« Absolutely the sickest website I've ever seen | Main | Illegal Immigration is More than a Cultural Issue: It's a National Security Matter (Video) »
September 16, 2008
Senator Stealth: How to advance radical causes when no one's looking
Topics: Political News and commentariesThe radical roots of Senator Stealth run deep, indeed. Here's a few excerpts from "Senator Stealth" by Stanley Kurtz, to give you an idea of just how deep they run:
[...] After hearing about Barack Obama's ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Fr. Michael Pfleger, and the militant activists of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), it should be clear to everyone that his extremist roots run deep. But the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has yet another connection with the world of far-Left radicalism. Obama has long been linked -- through foundation grants, shared political activism, collaboration on legislation and tactics, and mutual praise and support -- with the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation, one of the least known yet most influential national umbrella groups for church-based "community organizers."Please take the time to read it all. Then answer the question: Do you believe Barack Hussein Obama is the post-ideological pragmatist he sometimes claims to be, or in fact a stealth radical?The same separatist, anti-American theology of liberation that was so boldly and bitterly proclaimed by Obama's pastor is shared, if more quietly, by Obama's Gamaliel colleagues. The operative word here is "quietly." Gamaliel specializes in ideological stealth, and Obama, a master student of Gamaliel strategy, shows disturbing signs of being a sub rosa radical himself. Obama's legislative tactics, as well as his persistent professions of non-ideological pragmatism, appear to be inspired by his radical mentors' most sophisticated tactics. Not only has Obama studied, taught, and apparently absorbed stealth techniques from radical groups like Gamaliel and ACORN, but in his position as a board member of Chicago's supposedly nonpartisan Woods Fund, he quietly funneled money to his radical allies -- at the very moment he most needed their support to boost his political career. It's high time for these shadowy, perhaps improper, ties to receive a dose of sunlight.
The connections are numerous. Gregory Galluzzo, Gamaliel's co-founder and executive director, served as a trainer and mentor during Obama's mid-1980s organizing days in Chicago. The Developing Communities Project, which first hired Obama, is part of the Gamaliel network. Obama became a consultant and eventually a trainer of community organizers for Gamaliel. (He also served as a trainer for ACORN.) And he has kept up his ties with Gamaliel during his time in the U.S. Senate.
The Gamaliel connection appears to supply a solution to the riddle of Obama's mysterious political persona. On one hand, he likes to highlight his days as a community organizer -- a profession with proudly radical roots in the teachings of Chicago's Saul Alinsky, author of the highly influential text Rules for Radicals. Obama even goes so far as to make the community-organizer image a metaphor for his distinctive conception of elective office. On the other hand, Obama presents himself as a post-ideological, consensus-minded politician who favors pragmatic, common-sense solutions to the issues of the day. How can Obama be radical and post-radical at the same time? Perhaps by deploying Gamaliel techniques. Gamaliel organizers have discovered a way to fuse their Left-extremist political beliefs with a smooth, non-ideological surface of down-to-earth pragmatism: the substance of Jeremiah Wright with the appearance of Norman Vincent Peale. Could this be Obama's secret?
[...] FROM REVELATION TO REVOLUTION
Before outlining Gamaliel's techniques of political stealth, we need to identify the views that they are camouflaging. These can be found in Dennis Jacobsen's book Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing. Jacobsen is the pastor of Incarnation Lutheran Church in Milwaukee and director of the Gamaliel National Clergy Caucus. Jacobsen's book, which is part of the first-year reading list for new Gamaliel organizers, lays out the underlying theology of Gamaliel's activities. While Jacobsen's book was published in 2001, it is based on presentations Jacobsen has been making at Gamaliel's clergy-training center since 1992 and clearly has Galluzzo's endorsement. So while we cannot be sure that Obama has read or taught Doing Justice, the book certainly embodies a political perspective to which Obama's more than 20 years of friendship with Galluzzo, and his stint as a Gamaliel instructor, would surely have exposed him.[...] FAKE RIGHT, GO LEFT
It might have been all but impossible to penetrate the strategic thinking of Obama's cohorts if not for the fortuitous 2008 publication of Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith-based Progressive Movements, by Rutgers political scientist Heidi Swarts. This is the first book-length study of the organizing tactics and political ideologies of Gamaliel and ACORN, the two groups to which Obama's community-organizing ties are closest. Swarts's study focuses on Gamaliel and ACORN in St. Louis, but given the degree of national coordination by both groups, the carry-over of her findings to Chicago is bound to be substantial. Because Swarts is highly sympathetic to the community-organizing groups she studies, she was granted an unusual degree of access to strategic discussions during her period of fieldwork.Swarts calls groups like ACORN and (especially) Gamaliel "invisible actors," hidden from public view because they often prefer to downplay their efforts, because they work locally, and because scholars and journalists pay greater attention to movements with national profiles (like the Sierra Club or the Christian Coalition). Congregation-based community organizations like Gamaliel, by contrast, are often invisible even at the local level. A newspaper might report on a demonstration led by a local minister or priest, for example, without noticing that the clergyman in question is part of the Gamaliel network. "Though often hidden from view," says Swarts, "leaders have intentionally and strategically organized these movements that appear to well up and erupt from below."
Although Gamaliel and ACORN have significantly different tactics and styles, Swarts notes that their political goals and ideologies are broadly similar. Both groups press the state for economic redistribution. The tactics of Gamaliel and ACORN have been shaped in a "post-Alinsky" era of welfare reform and conservative resurgence, posing a severe challenge to those who wish to expand the welfare state. The answer these activists have hit upon, says Swarts, is to work incrementally in urban areas, while deliberately downplaying the far-Left ideology that stands behind their carefully targeted campaigns.
My money is on the latter of the two choices.
Posted by Mike in Iraq at September 16, 2008 3:13 PM
Articles Related to Political News and commentaries:
