Political & Elections

longprime · Guru

RE: Thoughts on VP?

catahoula · Guru

My hat's off to you, FarmDad.

An excellent post.

FarmDad · Veteran Member

When ACA passed two years ago, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid EXPLICITLY acknowledged that the cost of Obamacare would be paid for in part with about $500 billion in cuts in Medicare spending over the next 10 year period. They bragged that these Medicare cuts, in addition to revenues generated by ACA, would keep ACA budget neutral. According to the CBO last July, the amount of cuts in Medicare spending that is diverted to fund ACA for the period of 2013 to 2022 is now $716 billion. According to the CBO, if ACA were repealed, that money would be restored to Medicare.

So why is Ryan's statement that $716 billion was cut from Medicare to help pay for Obamacare even remotely in dispute?

While you might not like his rhetorical flourishes, from a factual standpoint, Ryan was 100% accurate when he said, "You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So, they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama."

What we have here is an agenda driven faux fact checking echo chamber. Biased Politifact, or whatever they're called, adopts Obama campaign talking points; AP writes a story on it; CBS, USA Today, and other lazy ass "news" outlets pick up the AP story; Google News disseminates it; and then all those who are so inclined, such as john doe, adopt it as "the truth." I know the vast majority of the media are in the tank for Obama, but I am nonetheless astounded by the dispatch they're taking to try to undermine Ryan's credibility. He must really be seen as a threat.

"The $700mill is what is paid to insurance companies for extra services that is above and beyond Medicare. The said amount is a reallocation from Medicare C (Advantage Program-Managed care) to Standard Medicare A,B."

Longprime, if you are saying that the entirety, or even the majority, of the $716 billion in Medicare cuts is money that was used to pay for Medicare Advantage, but now, as a result of Obamacare, that money will be reallocated to pay for standard Medicare A & B, you are simply wrong on both counts. According to the CBO, Medicare Advantage payments constitute only $156 billion of the $716 billion in Medicare cuts that result from ACA. THAT'S LESS THAN 22%. The lion's share of Medicare cuts caused by Obamacare are part A and B cuts in payments to hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, hospice services, home health services, and other providers. Frankly, it's fine with me to cut the Medicare Advantage subsidies and require those who choose MA to pay extra for their additional benefits. I'd just as soon use that money to cover the part D doughnut hole and still have over $100 billion left to help cover the doc fix. But you don't need Obamacare for that. And please don't tell me that the other $560 billion in cuts to hospitals and providers required by Obamacare will not adversely affect seniors' access to care. The Chief Actuary of Medicare has already said that it will.

The faux fact checkers know they can't say truthfully that Ryan's essential facts are false, so they blow smoke by saying, well, Obamacare is only cutting money for Medicare Advantage, which you now know is false, or that it is only cutting payments to providers, as if that is not going to affect beneficiaries. Or they say Ryan is not telling the truth because he was going to cut the same amount of Medicare spending in his original budget, missing his point that the cuts he formerly proposed would be left available to extend the life of Medicare or reduce the deficit, rather than be diverted to fund an entirely new entitlement program. When Obama says that his Medicare cuts extend the life of Medicare, he is intentionally misleading you by double counting the $716 billion as both funding ACA and extending Medicare. Fact check that, you faux fact checkers.

FarmDad · Veteran Member

So it's a lie to say that cutting $716 billion from Medicare actually is cutting $716 billion from Medicare because the $716 billion that is admittedly being cut from Medicare involves cutting $716 billion in Medicare payments to insurance companies, hospitals, and providers?

Okay.

longprime · Guru

farmdad; Yes and no. Mostly, No. The $700mill is what is paid to insurance companies for extra services that is above and beyond Medicare.

The said amount is a reallocation from Medicare C (Advantage Program-Managed care) to Standard Medicare A,B.

Come September and definitely by October, in between the endless political spots, you will see, hear, and read about changing to 'better' medicare programs.It is Open Enrollment time for changing Medicare plans. Since you are not near to being 65, you and most other Americans will ignore the ads.

An approximate summary: Healthnet, Humana, KaiserPermanente, are some of the bigger players. Medicare Advantage (C) is a way for health insurance companies to recapture health insurance dollares lost to singlepayer (Government) when their clients turned 65. Medicare Advantage programs are a little less expensive or the same as the cost of Medicare F + D (Supplement or Gap + Drug). Advantage is HMO/Managed Care. Some Advantage programs have different drug programs, vision, and dental. Standard Medicare A+B+D+F, do not and cannot have options in drug insurance; may not offer vision or dental without an extra premium. Advantage was an experimental/pilot program that got out-of-hand politically because someone was making money.

The 700mill is an attempt for the Government not to 'reimburse ' insurance companies for the extra services that are not found in standard Medicare. This a wedge issue that the R's are trying to develop where both sides are in essential agreement in cost containment.

The issues are who is eligible, who will pay, how much will the parties pay or not paid. confuse

I kinda find the exercise humorless. It is really an exercise in philosophy and morality. When it becomes a political issue then there will be shades of ethics. ashamed

In any outcome, DW has hers and I am close to having mine. Advised DS to either be self-insured or maintain his Canadian contacts and Canadian bank. account. evileye

-- Edited by longprime on Friday 31st of August 2012 08:35:00 PM

-- Edited by longprime on Friday 31st of August 2012 08:36:45 PM

-- Edited by longprime on Friday 31st of August 2012 08:39:07 PM

winchester · Guru

Ryan is an all out liar - forget about misleading - they are lies.

The above quoted statement is an all out lie.

Ryan's Fact Challenged Fact Checkers
http://reason.com/blog/2012/08/30/ryans-fact-challenged-fact-checkers

Fact Checking the Fact Checkers on Ryan's Speech
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/30/fact-checking-the-factcheckers-on-ryans-speech/

Paul Ryan Spoke the Truth About Obamacare
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/paul-ryan-spoke-truth-about-obamacare_651204.html

Fact Checking Paul Ryan's RNC Speech
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/315417/fact-checking-paul-ryans-rnc-speech-avik-roy

The AP 'Fact Checks' Ryan's Speech
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/ap-fact-checks-paul-ryan_650035.html

john doe · Guru

Really?????? The facts don't lie - look up each one of those comments. Ryan is an all out liar - forget about misleading - they are lies.

hope · Guru

There was once a time when lying in a political speech--and getting called out on it by the media--was shameful or embarrassing.

ROFLMAO Seriously? There was a time....before the Obama presidency!

Nobody has done politics like Obama.. period.

You want R's to roll over?

Kudos to the Republican Convention. A little class and dignity. A little optimism. A little pride in America.

Let's see what kind of mudslinging that paragon of virtue, Barack Obama, brings us in a few days.

Jeff Greenfield....really??

john doe · Guru

Paul Ryan's Speech Was Filled With Economic Inaccuracies: Yahoo!'s Jeff Greenfield‏

There was once a time when lying in a political speech--and getting called out on it by the media--was shameful or embarrassing.

Not anymore.

Now, says Jeff Greenfield, the veteran political analyst and Yahoo! News columnist, the media is held in such low regard by Americans that getting called out for lying merely serves to confirm a widespread belief that the "liberal media" has an axe to grind against conservative politicians.

As a result, the whoppers that dominated Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan's convention speech last night will likely not hurt the candidate's standing with Republican voters, says Greenfield. Rather, they'll reinforce the right-wing view that the media is "in the tank" for President Obama.

What facts in particular were observers and fact-checkers up in arms about?

Well, for starters, there were once again the claims that Obamacare cuts $716 billion of benefits from Medicare and that Paul Ryan wants to preserve Medicare. The truth is that Obamacare reduces payments to hospitals and doctors by $716 billion, not benefits. Also, far from preserving Medicare, after a 10-year grace period, Romney and Ryan want to radically change it.

[Related: Romney Adviser: Yes, We're Going To Slash Taxes Without Increasing The Deficit]

Then Ryan blamed S&P's downgrade of U.S. debt on Obama, when S&P explained explicitly that its downgrade was the result of Congressional Republicans--Ryan included--threatening to cause the country to default.

[Related: No Matter Who Wins the Election, Don't Expect a Deal on the Budget or Deficit: Kotok]

Then Ryan accused Obama of lying to voters in his home state by promising to keep a GM plant open for "hundreds of years" after he was elected, only to have it closed in the first year. The truth is that GM closed the plant before Obama took office.

And so on.

Jeff Greenfield says that none of this will matter to voters, who will just blame the media and its silly "fact-checkers." And he's presumably right.

hope · Guru

Shouldn't someone who chastises others for posting from partisan publications/sites reveal where he/she is cutting/pasting from?

Just sayin.' confuse

jazzy · Senior Member

What did Ayn Rand teach Paul Ryan about monetary policy?

Posted by Brad Plumer on August 13, 2012 at 11:53 am

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In 2005, Paul Ryan explained that he often looks to Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” as inspiration for his views on monetary policy. “I always go back to, you know, Francisco d’Anconia’s speech, at Bill Taggart’s wedding, on money when I think about monetary policy,” he said in a speech to the Atlas Society. So what are Ryan’s views on this front? And what do they have to do with Ayn Rand?

(Adam Jennings — Associated Press)

Over the past few years, economists and policymakers have been debating whether the Federal Reserve should do more to bolster the economy and bring down the still-high U.S. unemployment rate. True, the central bank has already cut interest rates — its traditional tool for stimulus — as far as possible. But the Fed has shifted to a number of novel tactics, such as quantitative easing, to try to bring down real rates even further and inject more money into the economy.

Paul Ryan has been heavily involved in these debates from his perch in the House. But he comes at monetary policy from a somewhat non-mainstream perspective. Like many other Republicans, he has repeatedly criticized Ben Bernanke’s efforts to stimulate the economy. But he has also gone further, arguing that the Federal Reserve shouldn’t be focused on reducing unemployment, period. And he has argued repeatedly for a “sound money” policy that has left some economists scratching their heads.

Perhaps Ryan’s most unconventional opinion on monetary policy came in the summer of 2010, when he told Ezra Klein that the Federal Reserve should actually raise interest rates even as the U.S. economy was still struggling: “[T]here’s a lot of capital parked out there, and we need to coax it out into the markets,” he said. “I think literally that if we raised the federal funds rate by a point, it would help push money into the economy, as right now, the safest play is to stay with the federal money and federal paper.”

This is not a common view. Most economists tend to think that raising interest rates will slow the economy down. Here, for instance, is Mitt Romney’s economic adviser Kevin Hassett explaining the basics of monetary policy back in 2007: ”When inflation fears are aroused, the Fed increases the fed funds rate (called a ‘tightening’) in order to slow activity in sectors of the economy, such as housing and automobiles, that are particularly sensitive to interest rates.”

As Hassett explains, raising rates is something the Fed does when the economy is overheating and inflation is at elevated levels. Yet, at the moment, inflation doesn’t appear to be the main problem facing the U.S. economy. High unemployment is:

Ryan, however, has been consistent in his view that the Fed should do whatever it takes to fight inflation — and stop trying to fret over the unemployment rate. In 2008, Ryan sponsored a bill that would repeal the Federal Reserve’s “dual mandate” to tackle both inflation and high unemployment. Instead, under his bill, the Fed would focus only on “price stability.”

To that end, Ryan has roundly criticized Bernanke’s efforts to stimulate the U.S. economy by buying up assets and injecting money into the economy. For instance, one way the Fed’s efforts are thought to work is by reducing the value of the dollar, helping U.S. exports. But Ryan has countered that there is “nothing more insidious that a country can do to its citizens than debase its currency.” (See this report by Reuters’s Mark Felsenthal for a round-up of Ryan’s criticisms of Bernanke over the years.)

As an alternative approach, Ryan has suggested that the United States should return to “sound money” by anchoring the value of the dollar to, say, the price of a basket of commodities. This isn’t quite a return to the long-abandoned gold standard, but it’s a roughly similar concept. It would prevent the Federal Reserve from boosting the money supply in times of crisis, as the Fed did in 2008. And Ryan’s approach could have other downsides as well. As economist David Beckworth explained here, if the dollar was pegged to commodities like metals or soybeans, it would be greatly affected by outside forces, such as swings in Chinese demand. “For better or for worse,” he told FrumForum’s Noah Kristula-Green, “the political process can’t allow big swings in the monetary policy by outside forces.”

So what does any of this have to do with Ayn Rand? Over at Slate, Dave Weigel has a longer explanation of the parallels between Ryan’s monetary policy and “Atlas Shrugged.” In the passages that Ryan has highlighted, Rand’s characters lament that statists have destroyed all “objective standards” for currency by abandoning the gold standard and boosting the supply of paper money in order to assist the “looters and moochers.” (Franklin Rooseveltabolished the gold standard in 1934 in order to fight the Great Depression — economists such as Milton Friedman and Bernanke have argued that the gold standard had been making monetary policy unduly contractionary.)

“Now, take all of that and apply it to our current debates about the Federal Reserve,” writesWeigel. “I hope it doesn’t surprise you that Ryan, since at least 2008, has wanted the Fed to abandon the employment mandate. He doesn’t say this in a stupid way, like Rick Perry. He says it by citing Ayn Rand.”

jazzy · Senior Member

Let's put it this way: Paul Ryan was for Ayn Rand before he was against her. (He only dropped his professed devotion around the time he became a candidate for VP and thus would have to defend said devotion on a national stage.)

Here's the remarks he made to a 2005 gathering of the Atlas Society, where he was there among the other attendees to honor Ayn Rand's birthday.

This is from the Atlas Society's website:

. We’re now releasing the full audio of Ryan’s speech, made at our “Celebration of Ayn Rand” event (photo at right).
Scroll to bottom for audio file.
(Rep. Ryan is introduced by The Atlas Society's Ed Hudgins, director of advocacy.)

Some exerpts from the audio (with minute and second markers):

(1:45) I just want to speak to you a little bit about Ayn Rand and what she meant to me in my life and [in] the fight

we’re engaged here in Congress. I grew up on Ayn Rand, that’s what I tell people..you know everybody does their soul-searching, and trying to find out who they are and what they believe, and you learn about yourself.

(2:01) I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff. We start with Atlas Shrugged. People tell me I need to start with The Fountainhead then go to Atlas Shrugged [laughter]. There’s a big debate about that. We go to Fountainhead, but then we move on, and we require Mises and Hayek as well.

"I always go back to... Francisco d’Anconia’s speech [in Atlas Shrugged] on money when I think about monetary policy."

(2:23) But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.

(2:38) In almost every fight we are involved in here, on Capitol Hill, whether it’s an amendment vote that I’ll take later on this afternoon, or a big piece of policy we’re putting through our Ways and Means Committee, it is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict: individualism vs. collectivism.

(2:54) And so when you take a look at where we are today, ah, some would say we’re on offense, some would say we’re on defense, I’d say it’s a little bit of both. And when you look at the twentieth-century experiment with collectivism—that Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did such a good job of articulating the pitfalls of statism and collectivism—you can’t find another thinker or writer who did a better job of describing and laying out the moral case for capitalism than Ayn Rand.

(3: 21) It’s so important that we go back to our roots to look at Ayn Rand’s vision, her writings, to see what our girding, under-grounding [sic] principles are. I always go back to, you know, Francisco d’Anconia’s speech (at Bill Taggart’s wedding) on money when I think about monetary policy. And then I go to the 64-page John Galt speech, you know, on the radio at the end, and go back to a lot of other things that she did, to try and make sure that I can check my premises so that I know that what I’m believing and doing and advancing are square with the key principles of individualism…

(6:53) Is this an easy fight? Absolutely not…But if we’re going to actually win this we need to make sure that we’re solid on premises, that our principles are well-defended, and if we want to go and articulately defend these principles and what they mean to our society, what they mean for the trends that we set internationally, we have to go back to Ayn Rand. Because there is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through Ayn Rand’s writings and works.

jazzy · Senior Member

The part of that blog post that got garbled above is here:

A few salient points:

1. Alinsky, writing in 1971, seems to think the radical student movement with its violence and nihilism was a Very Bad Idea (here, we agree.) He professes a deep respect for democratic institutions and the rule of law. Indeed, what I know of his history suggests that this isn't merely lip service. Alinsky sometimes played dirty, but he generally didn't advocate operating outside the law.

2. He apparently has no love for communism, arguing strongly in favor of American patriotism and against the murderous collectivism of Russia, China, and Cuba. For example, he thinks that the 1968 radicals were idiots for burning the American flag, because the alternative isn't communitarian utopia but totalitarianism. Alinsky doesn't appear to hold any illusions about the virtures of the very far left, which he argues becomes indistinguishable from the very far right.

3. He views the world dualistically; there are good/evil, rich/poor, etc., etc., dichotomies. Not much appreciation for shades of grey, except insofar as he points (correctly, I think) to the push/pull relationships of the middle class relative to the very rich and the very poor. I'm not sure I like this framework --- it seems dangerously simplistic --- but it explains much about the why of some of his theory. His whole intellectual apparatus appears to be colored by a contemporary Manichaeism.

4. He seems to respect one of Tocqueville's core theses --- that America works best when there's a healthy mediating layer of civil society that buffers and guides the nation in its relationship between a single person and government. To the extent that his professed goal is to empower individuals to live happy, healthy, and free lives, he recognizes that part of the radicals' struggle is to keep those mediating institutions on the level.

catahoula · Guru

Well, for starters, there were once again the claims that Obamacare cuts $716 billion of benefits from Medicare and that Paul Ryan wants to preserve Medicare. The truth is that Obamacare reduces payments to hospitals and doctors by $716 billion, not benefits. Also, far from preserving Medicare, after a 10-year grace period, Romney and Ryan want to radically change it.

Reducing payments to hospitals and doctors isn't cutting benefits?

An inspired idea, one with nothing but good consequences, such an excellent idea I wonder why they didn't take it to it's logical conclusion and cut payments to zero.

Speaking of slant, I wonder how Greenwald feels about being billed a Yahoo!NewsColumnist these days. Didn't they can, and ABC disavow any ties to, some guy today?

-- Edited by catahoula on Thursday 30th of August 2012 06:44:53 PM

longprime · Guru

Hope, I hope the D Convention will be shorten by a day or two. The R Convention is really fortunate to have end up with a 3 day convention; If the R Convention went the allotted time, more of us would have longed tuned out. evileye

-- Edited by longprime on Thursday 30th of August 2012 05:24:55 PM

-- Edited by longprime on Thursday 30th of August 2012 05:28:20 PM

jazzy · Senior Member

wincester:

I too will respond in two parts and then be done.

First, it's telling that Alinsky can't be branded as a Marxist or communist through his own writings and interviews. He was asked about belonging to those movements and clearly disavowed them ---- interesting that you're willing to swallow without chewing Ryan's disavowal of Ayn Rand after years of being a devotee, but Alinsky's repeated disavowal of "isms" are brushed aside by you and by the Glenn Beck stand in you quote. I'm talking about David Horowitz, of course, who actually has filled in for Beck on his Marxist-boogey-man themed show and whose speculation about Alinksky hiding his Marxist proclivities and revolutionary goals was simply that --- speculation. It's easy to do that, of course, since Alinsky not here to refute anything people choose to write about him. It's also obvious that the only reason for this relentless effort to tie Alinsky to Marxism is so that Obama can be likewise smeared as a secret commie with a hidden agenda to destroy America.

So I call BS on David Horowitz and his musings about Alinsky's unspoken thoughts and intentions.

BTW, if admiration and use of the Alinsky book and its tactics are evidence of hidden Marxism (Obama!) then why is not a single eyebrow raised when Dick Armey passed the book out to his Tea Party members as a useful guide for political agitation? You don't get to have your cake and eat it too, you know.

Also, here's a blogger's musings that are at least as valid as David Horowitz's:

Saul Alinsky, Reconsidered

Posted on 25 March 2012

My friend Duane loves it when people attribute political ruthlessness and dishonesty to Machiavelli. The Prince is one of those books that all the literati think they understand but never bothered to read; Machiavelli’s actual writings were much more pragmatic, with a strong ethical undercurrent, than the popular misconceptions would credit.

Apparently, the same phenomenon holds for Saul Alinsky. As a red-meat-eating, cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking, dyed-in-the-wool Republican, I’ve listened to the anti-Alinsky propaganda for years. You know the type: Obama is an Alinskyite, and we all know those Alinskyites are pinko commie bastards who want a Soviet-style Revolution that elevates the brain-washed union workers and tears down the mighty citadel of Capital.

But … not so much, it seems, if you look at what the man actually says.

A few days ago, I purchased Rules for Radicals; I began reading it last night. I’m not too far in — I’ve covered the prologue and the first chapter, “The Purpose.” What I’ve read reveals a man and a mission that don’t quite mesh with the dehumanization of the mad activist as caricatured by the far right. Although I reserve the right to be horrified by the chapters yet to come, so far Alinsky seems far more reasonable — in principle, anyway — than the angry diatribes from Limbaugh and Hannity would have led me to believe.

A few salient points:

Alinsky, writing in 1971, seems to think the radical student movement with its violence and nihilism was a Very Bad Idea (here, we agree). He professes a deep respect for democratic institutions and the rule of law. Indeed, what I know of his history suggests that this isn’t merely lip service. Alinsky sometimes played dirty, but he generally didn’t advocate operating outside of the law.
He apparently has no love for communism, arguing strongly in favor of American patriotism and against the murderous collectivism of Russia, China and Cuba. For example, he thinks that the 1968 radicals were idiots for burning the American flag, because the alternative isn’t communitarian utopia but totalitarianism. Alinsky doesn’t appear to hold any illusions about the virtues of the very far left, which he argues becomes indistinguishable from the very far right.
He views the world dualistically; there are good/evil, rich/poor, etc., etc., dichotomies. Not much appreciation for shades of grey, except insofar as he points (correctly, I think) to the push/pull relationship of the middle class relative to the very rich and very poor. I’m not sure I like this framework — it seems dangerously simplistic – but it explains much about the why of some his theory. His whole intellectual apparatus appears colored by a contemporary Manichaeism.
He seems to respect one of Tocqueville’s core theses — that America works best when there’s a healthy mediating layer of civil society that buffers and guides the nation in its relationship between a single person and government. To the extent that his professed goal is to empower individuals to live happy, healthy and free lives, he recognizes that part of the radicals’ struggle is to keep those mediating institutions on the level.

Don’t misunderstand; I’m not an Alinskyite and will not become one. As much as Alinsky claims to be non-ideological, only the Progressive Left seems attracted to his modus vivendi, and as long as the sort of “radical change” he articulates effectively works like a leftward-twisting ratchet, then Alinsky’s approach is functionally ideological — even, were one to be charitable about it, if the ideology is a manifestation of later misappropriation instead of being inherent to the system as he defined it.

More to the point: Radical change of any kind requires polarization to get people to accept strategies that fall outside the centrist norm. He apparently defines strategies to effect this polarization later in the book, but the general principle is this: You identify a problem; you mobilize support by presenting positive arguments while simultaneously isolating/demonizing your opposition; you keep it up until you can score a success at the ballot box; you declare victory and move on to the next target. This strategy requires the manipulation of voters through tactics both thuggish and outlandish. In the end, the idea unspoken premise is that the average voter is a dolt who needs to be “guided” to the preferred position of the activists at the ballot box, whence the activists derive their claim to moral authority.

The above notwithstanding, the more of Alinsky I read, the more I simultaneously see his theory at work in various strands of contemporary Progressive Left politics, and the more sympathetic I am to Alinsky as a political thinker. I will never be a disciple of his, but engaging his thought directly — instead of the caricature presented in the conservative media — gives me a deeper respect for the man as a noble adversary rather than a demonic bomb-thrower.

And if his tactics can be unleashed on the Progressive Left, so much the better.

-- Edited by jazzy on Thursday 30th of August 2012 12:14:55 PM

winchester · Guru

So, no, you do not get to compare a man who extorted concessions from businesses and municipalities through mob actions with a woman who advocated a political philosophy through fictional novels, editorials, and speaking engagements. I mean, seriously, by any stretch of the imagination there’s simply no comparison. Those dots just don't connect. And beyond that, your “logic” is illogical for several reasons.

First, your characterization of Rand contains misperceptions that are common to the liberal spin on her ideas.

Cathy Young, who has been published in several liberal publications such as The New Republic, Salon, The New York Times, and The Washington Post (so maybe you’ll at least give her ideas a chance) as well as some conservative ones such as The National Review (or maybe not), pointed out some of the misperceptions in an article titled “What Liberals Don’t Understand About Ayn Rand.”

In recent years, the passionately individualist, pro-capitalist Rand has been embraced as a champion of freedom by many conservatives and libertarians, and denounced as a prophet of greed and narcissism by many liberals. Yet, if Rand admirers tend to ignore the flaws of her vision, her detractors reduce her to grotesque caricature—and invoke her popularity as proof of right-wing nuttiness.
One major misconception is that Rand worshipped the rich and saw moneymaking as life’s highest goal. In fact, most wealthy characters in her novels are pathetic, repulsive, or both: businessmen fattened on shady deals or government perks, society people who fill their empty lives with luxury. (There are also sympathetic poor and working-class characters.)
…
Rand extolled “selfishness,” but not quite in its common meaning. … To Rand, being “selfish” meant being true to oneself, neither sacrificing one’s own desires nor trampling on others. Likewise, Rand’s stance against altruism was not an assault on compassion so much as a critique of doctrines that subordinate the individual to a collective—state, church, community, or family.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/08/23/what-liberals-dont-understand-about-ayn

Second, I have to say, your perception of “greed” is seriously flawed. Greed is not a liberal thing or a conservative thing, nor is it a rich thing or a poor thing, nor is it unique to any particular profession. Greed is a human thing, equally distributed among all who share that trait (of being human). The greed of those who abuse the welfare state, the greed of unions and their members, and the greed of homeowners who signed on to high risk loans are all arguably every bit as responsible for the current economic problems as anyone on “Wall Street.” If you’re going to lay the blame on traits that are common to all humans then you have to apply it to all them and not just to the ones you happen to personally dislike.

Third, Cathy Young is not completely accurate in her claim that “Rand has been embraced as a champion of freedom by many conservatives.” Rand is not the unabashed hero of conservative economic thought that Young, and apparently you, seem to think she is. As I pointed out in an earlier post, while SOME of her ideas happen to be coincident with SOME conservative ideas, Rand is, ultimately, an “imposter” to conservatism. Conservatism is much more broad, much more deep, and much more attuned to the full spectrum of human nature than is Rand’s objectivism. You’ll probably reject the following quote out of hand because it comes from a book by and for conservatives, but for the record, and in case anyone else who may read this may be interested, Rand was no fan of conservatism, and conservatism, rightly understood, is no fan of Rand, as illustrated not only by the Young quote above, but by this quote as well, from the book “Ten Books Every Conservative Must Read, Plus Four Not To Miss and One Imposter,” by Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D.:

After first having cuddled up to conservatives when she came to America, she definitively rejected conservatism and sharpened her own philosophy, Objectivism, against it. Her conscious break with conservatives had three related causes.

First, Rand was a devout atheist. Her contemptuous dismissal of religion in general and Christianity in particular was, in large part, the cause for the deep antagonism that quickly developed between Rand and William F. Buckley and his National Review.

Second, Rand’s insistence on pure selfishness as the root and branch of her moral system proved irreconcilable with true conservative moral principles, as she herself made amply clear in her work and personal life.

Third, her defense of the free market was based on the idea of a few heroic Nietzschean figures satisfying their creative and pecuniary impulses; it was not based on the conservative understanding of the free market as primarily about freedom for families and communities to provide for themselves in their own way, unhindered by government interference.

"Objectivists are NOT conservatives," she declared in her Objectivist Newsletter. "We are radicals for capitalism."

And fourth, since the topic of this thread is Romney’s choice of running mate, and the current discussion is about the influence of Alinsky and Rand on the candidates, it is important to note that Paul Ryan rejects Rand’s Ojectivism:

Brit Hume, FOX News: What is your view of Ayn Rand? Are you an Ayn Rand disciple?

Rep. Paul Ryan: No. I really enjoyed her novels, Atlas Shrugged in particular. It triggered my interest in economics. That's where I got into studying economics. That's why I wanted to study the whole field of economics.

I later in life learned about what her philosophy was, it's called Objectivism. It's something that I completely disagree with. It's an atheistic philosophy. But I think what she's done is she's showed -- she came from communism. She showed how the pitfalls of socialism can hurt the economy, can hurt people, families and individuals and that to me was very compelling novels. Which says freedom, free enterprise, liberty is so much better than totalitarianism and socialism. Those novels, I thought were interesting. But her philosophy, which is different, is something I just don't agree with.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/08/14/paul_ryan_rejects_ayn_rands_objectivism_philosophy.html

winchester · Guru

OK Jazzy, one more time, in two posts, and then I’m done with this. This post is about Alinsky and Obama’s connections to him. The second post is about comparing Alinsky with Rand.

Quotes in this post are from Rules for Radicals, The New Republic, and one of Alinsky’s cohorts during the 1960s. There’s no spin involved. Or, if you do see any spin then your argument is with Alinsky or the left, it’s not with me.

There is no doubt that Saul Alinsky was a highly intelligent, thoughtful person who had great insight into some parts of human nature and knew how to play the game (that’s not meant in a derogatory way). In particular he had a keen understanding of how to manipulate groups of people and motivate them into action. And yes, prominent people from the church and from politics, some of them conservative consulted with him and wanted to learn more about him and his tactics. I’m sure, in his mind, he had the best of intentions.

But your depiction of Alinsky tells only part of the story. For example, George Romney said he endorsed “legitimate and legal” attempts to rectify society’s problems. That part didn’t make it into your comment.

Have you even read Rules for Radicals? I have. It’s one thing to use quotes to help tell the story you believe and want others to believe. It’s another thing entirely to read the entire book and get an overall sense of the man.

Alinsky was most definitely a champion of Marxist ideas who clothed his real intentions in vague popular terms for the express purpose of hiding what he was really about. I’ll talk about his Marxism in a moment. His duplicity is stated explicitly in two of the rules from Rules for Radicals:

The tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.

The eleventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that goals must be phrased in general terms like “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” “Of the Common Welfare,” “Pursuit of Happiness,” or “Bread and Peace.”

Upon reading the whole book the sense of the man one comes away with is captured quite well in a moment from the old TV show M*A*S*H, in which Hawkeye Pierce is wondering why he is so often rebuffed by women. He is told it’s because he women see right through his disingenuousness. He understands the criticism and realizes what he has to do to get what he wants.

He says “Sincerity? I can fake that!”

Any notion that Alinsky’s overarching goal was about “helping poor and working class people,” or any statement of his in which he claims any sort of altruistic ends must be perceived and interpreted in light of his own rules.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The central thesis upon which everything in Rules for Radicals rests is that morality and ethics are whatever they needed to be to get what one wants, and that they are ever changing to accommodate one's latest desires. Virtually all of the rules are just variations on that theme. Alinsky was a moral relativist. Practically speaking, in Alinsky’s world view, the difference between right and wrong depends only on one’s perspective, and one’s perspective depends mostly on whether one is a “have” or a “have not.” The only way to get what you want is to have power. Power is taken, not given. Here’s how to take it. The entire book is little more than an extended defense and elaboration of these concepts.

Another moment from fiction that illustrates Alinsky’s morality is the knife fight in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Remember that? “Rules? In a knife fight?” That, in a phrase, was Saul Alinsky.

Reading “Rules for Radicals” begs a few questions, like: Where did Alinsky get his ideas? Who were his mentors? Who did he learn from? What are the intellectual origins of Alinsky’s philosophy?

A trustworthy answer comes from another 1960s radical who learned from the same mentors and is steeped in the same philosophies, David Horowitz, who wrote an extensive series of articles tracing the ideological origins of Alinsky’s philosophy. Here’s a small excerpt from that series:

Alinsky begins the chapter [about means and ends] by telling us that the very question “does the end justify the means” as stated is “meaningless.” The real question is “does this particular end justify this particular means?”

The whole discourse about means and ends that follows was made forty years earlier in 1938 in a famous (and far more intelligent) pamphlet by the Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky. It was titled Their Morals and Ours (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm ) and was written to justify the bloody crimes of his comrades (and himself). Summing up his case, Trotsky wrote: “Whoever does not care to return to Moses, Christ or Mohammed; whoever is not satisfied with eclectic hodge-podges must acknowledge that morality is a product of social development; that there is nothing invariable about it; that it serves social interests; that these interests are in conflict; that morality more than any other form of ideology has a class character.” In other words, there is no such thing as morality, only class interests. What is right and just is what serves the proletariat and its revolutionary war against the “Haves.” Continuing the argument, what is moral and right is what serves the revolutionary party which embodies the revolutionary cause. Alinsky cannot state the principle in these terms because as we know that the revolutionary cause of the Bolsheviks led to the slaughter of 40 million people and the most oppressive tyranny mankind had ever seen. Bloody and immoral means led to a bloody and immoral end.

Because of this unpleasant history, Alinsky cannot refer his disciples to Trotsky but has to restate the argument in terms that don’t appear related to Marxism but are. The art of radical politics, as Alinsky has already told us, is the art of deception. It is the art of convincing potential opponents and recruits that you are working within the system and its rules when you are actually working to undermine the system and destroy its moral order. In practice and conception, if not precisely in presentation, Alinsky’s rules about means and ends, and Trotsky’s Machiavellian principles, are the same.
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2009/08/23/means-and-ends-two-alinsky-beck-satan-and-me-part-vi-continued/

If morality is relative then there is no morality. Amorality, more than any other principle, is at the core of Rules for Radicals, and of Alinsky’s philosophy. This is a principle of Marxist invention, not mine, which Alinsky co-opted for his own purposes. Saul Alinsky was a real life Hawkeye Pierce or Butch Cassidy posing as a champion of the downtrodden while in reality working toward Marxist ideals.

And Barack Obama is an Alinskyite through-and-through.

Since you’re so suspicious of anything written in a conservative publication, then consider The New Republic, which published a profile of Obama in 2007. The profile is titled “The Agitator: Barack Obama’s unlikely political educationHere’s a quote from The New Republic:

In the 13 years between Obama's return to Chicago from law school and his Senate campaign, he was deeply involved with the city's constellation of community- organizing groups. He wrote about the subject. He attended organizing seminars. He served on the boards of foundations that support community organizing. He taught Alinsky's concepts and methods in workshops. When he first ran for office in 1996, he pledged to bring the spirit of community organizing to his job in the state Senate. And, after he was elected to the U.S. Senate, his wife, Michelle, told a reporter, "Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change." Recalling her remark in 2005, Obama wrote, "I take that observation as a compliment."
http://www.tnr.com/article/the-agitator

Rules for Radicals is much more than just Obama’s playbook. Obama did not just read and apply its rules. He attended classes to learn them. His teachers called him the greatest student of Alinsky’s principles they ever had. Obama internalized those principles. He taught them. One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it. Ask any teacher. Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals became part of Obama is. They describe the core essence of his personality, thought processes, morality, and political strategies and tactics. Alinskyism, along with years of the preaching of Jeremiah Wright, is a fundamental part of who Obama is as a person.

The statement about “exploring the viability of politics to make change” is telling. If Obama had a complaint about Alinsky’s tactics it was that they were too course, too confrontational. Whereas Alinsky’s rules and philosophy advocated the concept of working WITH the rules of “the system,” albeit under the guise of the Trojan Horse of phrasing goals in popular terms, to extort concessions out of business and politicians (and yes, if you know about some of Alinsky’s tactics, either real or threatened, “extort” is exactly the right word). Obama gentrified Alinsky’s lessons and took them to the next level applying them from WITHIN the system AS a politician.

Oh, and by the way, your defense of Alinsky by saying that he said “almost” any means is weak at best. You could use that logic to try to excuse just about anything by saying it is not quite as bad as it is made out to be, or could be. “That kid is really not a bad student because he “almost” didn’t flunk out of school.” “I really wasn’t driving that fast because I “almost” didn’t get a speeding ticket.”

Alinsky was an intelligent, thoughtful, person with deep insight into the human mind who had a knack for leveraging that insight into motivating groups of people to action. He was also an amoral Marxist (that’s redundant, I know) who hid his real intentions behind a deliberately fictitious façade of words about “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” “Of the Common Welfare,” “Pursuit of Happiness,” or “Bread and Peace.”

And Barack Obama is Alinsky’s greatest disciple who took Alinsky’s ideas to the next level by applying them from within the system as a politician rather than just to, or at, or with the system from outside of it as Alinsky did.

You can call this spin if you like, but if you do you’ll be sticking your head in the sand. It is simply not possible for any fair minded reasonable adult with an understanding of the history and origins of political ideas and of Obama’s biography to read Rules for Radicals and come away with any other impression.

winchester · Guru

I apologize for this extra post since it comes after I said I was done with this topic (of Alinsky/Obama and Rand/Ryan). But I stumbled upon this article from the magazine "The Objectivist Standard," which is dedicated to Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Emphasis added.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/blog/index.php/2012/08/paul-ryan-rejects-ayn-rands-ideas-in-word-and-deed/

Paul Ryan Rejects Ayn Rand’s Ideas—In Word and Deed

According to leftists and the mainstream media, the fact that Paul Ryan (Mitt Romney’s selection for vice president) has praised Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and drawn inspiration from her works means that he embraces her philosophy. In fact, Ryan rejects Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism in both word and deed.

Here’s one example of the leftist “logic”: Because Ryan has praised Rand, saying her views contributed to his values and beliefs, and because he has credited Rand with motivating him to enter politics, Ian Reifowitz, a writer for the Daily Kos, concludes that Ryan must therefore embrace Rand’s philosophy. Reifowitz even calls Ryan a “bald-faced liar” for saying he rejects Rand’s philosophy.

But Reifowitz’s claims—and similar claims by others—are ridiculous. The mere fact that a person agrees with some views of an author or draws inspiration from an author’s books hardly means the person embraces the author’s philosophy (can you say non sequitur?). Anyone who has ever read literature (I assume Reifowitz has) understands this to be the case. I could name dozens of authors who have inspired me but with whom I have serious philosophical disagreements, and I suspect you could too.

Millions of people have read and were inspired by Ayn Rand’s books. Are they all advocates of her philosophy? Would that they were! Many of them stand diametrically opposed to her ideas. For instance, Hillary Clinton—Obama’s Secretary of State—says she was inspired by Rand’s ideas. Does Clinton advocate Rand’s philosophy? Likewise, Democratic Congressman Jared Polis praised Atlas Shrugged as a “great book.” Is Polis a “Randian”? There are countless similar instances of people who express appreciation for Rand’s ideas but who clearly do not embrace her philosophy.

Where is Reifowitz and company’s exposé of the leftist politicians who are actually “Objectivists”? As Rand would say, “Blank out.”

Ryan Rejects Rand

Ryan both says he rejects Rand’s philosophy and demonstrates this in practice.

Earlier this year National Review—a conservative publication that has published and repeatedly republishes an article lying about the contents of Atlas Shrugged and slandering Ayn Rand—published an interview with Ryan in which he emphasizes that he rejects Rand’s philosophy:

I, like millions of young people in America, read Rand’s novels when I was young. I enjoyed them. They spurred an interest in economics, in the Chicago School and Milton Friedman. But it’s a big stretch to suggest that a person is therefore an Objectivist.

I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.

Although Ryan misrepresents Rand’s views about human interactions (see below), he correctly notes that Rand rejected religion and faith. Ryan, on the other hand, embraces both. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Ryan also rejects Rand’s politics of laissez-faire capitalism—the politics rooted in Rand’s morality of rational self-interest and her epistemology of strictly observation-based knowledge. Rand’s ethics and epistemology are wholly at odds with the self-sacrificial ethics and faith-based epistemology of the Bible.

Politically, whereas Rand was a proud defender of pure, laissez-faire capitalism, Ryan supports a mixture of freedom and government controls—including a robust welfare state. Here are but a few of the political differences between Ryan and Rand:

■Ryan wants to “save and strengthen Medicare,” protect Social Security, and provide a “minimum standard of living” (i.e., welfare). Rand advocated phasing out all such programs and ultimately abolishing the welfare state.
■Ryan wants to outlaw abortion on religious grounds. Rand recognized a woman’s right to abortion and condemned those who deny this right.
■Ryan supported the bank and auto bailouts. Rand opposed forced redistribution of wealth in all circumstances.
■Ryan wants to slow the growth of government spending. Rand advocated radical cuts in government spending with the ultimate goal of reducing government to only the courts, the military, and the police.

As a consequence of his basic philosophic beliefs, Ryan’s political views are radically opposed to those of Rand.

Ryan Misrepresents Rand

As noted, Ryan claims that Rand’s philosophy “reduces human interactions down to mere contracts.” Without any additional context, Ryan’s comments seem to suggest that Rand is concerned only with financial contracts and that Rand reduces human relationships to material interests. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Although Rand describes all healthy human relationships as types of trades, she sees trade as applicable to both material and spiritual values. She sees personal relationships as properly built on mutual respect for the virtues of those involved. Consider Rand’s comments on love and friendship:

Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person’s virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one’s own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut.

Whatever Paul Ryan’s merits or demerits as a vice-presidential candidate, he does not embrace the philosophical or political views of Ayn Rand. He rejects Rand’s views—in both principle and practice. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either uninformed or aiming to deceive.

If people wish to understand Rand’s ideas, they should read her works, especially Atlas Shrugged. If they do, they will see that Ryan’s ideas have nothing to do with Rand’s, and that Rand’s—not Ryan’s—are the way to a future of reason and freedom.

Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard.

-- Edited by winchester on Wednesday 29th of August 2012 05:28:56 PM

jazzy · Senior Member

What HAS been settled by the pros and cons discussion right here on this board is that Alinsky wasn’t the paragon of virtue that your apologia make him out to be, but instead he was the mastermind of a mass movement that rests on the principle of amorality. Point to the supposed “good” he did all you want, in the end he contributed to a sensibility that has done more to tear down the culture than help it, present administration included.

By the same token, then, I guess I get to claim that Ayn Rand is a mastermind of a Godless self-centered movement to elevate personal greed and accumulation of wealth above all else in American culture. Do I get to blame her philosophy for the rampant greed on Wall Street that led to the Great Recession and the ensuing unemployment and misery for millions of people?

Your whole cut-and-paste job is nothing but pure character assassination cited from the predictable source, the national review. Spin on top of spin.

Alinsky was no champion of socialism or communism or the federal welfare bureaucracy and he said as much.....course those quotes don't find their way into your national review articles because they wouldn't fit the narrative of depicting him as subversive and unAmerican thereby making the connection to Obama, tenuous as it is since Obama was still a child when Alinsky died, seem oh so sinister and corrupt. The fact that Alinsky worked with mainstream politicians and Church leaders at the time to accomplish his community organizing goals is ignored. The fact that mainstream politicians at the time, including Republicans like George Romney, sought him out and brought him in to give them advice ---- with nary a hint of "radical" taint befalling them --- is ignored. Just the need to build up this disingenuous phony narrative about a dangerous community organizer.

If you read anything else besides national review, it might become clear that if there's one overarching principle Alinsky stood for most of all it was the goal of helping poor and working class people solve their problems at the LOCAL level, addressing their concerns with and bringing their fight to local employers, local governments, local landlords (or slumlords as it happened.) Their goals were better working conditions, fair pay, better schools, more responsive local government (garbage pickup in their neighborhoods as well as in the rich areas) and better housing conditions. He did not trust national solutions and federal bureaucracies.

And Alinsky is more accurately quoted as saying the ends justify "almost any" means. His tactics were provocative, annoying, embarrassing to the powers that be, for sure, as they were intended to gain attention or elicit cooperation, but I haven't come across any suggestion that violence was encouraged or even that it occurred under Alinsky's involvement in organizing communities. "Principle of amorality" is your own invention.

-- Edited by jazzy on Wednesday 22nd of August 2012 11:19:40 PM

hope · Guru

Once again, jazzy, this particular part of this thread was about the influence of Rand on Paul Ryan (I think you brought it up if I'm not mistaken) and the influence of Alinsky on Obama.

Lee A****er was a political consultant. He did not start a movement. He did not write a book that people use as a far left tactical handbook. I doubt anyone has ever said that they have "learned more from A****er than they had anywhere else" as Obama has said of Alinsky.

Nice try, though. biggrin

winchester · Guru

As for my supposed certainty that I’m right, all I’m doing is relying on the latest findings of social science research, including studies using fMRI to see which parts of the brain are put to use when liberals and conservatives reason.

As a liberal, you do believe in science, don’t you? You do accept its findings and use them as part of the basis of you views, don’t you? Or am I wrong about that too?

winchester · Guru

The liberal morality, with its good-hearted, well intentioned, laser-like focus on maximizing the autonomy, opportunity, and “care” for the individual is effectively blind to the unintended consequences of its egalitarianism. Liberal altruism is pathological.

Has the welfare state helped large numbers of people? It certainly has. You can point to the amount of income people have that they wouldn' otherwise receive. That's part of the “pros.”

But what are the “cons” of the welfare state morality of liberal “care?” What effect have the massive handouts had on the culture and the society as a whole (besides buying votes for Democrats, that is, without which the case could be made that they'd not win ANY national elections.)

The welfare state has been arguably the greatest single contributor to the breakdown of marriage and the family, and the rise of unemployment and imprisonment among the exact population it was intended to help.

One of the many reasons why rhetoric does not automatically translate into reality is that the ramifications of so many government policies produce results completely different from what was claimed, or even believed, when these policies were imposed.

The poverty rate among blacks was nearly cut in half in the 20 years prior to the 1960s, a record unmatched since then, despite the expansion of welfare-state policies in the 1960s.

Unemployment among black 16- and 17-year-old males was 12 percent back in 1950. Yet unemployment rates among black 16- and 17-year-old males has not been less than 30 percent for any year since 1970 – and has been over 40 percent in some of those years.

Not only was unemployment among blacks in general lower before the liberal welfare-state policies expanded in the 1960s, rates of imprisonment of blacks were also lower then, and most black children were raised in two-parent families. At one time, a higher percentage of blacks than whites were married and working.
None of these facts fits liberal social dogmas.

Jazzy I thought liberals were supposed to be about facts and logic and “reason;” about following the evidence; about being grounded in a “reality based community,” and about being open to new ideas, and about pragmatism. Even Obama has made claims that he doesn’t care where the ideas come from, as long as they “work.”

Well, if any of that is true, then please, help me out, because I’m so stuck in the certainty that I’m right that I just don’t get it. Please, explain the “pros” of the reality of the destruction of the culture by the welfare state that the facts above suggest, and please justify the liberal pathological altruism of “care” which ignores half of human nature.

Explain how removing the work requirement from Welfare is going to improve the culture.

Explain how overruling duly passed laws by executive order is going to help make Americans more free?

winchester · Guru

C’mon man, you’re proving my point about looking only at the trees.

OF COURSE there are individuals of all stripes who do bad things who you can point to for anecdotal evidence of what you want to believe. But if you really want to get at the truth and make any sort of difference what you have to do is look beyond the foibles of individuals and see the pros and cons of the morality that underlies entire mass movements of people and the effects that morality has on the culture.

What HAS been settled by the pros and cons discussion right here on this board is that Alinsky wasn’t the paragon of virtue that your apologia make him out to be, but instead he was the mastermind of a mass movement that rests on the principle of amorality. Point to the supposed “good” he did all you want, in the end he contributed to a sensibility that has done more to tear down the culture than help it, present administration included.

jazzy · Senior Member

Ends-justify-the-means amorality?

Look no farther than Karl Rove and his mentor Lee A****er, whose tactics were so vicious and deceitful (Willie Horton) that he later apologized for them on his deathbed.

What's the point of having a discussion --- pros and cons and all that --- if you're going to fret about being distracted from the absolute certainty that your point of view is the only correct one?

winchester · Guru

In the article hope linked to, we find Nancy Pelosi embracing the Alinsky model of "ends justify the means" amorality:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's complaint that Catholics need to overcome their "conscience thing" regarding abortion.

Also, remember her reaction when asked if Obamacare was Constitutional: "Are you kidding me?"

And who can forget Al Gore saying "I'll do anything to win."

winchester · Guru

Here's more from the same article, and it is spot on.

Conservatives must stay focused on this, and not get distracted by liberal reductive reasoning and its deconstruction and obfuscation of what really matters.

There have been many wise warnings that freedom is seldom lost all at once. It is usually eroded away, bit by bit, until it is all gone. You may not notice a gradual erosion while it is going on, but you may eventually be shocked to discover one day that it is all gone, that we have been reduced from citizens to subjects, and the Constitution has become just a meaningless bunch of paper.

ObamaCare imposes huge costs on some institutions, while the President's arbitrary waivers exempt other institutions from having to pay those same costs. That is hardly the "equal protection of the laws," promised by the 14th Amendment.

John Stuart Mill explained the dangers in that kind of government long ago: "A government with all this mass of favours to give or to withhold, however free in name, wields a power of bribery scarcely surpassed by an avowed autocracy, rendering it master of the elections in almost any circumstances but those of rare and extraordinary public excitement."

If Obama gets reelected, he knows that he need no longer worry about what the voters think about anything he does. Never having to face them again, he can take his arbitrary rule by decree as far as he wants. He may be challenged in the courts but, if he gets just one more Supreme Court appointment, he can pick someone who will rubber stamp anything he does and give him a 5 to 4 majority.

hope · Guru

Interesting read, germaine to this discussion.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443989204577601273551443082.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

Think about that. In another age, Catholic progressives would have laughed at the suggestion that people were corrupted by reading certain works; now they believe Paul Ryan's soul is in peril for his having read Ayn Rand. Before, they would not have feared science; now they insist that a program such as food stamps ought to continue ad infinitum without consideration of its effects. And while they believe that the pope and bishops have nothing of value to offer about the sanctity of marriage or the duty of protecting unborn life, when it comes to federal spending, suddenly a miter means infallibility.

hope · Guru

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Barack Obama - April 12,2008 in San Francisco, CA

This famous quote could have been made by Alinsky. In fact, I read a quote from Alinsky about "clinging" to conservative values (which I now can't find). How is someone capable of speaking of people (or maybe just the implied "hicks" from "small towns") as "clinging to religion" out of "bitterness" and then on the other hand exhort those same people to "follow Jesus" and help the poor by agreeing with all of his policies?

It is deeply offensive, not just to me, but apparently to a rather large segment of the voting public.

winchester · Guru

I think the discussion about what Alinsky said or didn't say, or stood for or didn't stand for, helps to strengthen my ealier point about liberals tending to think "analytically" and conservatives tending to think holistically, and it also helps to make another point about what I see as a defincency in conservative arguments.

The analytical mindset of liberalism tends to want to debate the pros and cons of any particular issue, not unlike the process of buying a refrigerator. Due to their predisposition toward this style of thought, liberals tend to see a world full of separate objects, like refrigerators, rather than of a complex interplay of relationships, and they want to measure each issue in terms of the bottom line costs and benefits to the individual.

The more holistic style of conservative thought tends to measure issues in terms of the larger picture of the relationships; of the effects individual issues have on the culture as a whole. It is literally impossible to ensure the health and autonomy of the individuals within a culture if the culture itself is sick.

Conservatives are generally talking about the forest and liberals are talking about the trees. Liberals seem to fail to realize that "Politics at the national level is more like religion than it is like shopping. It's more about a moral vision that unifies a nation and calls it to greatness than it is about self-interest or specific policies. In most countries, the right tends to see that more clearly than the left."* Liberals are sometimes befuddled by what they see as conservatives voting against their own best interests (see "What's the Matter With Kansas?").

The deficiency in conservative arguments is that it too often engages on liberal turf, by liberal rules. That is, conservatives get sucked in to discussing the pros and cons of a particular issue; the costs/benefits; or what any single person like Alinsky, Madison, Hamilton, or anyone else said or didn't say in this or that quote, as if that has any real bearing on the larger issues. It turns into a he said / she said kind of thing; an argument about the argument; a distraction which loses sight of the larger point. When conservatives engage in this sort of debate they essentially concede the larger point of the effect those issues might have on the culture to the liberal side. They lose the argument before it starts.

Here's one person who gets it, and who seems to consistently stay focused on what's really important:

There are some very serious issues at stake in this year's election -- so many that some people may not be able to see the forest for the trees. Individual issues are the trees, but the forest is the future of America as we have known it.

The America that has flourished for more than two centuries is being quietly but steadily dismantled by the Obama administration, during the process of dealing with particular issues.

For example, the merits or demerits of President Obama's recent executive order, suspending legal liability for young people who are here illegally, presumably as a result of being brought here as children by their parents, can be debated pro and con. But such a debate overlooks the much more fundamental undermining of the whole American system of Constitutional government.

The separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial branches of government is at the heart of the Constitution of the United States -- and the Constitution is at the heart of freedom for Americans.

No President of the United States is authorized to repeal parts of legislation passed by Congress. He may veto the whole legislation, but then Congress can override his veto if they have enough votes. Nevertheless, every President takes an oath to faithfully execute the laws that have been passed and sustained -- not just the ones he happens to agree with.

If laws passed by the elected representatives of the people can be simply over-ruled unilaterally by whoever is in the White House, then we are no longer a free people, choosing what laws we want to live under.

When a President can ignore the plain language of duly passed laws, and substitute his own executive orders, then we no longer have "a government of laws, and not of men" but a President ruling by decree, like the dictator in some banana republic.

When we confine our debates to the merits or demerits of particular executive orders, we are tacitly accepting arbitrary rule. The Constitution of the United States cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution. But, if we allow ourselves to get bogged down in the details of particular policies imposed by executive orders, and vote solely on that basis, then we have failed to protect the Constitution -- and ourselves.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/08/21/issues_or_america_115161.html

* http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/05/why-working-class-people-vote-conservative

-- Edited by winchester on Tuesday 21st of August 2012 01:32:11 PM

-- Edited by winchester on Tuesday 21st of August 2012 01:33:01 PM

winchester · Guru

Here's a little injection of reality which offsets Jazzy's apologia (i.e., whitewash) of Alinsky and his tactics, and introduces the connection between Alinksy's ideas and the current administration :

Somewhere between Gingrich’s exaggerations and the Left’s whitewash of Alinsky is an explanation of why so many followers of Barack Obama — along with the president himself — draw inspiration from a long-dead radical.

Alinsky was amoral, believing that the ends justify the means.

Alinsky argued for moral relativism in fighting the establishment: “In war the end justifies almost any means. . . . The practical revolutionary will understand [that] 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.”

Alinsky learned his approach from the Chicago mob:

Where did Alinsky get this amorality? Clues can be found in a Playboy magazine interview he gave in 1972, just before his death. In the closest thing to a memoir Alinsky left, he told how he decided to do his (never-completed) doctoral dissertation in the 1930s on the Al Capone mob, and to do it as “an inside job.” He caught the eye of Big Ed Stash, the mob’s top executioner, and convinced him he could be trusted as a sort of mob mascot who would interpret its methods to the outside world. “He introduced me to Frank Nitti, known as the Enforcer, Capone’s number-two man,” Alinsky told Playboy. “Nitti took me under his wing. I called him the Professor and I became his student. Nitti’s boys took me everywhere.”

Alinsky recalled that he “learned a hell of a lot about the uses and abuses of power from the mob,” and that he applied that knowledge “later on, when I was organizing.” The Playboy interviewer asked, “Didn’t you have any compunction about consorting with — if not actually assisting — murderers?” Alinsky replied: “None at all, since there was nothing I could do to stop them from murdering. . . . I was a nonparticipating observer in their professional activities, although I joined their social life of food, drink, and women. Boy, I sure participated in that side of things — it was heaven.”

Thus freed from the norms of civil society, Alinsky's tactics included:

He deployed pickets to the homes of slumlords and used megaphones to hurl insults at them; he dumped trash on the front step of a local alderman to demand better garbage collection; he flooded stockholder meetings with raucous protesters, a tactic Occupy Wall Street is emulating; and he tied up bank lines with people who exchanged loads of pennies for $100 bills and vice versa.

He boasted that knowledge of his tactics often led to preemptive surrender by local officials or businesses. He was able to abandon plans to flood a department store with protesters who would order merchandise to be delivered that they had no intention of paying for; he also never had protesters occupy every bathroom stall for hours at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. In both cases, the mere threat of such action won important concessions from his targets.

Remind anyone of "Occupy?"

Alinsky’s disciples, Obama included, have taken his tactics to heart:

Lee Stranahan, who was a blogger for the Huffington Post until last year, when his research into Alinsky-inspired groups soured him on the Left. “His followers are even more ideological and relentless than he was.”

Alinsky’s tactics of intimidation are a case in point. His most oft-quoted rule is “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. . . . One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.”

Obama’s White House has honed that tactic to perfection. In 2009, then– communications director Anita Dunn sneered that Fox News “really is not a news network at this point.” President Obama himself has, in the spirit of Alinsky, gone out of his way to lambaste “fat-cat bankers” and greedy health insurers.

“[The administration has] shown they’ll go after anybody or any organization that they think is standing in their way,” Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said in a February speech. “You know the drill. Expose these folks to public view, release the liberal thugs on them, and then hope the public pressure or the unwanted attention scares them from supporting similar causes down the road.”

What exactly are the connections between Obama and Saul Alinsky’s thought? In 1985, the 24-year-old Obama answered a want ad from the Calumet Community Religious Conference, run by Alinsky’s Chicago disciples. Obama was profoundly influenced by his years as a community organizer in Chicago, even if he ultimately rejected Alinsky’s disdain for electoral politics and, like Hillary Clinton, chose to work within the system. “Obama embraced many of Alinsky’s tactics and recently said his years as an organizer gave him the best education of his life,” wrote Peter Slevin of the Washington Post in 2007. That same year, The New Republic’s Ryan Lizza found Obama still “at home talking Alinskian jargon about ‘agitation’” and fondly recalling organizing workshops where he had learned Alinsky concepts such as “being predisposed to other people’s power.”

In 1992, after Obama returned to Chicago from Harvard Law School, he ran a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an ACORN affiliate set up by Alinsky acolytes. The purportedly non-partisan effort registered 135,000 new voters and was integral to the election of Carol Moseley Braun to the Senate. Obama then moonlighted as a top trainer for ACORN.

Obama even became ACORN’s attorney in 1995, when he sued on its behalf to implement the “Motor Voter” law — a loose system of postcard voter registration that has proven to be a bonanza for vote fraudsters — in Illinois. Later, while on the board of the liberal Woods Fund, Obama saw to it that the group gave substantial grants to ACORN.

His 2008 presidential campaign quietly hired ACORN affiliates to handle get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio and Pennsylvania, improperly concealing their activities in Federal Election Commission reports as being for “staging and lighting.” Obviously, Team Obama was eager to distance itself from ACORN’s reckless record in voter-registration-fraud scandals. Indeed, since then ACORN has gone into bankruptcy following the surfacing of undercover videos showing its employees offering advice on setting up a whorehouse for underage illegal aliens.

Obama’s 2008 campaign showcased many Alinsky methods. “Obama learned his lesson well,” David Alinsky, the son of Saul Alinsky, wrote in the Boston Globe in 2008. “The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style. Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board.”

In her new book on Obama, New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor lifted a bit of the curtain on his past. She told the Texas Book Festival: “The Obamas often don’t mingle freely — they often just stand behind the rope and reach out to shake hands — but he sees Jerry Kellman, his old community-organizing boss, and he is so happy to see him he reaches across and pulls him in. And Obama says, ‘I’m still organizing.’ It was a stunning moment and when [Kellman] told me the story, it had echoes of what Valerie Jarrett had told me once: ‘The senator still thinks of himself as a community organizer.’ . . . I think that plays into what will happen in the 2012 race.”

You can expect that the Obama 2012 campaign and allied groups will be filled with people deeply steeped in Rules for Radicals. That is good reason for conservatives to spend time studying Saul Alinsky. It also explains why liberals are so anxious to sugarcoat Alinsky and soft-pedal his influence on Team Obama.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/294454/still-alinsky-playbook-john-fund

-- Edited by winchester on Tuesday 21st of August 2012 08:06:14 AM

catahoula · Guru

So Alinsky wormed his way into an alliance with some Catholic organization.

It was nice to see TNR now respects the judgement of church hiearchy. Says something good about the evolving attitudes of their readers, too, since they've done a 180 from their opinions of a few years back.

catahoula · Guru

That I didn't claim it was isn't still in dispute is it, jd?

If not that: all I can say is; I still think it's a paraphase that a lot of Christians would either nod to or at least wouldn't object to but... after thinking about it today, realize it applies just as well to the spoils system Alinsky championed.

john doe · Guru

"The verbatim phrase isn't in the new testament, along with that you don't feel it's a paraphrase of any of the teachings of Jesus?"

Absolutely not except perhaps interpretations from some new fangled religion that purports to be Christian but actually teaches greed.

busdriver11 · Guru

There's all sorts of garbage on the internet, it doesn't take much time to find it.

But what this has to do with any argument about Alinsky, Rand, Jesus Christ, or the presidential election....I have no clue.

jazzy · Senior Member

Do your own internet search.

Start by googling "parasites looters and moochers" and then try "poor people shouldn't vote" and see what comes up.

If you don't recognize that it's demeaning to call people "parasites" and suggest they shouldn't be allowed to vote, then I don't know what else to tell ya.

catahoula · Guru

Makes a certain sense to me but....

If the poor are noble - blameless, at least - then about any effort that can be billed as aimed to help them almost has to be a noble one. The biblical justifications usually begin and end with the parts that stress the virtues of charity - any deeper and the argument might drift off into those inconvenient parts, the ones that suggest there's no justification for forced charity, nor for helping those who won't do what they can for themselves. (Said facts being a very large part of the problem those who believe charity should be an individual responsibility, and cheerfully given, have with the the grievance satifaction model the government practices.... and most likely will until the money runs out.

Alinsky, since he spent his career organizing groups of the aggrieved into organizations that can make charity rain, would almost by defintion be a noble figure.

It's a delicate chain of supposition, though, one that falls apart if some of that rain is falling on those who can honestly be called "moocher", "layabout", or "parasite".

Or "crook", which describes some of the single biggest beneficiaries of Medicare, and.... reminds me that the Ryan pick may turn out to be a very good one.

-- Edited by catahoula on Monday 20th of August 2012 04:53:37 PM

-- Edited by catahoula on Monday 20th of August 2012 05:26:36 PM

winchester · Guru

Don't evade.

Answer the question.

jazzy · Senior Member

Callling them "moochers" would be a start. Who does that?

winchester · Guru

But demonizing and demeaning poor people is clearly not acceptable if one is adhering to J-C teaching.

Who does this?

Examples please.

jazzy · Senior Member

C:

I think it's true that progressives and evangelicals/other religious conservatives have a fundamental disagreement over whether government should be involved in alleviating poverty and if so, how much.

I can understand that within the context of Judeo-Christian teaching, it's consistent for religious people to prefer that charity be handled by themselves, or through their local organizations, rather than through the federal government. But demonizing and demeaning poor people is clearly not acceptable if one is adhering to J-C teaching.

jazzy · Senior Member

Then I'll post this for others who might be interested, hope.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/100030/gingrich-alinsky-saul-newt-catholic-carolina

An excerpt:

Saul Alinsky often described himself as a radical, but his career as a community organizer had thoroughly traditional foundations in grassroots democracy and institutional religion. Indeed, it was built with the active support and resources of key figures in the Roman Catholic Church.

In the late 1930s, Alinsky launched his first project in the Back of the Yards, a multi-ethnic, working-class, mostly Catholic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Bernard J. Sheil, the city’s auxiliary bishop, championed the new Back of the Yards Council and encouraged local priests and leading parishioners to take part. Sheil, founder of the Catholic Youth Organization, helped set up Alinsky’s network of local organizers—the non-profit Industrial Areas Foundation—and convinced financier Marshall Field III to bankroll it.

During the 1940s and early 1950s, Alinsky worked closely with another influential priest, Monsignor John O’Grady, director of the National Conference of Catholic Charities. O’Grady liked Alinsky’s focus on mobilizing local people to help themselves and introduced the “radical” to a parish priest who was working with young Puerto Ricans in a poor neighborhood near the University of Chicago.

The Monsignor and the Jewish troublemaker got along so well that Alinsky began to work with O’Grady on the older man’s biography. The book was not completed, but the outline made clear that the two shared a strong critique of modern liberalism that would be congenial to many conservatives today: “…the New Deal was important, it was good…yet it carried an opposite side to the shield, in terms of a gravitation of power and the establishment of enormous bureaucracies which were evil.” Americans should turn, instead, wrote Alinsky, “to grass roots organization and decentralization.”

So, Alinsky believed in helping the poor organize and fight for justice (fair pay) in the workplace and decent schools and neighborhood services, but he did not like big federal bureaucracies and preferred solutions be found at the local level. The local employers, the local governments, the local religious organizations. Interesting. Comparing their philosophies, body of work, the kind of socieities each championed, I have no doubt that the majority of Americans would prefer Alinsky's vision to that of Ayn Rand.

catahoula · Guru

I think you may have put your finger right spot on the animosity progressives and evangelicals have for each other, jazzy. Progressives are okay with the intellectual leap required to justify farming out their own charitable giving to the government but evangelicals, not finding scripture that defines coerced charity as charity at all, still handle their own. They see charity as a personal responsibility, a strongly advised one, but one still left for the individual to choose to do. Or not.

Those occasional surveys that come out, the ones that compare giving by political leaning, tend to say they choose to do the right thing, right along with paying for the contracted system..

Do you think that’s it? That progressives resent evangelicals for their virtue and evangelicals just feel like they’re being rolled by progressives once a year?

And whether we define Alinsky’s model for giving as a “coerced” one or an “extorted” one, doesn’t it appear to run afoul of the admonishments regarding idleness and responsibility? I'm speaking of over time, because good intentions hardly count if the results keep coming back bad.

hope · Guru

Don't bother please, jazzy.

It sickens me when your side exhibits such antipathy toward the Church and those those "far right winger Evangelical" types and then turns around and uses Jesus to buttress their political views, as Obama has done many times now.

So Alinsky wormed his way into an alliance with some Catholic organization. Is that supposed to prove something to me? Seriously.

jazzy · Senior Member

Hope:

May interest you that Alinsky had a long partnership with the Catholic Church on his organization projects. There's an article I saw, but can't link right now. I'll find it for you tomorrow.

jazzy · Senior Member

Hmm, a quote that originated in ancient Greece, courtesy of Aesop's Fables (God helps those...) and one that seems to be more attributable to Confuscious (fish, teaching....) than the Western Bible.

Why not go to Christ's teachings to quote what Christ said about the poor?

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.'"

-Matthew 19:23-24

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least among you, you did not do for me.'"
-Matthew 25:41-45

Jesus answered, 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.'"

-Matthew 19:21

But the Jewish tradition of teaching, from whence Jesus Christ sprung, is also full of admonitions to do justice toward the poor.

Protection of the poor

Although poverty is neither virtuous nor desirable, Judaic Law commands that the poor are to be respected and protected. According to Jacobs and Greer, "the overarching Jewish attitude toward the poor can be best summed up in a single word: achikha (your brother). Jews are enjoined by the Torah to resist any temptation to view the poor as somehow different from themselves.^[7] The Tanakh sets forth numerous protections of the poor. As an example of such protections, Perotta points out that the poor were protected from being exploited when in debt. Perrotta asserts that the goal of these commandments was "not only to protect the poor but also to prevent the excessive accumulation of wealth in a few hands." In essence, the poor man is "protected by God".^[8] Kravitz and Olitzky cite the Jubilee (yoveil) and thesh'mitah as examples of commandments in the Torah designed to protect the poor.^[2]

Individual charity and public welfare

Aaron Levine comments that, although the concept of public welfare is an integral part of the modern state, its historical origins are relatively recent, starting in the late nineteenth century. According to Levine, the key concept of the welfare state is that voluntarism alone is not sufficient address the needs of the poor and the disadvantaged. Thus, government steps in to complement private efforts by establishing programs to guarantee a minimum standard of living and to protect individuals against certain adverse events. Levine points out that, in Judaism, these principles can be traced back to Talmudic times (300 B.C.E. to 500 C.E.) and are embodied in Jewish Law (Halakah). Levine characterizes the Judaic approach to social welfare as a "dual antipoverty system, consisting of private and public components."^[10]

[edit]

"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."
-Proverbs 31:8-9

"He who mocks the poor shows contempt for their Maker; whoever gloats over disaster will not go unpunished."

-Proverbs 17:5

"He who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and he who gives gifts to the rich--both come to poverty."
-Proverbs 22:16

"He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses."

-Proverbs 28:27

"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy."

-Ezekiel 16:49

"The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern."
-Proverbs 29:7

"Do not exploit the poor because they are poor and do not crush the needy in court, for the LORD will take up their case and will plunder those who plunder them."
-Proverbs 22:22-23

-Proverbs 22:1

hope · Guru

" but that her philosophy rejects Judeo-Christianity while his embraces it. That "the Lord helps those who help themselves" doesn't include helping themselves to a permanent posting to dependency, not at all, not at all."

What part of the bible or Christian teachings does this quote come from?

Oh I'm so glad you brought that up. jd. Because it's one of my little pet peeves. Don't know about other churches, but the Catholic church does NOT believe in government dependency, no matter what the good bishops have to say about it (and they should really be keeping their noses out of American politics).

Read the Catechism. When government allegience replaces all else, God goes out the window. Not something the Church wants to see, obviously.

In this respect, Rand is more in alignment with Catholic doctrine than Alinsky or the bishops.

catahoula · Guru

Where did I claim it was?

It's an aphorism and if my terming it a phrase a few posts back caused this, I apologize.

(Though I thought I made it clear I wasn't attributing it to verse a post or so later.)

SamuraiLandshark · Guru

If Jay Carney says it is in the Bible, it must be so. http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctpolitics/2011/11/obama_spokesman.html It is actually not biblical, even though commonly attributed. However, it does fit the theme of helping men to help themselves... "if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for life." I learned that in Sunday school, but honestly cannot remember if it is an actual passage. I am sure others here can enlighten me.

catahoula · Guru

The verbatim phrase isn't in the new testament, along with that you don't feel it's a paraphrase of any of the teachings of Jesus?