Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger

  I’d actually halfway finished a blog on a different subject today, when I was spun in a different  direction. Thursday night I had done something I never do and watched the Republican Debate in Florida. It was frighteningly enlightening to say the least, but what stood out for me was Newt commenting that our President was a disciple of Saul Alinsky. I thought then “How many people today know who Saul Alinsky was and what he represented?” On last nights Bill Maher’s show, Bill asked the question “Who was Saul Alinsky?” as part of his New Rules segment. This morning in HuffPost, Frank Mankiewicz addressed a variant of the same question: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-mankiewicz/america-meet-saul-alinsky_b_1238953.html

The idea of following heroes to me has always seemed silly, yet there are people whose lives and work I deeply admire and to some sense try to emulate. My first was Clarence Darrow and it is therefore no coincidence that I am a denizen of this blog. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Darrow .  Clarence Darrow’s picture is used above because it is in the public realm, while mysteriously Saul Alinsky’s isn’t. Obviously, Saul Alinsky is another person whose life I admire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky  Alinsky was a radical in his methods, but one who eschewed the doctrinaire self assurance of an ideologue. When asked if he ever considered joining the Communist Party he famously replied”

“Not at any time. I’ve never joined any organization—not even the ones I’ve organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it’s Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as ‘that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you’re right.’ If you don’t have that, if you think you’ve got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide.”

His was a belief that has resonated with me since those radical days in the 60’s, with the Movement, when I was surrounded by and courted by various ideologies, mostly Marxist whose rigidity of thought and party line belief, actually disgusted me. Yet there was Alinsky, the man who literally wrote the book on community organizing, who felt similarly towards ideological rigidity. He was truly an America Patriot, whose guiding idea was to assist downtrodden people to gain power over their lives and give them a chance to decide their fates. Alinsky was a man who achieved great success, if you define success as achieving ones goals. The disdain and demonization again being heaped upon him today comes from the very real threat his methodology has towards the 1% elite and curiously that aim of his was the reinstatement of “The American Dream” of freedom, equality and social justice. Continue reading “Who in Hell is Saul Alinsky?” →