honorific) a person’s behavior is determined by a genetic endowment traceable to the evolutionary history of the species and by the environmental circumstances to which as an individual he has been exposed. Neither view can be proved, but it is in the nature of scientific inquiry that the evidence should shift in favor of the second. As we learn more about the effects of the environment, we have less reason to attribute any part of human behavior to an autonomous controlling agent. And the second view shows a marked advantage when we begin to do something about behavior. Autonomous man is not easily changed: in fact, to the extent that he is autonomous, he is by definition not changeable at all. But the environment can be changed, and we are learning how to change it. The measures we use are those of physical and biological technology, but we use them in special ways to affect behavior. (Skinner, 101)

When we hear leftwing activists try to discredit the rightwing movement understand that they are attempting to draw a correlation between the so called anti-government attitudes of those that believe in limited government and the radicalism we have been witnessing in the media. The goal is to get the masses to believe that anyone going against the mainstream narrative has the potential to become radicalized. Once the initial fear of terrorism sinks into the subconscious the association between the horrors seen on television and words like hateful ideologies become permanently rooted in the brain. Therefore, people become conditioned to react to the same way when they simply hear words that they associate with the terrifying images of terrorism. The end goal is to get the masses to believe that rightwing extremism, even though it has been the left responsible for all the violence, is the biggest threat the nation faces.

Source: BRAIN-WASHING A Synthesis of a Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics Chapter VII
Source: B.F Skinner Beyond Freedom and Dignity pp. 101
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