Posted by Anthony on June 7, 2009
The impact that Saul Alinksy’s ideology had in the thinking of the man currently occupying the office of the presidency, one Barack Hussein Obama, is well documented. Thus, I will not document it myself, and submit the reader to Google.
Having only read excerpts of Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals, I was pleased to have the opportunity to sit down and read it for myself in its entirety. Knowing how influential Alinksy was for the young Obama (and many others who now occupy seats of power) I am more worried than I was before now that I’ve actually read this book. Go to the library and pick up the book. You need to read it.
The subtitle of the book is “A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.” It is not an inappropriate subtitle. Alinsky is all about pragmatism and realism. Alinsky is dismissive of ethical questions related to the question “Does the end justify the means?” He says:
The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe’s “conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action”; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual’s personal salvation. He who sacrifices mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of “personal salvation”; he doesn’t care enough for people to be “corrupted” for them. (pg 25, chapter titled: Of Means and Ends) Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on October 16, 2008
Because I believe that the unborn are really persons abortion is a huge issue for me. I am generally sympathetic to some pro-choicers… some of them lack the imagination required to treat as a human person something that doesn’t quite look like a human. I still vehemently reject the position but I’m sympathetic. But what Obama is advocating removes any hope for sympathy. Obama is in support of partial birth abortion and voted against legislation that would have required giving medical treatment to a child that survives the abortion.
If you’d like to see what happens in partial birth abortion click here. Jill Stanek was a key person in bringing to light the fact that in Illinois, children that survive the abortion are put into a ‘utility’ room until finally they die. Now she has documented Obama’s resistance to the ‘born alive’ while he was involved in Illinois politics, here. Though Obama decried this all as a ‘lie’ he has offered shifting reasons for why he did what he did (so I guess it wasn’t a lie, after all!) and Stanek documents those, here.
In last night’s debate, Obama said:
Yes, let me respond to this. If it sounds incredible that I would vote to withhold lifesaving treatment from an infant, that’s because it’s not true. The — here are the facts.
…
With respect to partial-birth abortion, I am completely supportive of a ban on late-term abortions, partial-birth or otherwise, as long as there’s an exception for the mother’s health and life, and this did not contain that exception.
And I attempted, as many have in the past, of including that so that it is constitutional. And that was rejected, and that’s why I voted present, because I’m willing to support a ban on late-term abortions as long as we have that exception.
It is true. Obama expects that no one will notice the sleight of hand here. It is true, he did vote against that legislation, but today the reason is because the legislation was redundant. It is true. I guess it all depends on what the definition of is, is. Only Obama makes it sound better.
Barack, if you think you’ve got good reasons for what you did then be man enough to admit you did them when you turn around and give the reasons for why you did them.
It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which a woman’s life is in such jeapordy where it is safer to deliver the child all the way up to the head where you jam a knife into the skull and suck out the brains then to deliver the child altogether, at the very least by c-section.
And naturally, if the child is already out of the womb then the ‘life of the mother’ is no longer in danger, right? Therefore the question of the health of the mother ought to be moot. According to some versions of Obama’s opposition to the ‘born alive’ legislation (see link to list above), Obama didn’t want to ascribe personhood status to these children because it could jeapordize Roe vs. Wade.
I’m sorry, but I don’t want a man for president who is willing to write off for dead people who are clearly people- clearly to everyone- in furtherance of an agenda, and then lies about it. I can’t imagine how such a person sleeps at night. I definitely don’t want him sleeping in the White House.
PS, it is entirely debateable that Obama really would support bans of any kind. He seems to prefer removing them altogether for any reason whatsoever. This article outlines Obama’s views, including some statements to Planned Parenthood, which you just know are going to be rich.
Posted by Anthony on September 16, 2008
Last week a Democrat lady said that Sarah Palin’s chief credential seemed to be that she had not had an abortion. She later tried to apologize (I have no idea why) saying the comment arose in the context of a discussion about ‘one issue’ voters. I have occasionally met people who have ‘one issue’ which isn’t abortion but it seems rare to me. ‘One issue voters’ seems to be a reference to those in the abortion debate.
One thing that I’ve noticed is that pro-choice people are as likely to be ‘one issue’ voters as pro-lifers with the difference being that the pro-choicers happen to agree with so many other aspects of liberalism that they really think they have more than one issue in play. Anyway, pro-lifers I think get a bad rap here because this is no ordinary one issue.
If you believe that the unborn ‘thing’ is not a ‘thing’ at all but a person entitled to the rights and privileges that we accord other persons, then it obviously follows that legalized abortion on demand will be something that apalls you. According to this belief, some 40,000,000 people, in the US alone, have died since Roe vs. Wade.
Let us set aside for a moment the dispute about when the unborn becomes worthy of personhood status.
Let me ask a simple question: if the candidate was right on 99 out of a 100 issues but the one he was wrong on was that he wanted to finish the job that Hitler left unfinished and exterminate all the rest of the Jews, would you be able to overlook that?
I want to meet the person who would vote for a candidate who was right on everything else but wanted to slaughter millions of Jews. I doubt such a person exists, but if he does, I want to meet him, if only so I can know where he is at all times.
Now, ‘only’ six million Jews were killed by Hitler and another couple of million of handicapped, etc. Compared to that, what has been done in the ‘land of the free and home of the brave’ blows it out of the water. IF you believe that the unborn are persons then it makes complete and utter sense that this is ‘one issue’ which demands your 100% attention. You may even be willing to vote for a person who is only right 50 out of a 100 times, if they at least get this one honkingly huge issue right.
The reason why pro-choice people believe ‘one issue’ voting is absurd is because they of course don’t believe that the unborn represents real people. When they try to persuade us ‘one issue’ people the underlying presumption is that they are correct in their unbelief. It is one more example of talking at cross purposes.
The really sad part of this is that in the face of the prospect that millions and millions of real persons have died and are dying, the pro-choicers cannot give us an alternative view that can say with any kind of objectivity exactly when the ‘thing’ becomes a person. Imagine cornering your neighborhood Nazi during World War 2 and asking him to differentiate between the ‘personhood’ status of Germans and the ‘personhood’ status of Jews. You’re just supposed to ‘get it.’
As far as I’m concerned, so long as there is any reasonable possibility that the unborn are persons, prudence and good moral sense demands that we protect them. Though I doubt it will ever come, if there were ever a day when we were quite certain about the point when the unborn ‘magically’ becomes a person apart from conception, I might be willing to change my tune. With a large element of pro-choicers out there willing to support measures such as ‘partial birth abortion‘ right up to the last stage of pregnancy, I strongly believe that moment will ever come, in large part because people who are willing to do things like that, I believe, do not really care to define such a moment. It isn’t even on their radar.
For these reasons and more, I am a proud one issue voter. I am under no illusions about the other things I have to tolerate that I don’t like nor am I unaware that political candidates may decide to take advantage of this, opposing abortion with their lips but never acting. That is still better than voting for someone who with both lips and action perpetuate the American Holocaust.
By the way, Barack Obama opposed the ban on partial birth abortion.
