Alinsky's smashing idea

One recent Sunday morning at 6 a.m. my daughter knocked on the bedroom door with the news that water was pouring through the ceiling downstairs. Oh the joys of upstairs plumbing gone bad and leaving five rooms in need of some combination of floor/wall/ceiling demolition and repair. At some point in the near future that new-house smell will replace the present swampish odor and we'll be back where we were. But there is no avoiding turmoil and disruptions as we turn the house over to contractors and find a temporary place to live so that what was perfectly serviceable before can be made serviceable again.

It is axiomatic that the destruction of one thing often leads to the creation of something new. The destruction may be accidental and undesired, as in the case above, but sometimes it is intentionally used as a tool to force the replacement of something old with something new. The intent behind the destruction may be good or bad, but intentional destruction has clearly been one of the greatest agents of change throughout human history - an observation that was not lost on Saul Alinsky.

It is much easier to destroy an existing system than it is to reshape that system into something fundamentally different in one step. What would take generations of slow evolution can be dramatically accelerated by destroying the undesired form of an existing system and creating a void that demands a replacement. The very foundation of Alinsky style radicalism is destruction. One of the reasons that this style of radicalism is so pernicious is that those that oppose it have a difficult time coming to grips with the idea that destruction itself is the end goal of the radical. There is a default presumption from people of good will that the radical seeks to improve the existing system. Nothing could be further from the truth. In recent years we have seen example after example of Alinsky's "smashing" idea in motion:

Healthcare: The American health care system is on the path toward a single-payer system because radicals were successful in convincing a significant portion of the American public that the best health-care system in the world was unfair and ineffective. As the changes to the system create more turmoil, confusion, and hardship, the opportunity to completely replace the old system with single-payer increases dramatically. Since that was the goal all along, the bumps in the road are acceptable to the radicals.

There were a number of simple modifications that could have been made to improve the previous healthcare system. But making those modifications would have breathed new life into a system that the radicals don't want to live. Resistance to changes like removing the barriers to selling insurance across state lines seems a little strange, even illogical, to people that argue the merits of market based reforms. That resistance makes more sense when we consider that the opposition is simply not interested in trying to improve the existing system. The old and the new can't occupy the same space.

Foreign Policy: We also see Alinsky's idea of creative destruction born out in U.S. foreign policy under Obama. Decades of foreign policy that has seen continuity from one administration to the next has left America in a position of strength and influence that left-wing radicals are very uncomfortable with. The consistent foreign policy inversions under the Obama administration can be extrapolated to converge on one goal - realigning geopolitical power structures away from U.S. hegemony.

Whether it is bowing to a Saudi King, a world tour apologizing for American arrogance, turning our back on allies in Honduras, embracing socialist dictators in Cuba and South America, betraying U.S. ally Mubarak in Egypt, isolating Israel while emboldening her enemies, giving up on a status of forces agreement with Iraq, Ignoring the open conspiracy of our Southern neighbors to increase illegal immigration into the U.S., or participating in the overthrow and execution of the cooperative Qaddafi in Libya, every single move supports the effort to diminish the U.S. in world affairs. It makes it difficult for future administrations to rebuild lost confidence in the U.S. as a dependable ally or a serious defender of our own interests. If the goal is to create a system that enables and empowers UN style governance of international affairs, the system that stands in the way of that goal must first be smashed.

Energy policy: Solar and wind power technologies have not advanced sufficiently to replace traditional sources of power. Pretending otherwise is increasingly popular politically, but not grounded in reality. The impact of current energy policy on U.S. power generation in coming years will be profound. More people will suffer economically and more will be at risk from extreme temperatures as a result of the turmoil of destructive change. Power distribution will be less reliable and more costly as a result of the policies. As stress on the power generation and distribution system has an increasingly negative impact on the daily lives of increasing numbers of Americans, the radical's expect to find justification for more sweeping changes to the system.

Common sense efforts to reduce U.S. energy independence by traditional means of increasing energy supplies via fracking, expanding production on federal lands, or pipeline construction bolster a status-quo that the radicals can not tolerate in the slightest measure. 

Race relations: For decades we worked toward a color-blind society in America. The progress that has been made in the past 50 years is nothing short of amazing. Rather than celebrate that progress we are now told that focus on what we have in common, or treating everyone the same is a new form of racism. We are told that considering the content of one's character is irrelevant and judgmental. When it is only the color of one's skin that matters there is no possibility of overcoming the difference. Guilt and victimization are prized tools for the radical whose interests conflict with improving race relations. Some problems are simply too useful to ever allow them to be solved.

Law Enforcement: There is an effort underway in the United States to increase federal control of local law enforcement. When the President of the United States makes a statement that the police "acted stupidly", or sends representatives to the funeral of a criminal slain by police, or pursues civil actions against police departments, these are not actions that are lightly undertaken. The administration has established a consistent pattern of questioning local law enforcement. That consistency indicates that the responses are not knee-jerk reactions to current events, but examples of opportunities being seized to advance a pre-conceived agenda.

Transformative change does not take place in a problem free environment. Just as the U.S. healthcare system had to be disparaged before its transformation could begin, so must local law enforcement.

Immigration policy: Decades of lax interior immigration and border enforcement have been followed by open lawlessness on the part of the current administration. The resulting surge of illegal immigration and low morale among border agents are predictable results. In fact, they are so predictable that they can only be intentional. Opening America's borders to all-comers is not a policy that could be implemented through normal legislative process with the support of the American people. Granting amnesty to large numbers of illegal immigrants is also not a course that could be taken in the absence of a significant crisis. These sources of intentional stress on the immigration system are directed to overwhelm the system in pursuit of fundamental, long-term, change.

Economics: When George W Bush started Obama's administration early with TARP and auto bailouts he infamously stated that he had "...abandoned free market principles to save the free market system." - leaving the free market system in the position of being abandoned by a sitting president that considered it worth saving so that it could be abandoned by an incoming president with no love for it whatsoever.

When a significant number of politicians are ambivalent about capitalism, or motivated by crony capitalism, or rewarded by pork-addicted constituents, and the radicals among them view the national debt and other stresses on the system with approval, the few fiscal conservatives left in Washington are faced with a monumental task.

American culture: Education and immigration policy are the two largest levers used by radicals to transform American culture. America's founders, and America's historical role in world events are understood very differently by today's school children than they were by children going through the same school system a generation ago. Convincing Americans that their heritage is not worth preserving is a logical first step in displacing the old culture. The effort is significantly augmented by the influx of millions of immigrants that tend to be more in line with the radicals viewpoint.

The U.S. illegal immigration crisis would have been nipped in the bud long ago if we were dealing with millions of constitutional conservative immigrants. Even the pretense of assimilating immigrants into American culture is all but gone - thanks in some part to the effort to downplay the value of American culture through education. Traditional American education, and America first immigration policies serve to preserve a status-quo that poses an intolerable obstacle to the radical agenda.

The Constitution: As I type, the internet is abuzz with the news of Loretta Lynch's confirmation as the next Attorney General of the United States. A radical leftist that sat before a Senate committee and thumbed her nose at the rule of law will now be the highest ranking law enforcement officer in America. Every Senator that voted for her violated his or her oath of office. For the twenty Republican Senators that enabled her confirmation that violation is particularly egregious. Under the Obama administration the last vestiges of the seperation of power in the U.S. government have moved from reality into the realm of political philosophy. A decade ago I would never have believed that a congress would so willingly transfer its constitutional powers to the administrative branch. A Republican majority congress continuing to demonstrate that willingness, for a President that is leading what is perhaps the most lawless administration in history, reveals the thin thin thread by which the Republic hangs.

The Constitution has long been an obstacle to radical progress. Efforts to rewrite the bill-of-rights through gun-control laws, putting churches under non-profit tax restrictions, restricting new press, punishing acts of religious conscience, working around due process, limiting political speech, expansive regulatory and enforcement powers of federal agencies, etc., so on, and so forth, are nothing new. But there has been a noticeable increase in cadence and forcefulness of these efforts under the Obama administration.

The radical thrives on crisis. Rahm Immanuel made the news with his comment about never letting a crisis go to waste. In reality the radicals actually take it a step further. Where no crisis exists, create a crisis. Where a crisis has been resolved, restore it by moving the goal. Above all - never let a useful problem be solved.

When you believe in the basic goodness of a thing, "fundamental transformation" is not how you describe what you want done to it. It is an unfortunate truth that we have elected a President that does not believe in the goodness of America, past or present. The future that he envisions has nothing to do with American first principles. The presumptive nominee for the democrat presidential ticket is another student of Alinsky. The radicals want to remodel our house. Their intent to start at the foundation should alarm everyone that lives in it. Until Americans are willing to acknowledge that the radical's remodeling project begins with wrecking-balls, bulldozers, and matches, we will not begin the process of halting the destruction of America.