Obama Citizenship

Individualism vs. Collectivism: How Far We?ve Come

By Phil

I’ll start this post with the current push towards massive collectivism by the left in this country, something that has been going on over several decades. American Thinker recently posted a fantastic article that is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the product of the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama.

The following is a small excerpt:

As I put forth last year in “Obama, the Closer”, Barack Obama, did not start his movement; Alinsky did. Nor did Obama amass the organizations that propelled him.  As detailed by Heidi J. Swarts, in her book, Organizing Urban America, the movement begun by Saul Alinsky in the 1930s has morphed into thousands of secular and faith-based leftist political organizations. ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has perhaps the highest public profile, is most reputed for radicalism, and is the organization with which Barack Obama was first aligned.  But ACORN is the mere tip of a veritable iceberg of Alinsky-styled community organizations that sweep across the entire United States and make up the backbone of faith-based progressive movements as well.

These euphemistically called “community” organizations have next to nothing to do with improving the communities and everything to do with politics, primarily strong-arming government money to advance their political aims.  Prior to Reagan’s election, these groups worked independently for the most part, each seeking to effect local change towards leftist ends.

But with Reagan’s victory, ACORN founding member Wade Rathke sent out a memo (published by Swarts; Organizing Urban America; p. 29) that would reverberate all the way to Barack Obama’s moment.  ACORN had been behaving as a sort of “Lone Ranger of the Left” for too long, wrote Rathke.  Ronald Reagan had formed a coalition among the middle-class that threatened to bring greater prosperity without left-wing Statists calling the shots.  Rathke put out the call to the ACORN troops to stop antagonizing those who would be allies, especially unions and church organizations, once shunned by ACORN as too placid for the real fight for power.  For the next 25 years, the community organization network built, proliferated and formed a solid, nation-wide base of political strength, purely according to Alinsky’s original vision, and all just waiting for the right candidate to tap into it and lead it.

When folks from all corners of America proclaimed, seemingly with one voice, Barack is the “One we’ve been waiting for,” they were speaking out of the vast Alinsky-originated network.

Neither did Barack Obama invent the political “ideology of change,” nor design its carefully crafted propaganda.  While media folks talked of the tingles up their legs and the brilliant rhetoric of Barack Obama, they were heralding the speaker only, not the creator of the movement and its slogans.  That would have been Saul Alinsky, the man who took fascism and cunningly made it appear to casual observers every bit as American as apple pie.

Barack Obama is merely the movement’s closer, the quintessential liberal fascist with a teleprompter.

And as FoundingBloggers.com notes, the following 50-year-old cartoon foresaw exactly this moment in American history; as they remark, “The threat is not new. What?s new is our unprecedented level of collective blindness:”

It should come as no surprise to my readers that I see collectivism as a morally evil imperative because it essentially forces the individual — the greatest minority, don’t forget — to be subservient to the will of the majority. I see absolutely no freedom in such a circumstance, and I doubt the founders of America would, either.

As the cartoon notes, we can call this collectivism by any other formal “-ism” we wish; it still does away with that about which Benjamin Franklin so presciently warned:

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.”

-Phil

Image via ShotsOnTheHouse.com

Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on May 12, 2009 (boomark / email).