Academic

JAMES TARANTO: ?Take ?Em Down:? Would Saul Alinsky approve of the SEIU?s new anthem? Is this wh?

By Glenn Reynolds

JAMES TARANTO: ‘Take ‘Em Down:’ Would Saul Alinsky approve of the SEIU’s new anthem?

Is this what the SEIU means by “civil discussion”? The song does not identify the bastards we gotta take down, but there are only two possibilities: the taxpayers of Wisconsin or their elected officials. As Andy McCarthy notes at National Review Online, “public-sector employees work for us–they are not beaten down by ‘the man,’ ‘the system,’ or whatever bogeyman the lefties are using today.”

McCarthy also observes that “the Obama/Alinsky Left has demonstrated to an appalled country just how ugly they intend to make things–thug leaders calling for blood in the street, the Nazi/Mubarak/Mussolini rhetoric, lawmakers abdicating their duty and shutting down the legislative process when they can’t get their way.”

Which leads us to say a word in defense of the oft-misunderstood Saul Alinsky, whose 1971 book, “Rules for Radicals,” we recently read. It’s true that Alinsky used some of the same obnoxious tactics employed by the left today. Specifically, he sometimes organized demonstrations outside the homes of antagonists. More generally, he often sowed chaos–or threatened to sow it–as a means of winning concessions.

But he was a lot more strategic about it. If today’s left appalls the country with its ugly tactics, it has failed by Alinsky’s standards. . . . The most crucial disjunction between Alinsky and today’s left is that his tactics aimed at wresting away institutional power, whereas their imperative is to preserve it. Government employees in Wisconsin, with their generous pay, lavish benefits and legal privileges, are in no sense “have nots.”

Read the whole thing. Including this:

Speaking of which, do you remember the middle-aged white man with the mustache who said that Justice Clarence Thomas should be put “back in the fields,” that Justice Samuel Alito “should go back to Sicily,” and that Fox News chief Roger Ailes “should be strung up and–but, ah, I don’t know. Kill the bastard”? Breitbart has now identified him as Don Wallace, a former president of a public-sector union, the United Firefighters of Los Angeles.

Good grief.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on February 25, 2011 (boomark / email).