Posted by Anthony on August 16, 2009
I haven’t chimed in on the health care debate but I don’t suppose my regular readers believe I haven’t any strong feelings on the matter. Let me represent a line of thinking that I haven’t heard even among the most strident opponents to the legislation being advocated by the current administration.
I was spurred on to post this because events are unfolding which I predicted privately but I won’t get any credit for, and I should like a little. 
Namely, this morning the news reports that Obama is willing to ‘consider’ taking the public option off the table. Already the section that apparently gave doctors a material motive for having ‘end of life’ conversations has been dropped. I said privately that I thought that the final health care bill would be vastly different: As presented, it would include as many of the liberal and socialistic dream policies as they think they might reasonably be able to get passed, but as passed, a large number of these would be dispensed; but many would be retained.
This may strike the average, patriotic American, as fair. Compromise is one of those things that we think fair play requires. There is only one big problem: liberals who are operating on the activist play book (Read: Obama standing on Alinksy’s shoulders), have an entirely different notion of ‘compromise’ then the average fair minded American. Consider this long quote from Alinksy’s book Rules for Radicals:
…to the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word. It is always present in the pragmatics of operation. It is making the deal, getting that vital breather, usually the victory. If you start with nothing, demand 100 per cent, then compromise to 30 per cent, you’re 30 percent ahead. (pg 59 emphasis mine)
Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on July 24, 2009
Many thanks to Kevin Doran from WLEA for having me on to discuss Saul Alinsky. Read the original post that inspired the interview on Saul Alinsky.
You can download and listen the interview here:
wlea_horvath_alinsky_interview (12.2 MiB, 167 hits)
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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 March 6, 2009
I have been saying privately that if FOCA is passed there is a good chance that Catholic hospitals would be closed, without personally being aware of any suggestions of the sort being out there. That changed today when I saw this article on the Drudge Report.
Speaking in Baltimore in November at the bishops’ fall meeting, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a Chicago auxiliary bishop, took up the issue of what to do with Catholic hospitals if FOCA became law. “It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions,” he said. “That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil.”
But even within the Catholic community, there is disagreement about the effects FOCA might have on hospitals, with some health care professionals and bishops saying a strategy of ignoring the law, if it passes, would be more effective than closing hospitals.
In the main, I agree with Bishop Paprocki. To me the problem runs a little deeper, though. Despite all my problems with Catholicism I have had nothing but the utmost respect for their firm pro-life outlook. That said, the autocracy of the Roman Catholic Church which I don’t really approve of seems to be relatively useless here in America. I mean, more than half of America’s Catholics voted for the most pro-abortion presidential candidate in history. That doesn’t seem right. If you’re going to have a strong top-down hierarchy you may as well achieve some good out of it, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. Read the rest of the entry… »
