Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. That’s number five in Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” a list of power tactics designed as guidelines for faithful spongebrains who want to be modernistas in the drive toward a changed world.
Alinsky notes, “It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule.” And, he’s right. To push back against ridicule is much akin to arguing with an idiot. That individual doesn’t care to be correct. Preferred pronouns want only to be loud enough to suppress different opinions or quick enough on the keyboard to overwrite anyone stupid enough to engage in online debate.
Alinsky’s rules are quite effective. Without hanging out the “here they are” banner, one can see them in practice almost daily from a wide range of individuals, groups and organizations. Many are framed, organizationally, within acronyms espousing such ideals as liberty, equality, fraternity, diversity, unity, peace…any positive term one would not consider dangerous.
Under these banners, today’s community activists and organizers and their vassals push semi-popular agendas or stampede privileged issues over us, supported by a friendly media and willing bureaucracy. We have to wonder how all these many singular focus groups got so much power and attention, and how it seems to have happened practically overnight.
Well, it didn’t happen suddenly. It’s been in the works for nearly a century, with a serious push coming in the past six decades. In the 1920s, communists and anarchists had small voices demanding to be a part of the national conversation. The best way to get that voice, leadership said, was through media and education. The trip began in earnest, and those voices got louder.
Fast forward to the 1960s. Groups, like Weather Underground, Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Panthers openly espoused hatred for our country and promoted violence as the means to bring about their idea of a perfect America. When bombings of government buildings, police precincts and corporate headquarters failed to put society into the dumpster, battle plans changed.
Those radicals changed from bellbottoms and tie-dyes to suits and ties, infiltrating this country’s K-12 schools, colleges and universities, newspapers, TV networks and corporate board rooms.
Weather Underground founders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, self-professed bombers and revolutionaries, became educators and lawyers, roaming the halls and holding classes at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University. Most impressive, however, was their mentor-like relationship with “community organizer” Barack Obama.
Another underground weatherman, Howard Machtinger, became a Professor M. at North Carolina Central University and Teaching Fellows Director at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill’s School of Education.
Mark Rudd, a Weather leader who fled indictment and went “underground,” turned himself in and was sentenced to two years’ probation. He later taught at Central New Mexico Community College. Former Weather Underground member Eleanor Raskin, who fled after being indicted for bomb making in the 1970s, is an associate professor at Albany Law School.
Black Panther Warren Kimbro and was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of another panther member, but only served four years. He later became an assistant dean at Eastern Connecticut State University.
These few examples show where many of the ideas we hear from our young people may have originated. Those who, in the ’60s and ’70s, sent messages through action that America is racist and always will be, that police and the law are here only to protect the privileged and is, therefore, the enemy, are teaching a generation of young people.
In too many school systems and higher educational institutions, our younger generations are being taught that democracy is a con; capitalism is a tool of supremacy, and that white heterosexual Christian males are as much a threat to civilization as climate change. The only way to reach the ultimate goal of Utopia is through green energy, greenless money and greater governmental intrusion into our lives.
Friends and neighbors, we’re looking down a barrel that’s been pointed at us for way yonder too long. It first was pointed quietly beyond our view. Now, it’s out there for all to see. We think it’s time for the Alinsky rule to be used to our advantage. Ridicule is a noun, just like freedom. It shoots both ways.
But from our little corner of the porch, things don’t look so bad regardless of how hard we see our hired hands trying to legislate common sense completely out of existence. Like my ol’ grandad said, even a heel hound gets tired of being hounded to heel.
We, the great unwashed, have a collective voice equally as loud as those we hear trying to shout us into irrelevancy. But, friends, while we may be considered only a troublesome barking dog, the hands that try to push us down ought not forget some dogs bite. Even those who are considered the lesser of the animals.
