Category Archives: centralization

by Barry Kelly | February 5, 2013 · 8:06 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 33

Saul Alinsky (Photo credit: Fresh Conservative) Former community organizer in Chicago.

Washington Monument and Flag (Photo credit: Mr. T in DC)

THE ISSUE IS NEVER THE ISSUE

I am not now and never have been a conspiracy theorist. But, neither have I been reticent about going where observation, experience, and study lead me. The issue is never the issue sounds like the mantra of a mystical guru crouched over a small flame in a mountain top cave. It is not. It is the political guidance of a revolutionary American political theorist who died in 1972. His name is Saul Alinsky, whose writing seems to have had a profound influence on President Obama, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and the entire Progressive movement.

Alinsky believed the only issue is the striving for power. Power to destroy the existing political system and to create another, more equitable society from the ashes. Issues like tax policy, deficit reduction, gun control, expanding government, medical and foreign policy, military strategy, terrorism, job creation, and immigration don’t matter. They are only useful as opportunistic means to attack everything that is an obstacle to seizing power. Seizing power through revolution is the only end. All means to achieve this end must be used. Ethics, morality, or laws are not considerations. Those Democrats and liberals, who are too squeamish to do what it takes to seize power, will be dumped in the dust bin of history when the Progressives tire of them. There is nothing wrong with flip flopping. Use whatever side of any issue to further your progress toward seizing power. Change your mind any time, if being on the other side is more useful. (Read Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals, and David Horowitz‘s, Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution. Those two sources will clarify the president’s actions since he was first elected.)

Alinsky has taken the writings of other better known radical revolutionaries such as, Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mao se Tung, and Castro and molded them into a clear modern guide-book for revolutionaries. To judge this administration by its progress on economic and political issues confronting the nation is a meaningless measure. But, if the end game is the destruction or transformation of our society, then the administration is being more successful. For the transformation of America to become fact, all opposition must be obliterated. The Republican Party is in the way and must be destroyed.

Other obstacles to the transformation of America are the Constitution and the doctrine of the separation of powers, our two-party system with two centuries of traditions and rules, the judicial system, the U.S. military with its record of protecting America from foreign and domestic enemies, and an armed civilian population. It is historically relevant that none of Alinsky’s heroes, whether Fascist, Socialist, or Communist rose to power when there was an armed civilian population present. Those same heroes are responsible for killing hundreds of millions of citizens to transform their societies. This could happen in America if we fail to understand what is happening. It is harder to keep freedom than to win it.

My next blog will cover the war between the haves and the have-nots which is the war to transform or destroy the existing American political structure.

By the author of the Jack Brandon thriller series. www.factsandfictions.com

ACE: We Must Do Something About The Media. “It’s important.” So go full Alinsky. Buy stock and s… (pjmedia.com)
LETTER – Obama is transforming Ameri9ca, and not for the better (hollandsentinel.com)
Is there an Obama-Alinsky comparison to be made and will it push us over the fiscal cliff? (itmakessenseblog.com)
National Education Association Raves To Teachers About Alinsky Books (patdollard.com)

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Filed under Alinsky, Capitalism, centralization, class warfare, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Politics, Progressives, totalitarianism

Tagged as Barack Obama, communist, David Horowitz, politics, Saul Alinsky, socialist, United States, White House

by Barry Kelly | January 28, 2013 · 8:40 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 32

Management of Complexity (Photo credit: michael.heiss)

THE REAL BI-PARTISAN ISSUE

Nearly every day I hear someone saying, “I can’t believe what I just heard the administration is doing.” If there ever was a bi-partisan statement, this is it. Democrats or Republicans, it makes no difference when it comes to dumbness.

English: Seal of the United States Department of Homeland Security. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since the first days of centralized authority, government dumbness has been with us. In the last 150 years, the level of government centralization has steadily grown to levels that jeopardize the continued development of our civilization. The roots of centralization have been nurtured by an explosion of progress in the transmission and processing of information. Good thing? Maybe yes. But many good things have dangerous side effects.

It is usually true, the closer a leader or manager is to a situation or problem, the more they know about the facts and can fix the problem or recommend a wise course of action. A hallmark of an effective leader and manager is their ability to put a premium on the advice from ‘people on the ground.’ As governments have moved more toward centralization, managers have been moved further and further from people on the ground. There are myriad management levels between the point of contact with the situation or problem and the top-level decision maker. Government managers, in my favorite example, of the Department of Homeland Security, are several light years beyond their span of control. While I don’t think the recent and current heads of Homeland Security are exemplary managers or leaders, no human can do more than pretend they can manage something as large and diverse as Homeland Security or the Intelligence Community or a number of other government agencies and departments.

You see, the catalyst of expanding centralization is the speed of information transmission and processing. Managers believe because they can communicate they can understand and manage. This is a dangerous illusion. How well did Presidents Johnson and Nixon, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and later National Security Advisor Kissinger personally manage the Vietnam War? Not well. I was there and read many of their directives. Some verged on comic relief.

A few organs of government like the Defense Department and NASA have been able to somewhat mitigate the downside of centralization because at all levels, except the very top, managers come from men and women on their way up the management ladder. They and their staffs can receive and understand the flow of information. They understand the culture. In a sense they have all been there, done that. I believe the only remedy to the downsides of centralization is to ensure organizations are made up nearly entirely of men and women who have had a deep immersion in various mission levels of their organization and to decentralize those departments and agencies that have an impossible scope of attention and management for anyone. Letting the states manage their own affairs according to the Constitution will check rampant centralization. This is truly a bi-partisan issue.

By the author of the Jack Brandon Thriller Series.

http://www.factsandfictions.com

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Tagged as politics

by Barry Kelly | December 12, 2012 · 5:19 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 30

FISCAL

CLIFF

Are you tired of the term, ‘GOING OVER THE FISCAL CLIFF’? I am. I wish all the politicians in Washington would join a pack of lemmings and go over the nearest cliff. Then we could start over and get a real agreement. One that is good for the nation, not just good for radicals.

Why is it so hard to reach an agreement? The problem is simple and fundamental. Our two parties have very different objectives. Let’s start with the Progressives of the Obama party. Can you believe that a president who hasn’t had a Congressionally approved budget in all of his first term is interested in budgets, deficits, and future financing for entitlement programs or defense of the nation? His last “budget” was rejected unanimously by members of both parties in the Senate. Using my yardstick of what a president should do, this man is a total failure. But if you use a different measuring system, one crafted over the years by foreign and domestic Progressives, he has an outstanding record. He said he would transform America and he has and he still is. In another four years, America will be a very different place. What my generation and previous generations strived and fought for will be gone. Collectivism, not individualism, will be the banner. There maybe freedom but it will be a very different freedom.

From the president’s perspective, what does he say he wants before he can agree on action to avoid the cliff issues? He wants to raise taxes on the rich (people making more than $250,000 per year.) He wants the power to raise the debt limit whenever he thinks an increase is required. He does not want any cuts or changes to entitlement programs. He wants more money to spend on stimulus packages. He wants real revenue now and maybe, spending cuts sometime in the future. That is the package the Republicans think they are trying to negotiate. They are trying to find agreement on a fiscal and deficit problem. That is not the real battle. No matter how much they comprise or capitulate there is no fiscally sound path in these negotiations. Not now. Not later.

This cliff thing is another phase in the transforming of America. Keep your eye on the power game. Achieving a one-party system is part of the transformation process. The two-party system is an obstacle to the collectivist goals of the Progressives. The major goal is to marginalize the Republican Party. The president has proven his ability to out-message his opponents. His mandate, truly won, is for a far superior numbers game in getting out the vote and in defining his opponents in populist terms by endlessly repeating simplistic slogans. Accuracy and truth were not front and center. Instead it was the use of 21st century mass appeal campaigning, appealing to the fears and desires of targeted interest groups, not presenting plans or programs for the good of the nation. The election did not provide a mandate on ideas or national requirements. Neither the president nor the speaker should talk about mandates.

Rhetoric about going over the cliff is only the fog generated to conceal the real objectives of the ruling Progressives.

http://www.factsandfictions.com By the author of the Jack Brandon Thriller Series.

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Filed under Alinsky, centralization, class warfare, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, fiscal cliff, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, political solutions, Politics, Progressives

Tagged as current-events, deficit problem, government, politics

by Barry Kelly | December 5, 2012 · 11:36 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 29

President George W. Bush signs the Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2004 on October 1, 2003. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

UTOPIA VS REALITY

Some things we can control for the better. Some we can’t. Deciding which we can and can not do is the essence of the struggle between liberals and conservatives.

Both sides want to improve the condition of the people. Neither faction is evil; it’s just that the fundamental belief system is different. The roots of liberal philosophy are imports from foreign thinkers. Utopian communes, kibbutzes, socialism, communism (to each according to need, from each according to capability), interpretations of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, ancient and modern age totalitarianism all emphasized the good of society over the individual.

Efforts to achieve these goals all had to, or strived to, centralize power. Centralized power is always required to channel and control individualism for the good of the whole society. The problem has been that those who end up in charge of centralized power are not capable of deciding or managing how to balance their judgement of the needs of the masses with the needs of the individual. Instead, centralized power, especially in totalitarian governments, is used to perpetuate the rule of the elite. And there is always an elite. Nowhere in the history of the known world has unfettered centralization been successful. Yet some humans still try to improve life by centralization in spite of the clear historical record of total failure.

As an example of this innate drive for people to see centralized control over every real or imagined problem is the liberal position on global warming. Is the Earth warming? Maybe, probably, absolutely, positively not. All those answers are possible. The record of the Earth is that it has warmed and cooled. Surely it is a question science can answer, if they avoid cherry picking data to prove strongly held environmental beliefs. At one time, I’m told, Chicago was covered by two miles of ice and much later, Vikings cultivated Greenland for a period of one hundred years or so until the Earth cooled. Surely Chicagoans did not cause Chicago to freeze over nor did Vikings cause Greenland to warm. Just maybe our heat source, the sun’s output, or slight changes in the Earth’s orbit are the cause. These are causes humans cannot control or change. Certainly prehistoric carbon emissions from man-made industries were not responsible.

Centralization has been used by both parties to “fix” problems. The conservatives tried with the organization of the Department of Homeland Security. But do you feel safer now that effective organizations have all been dumbed down to fit the limited scope of human management? Or how about the Director of National Intelligence‘s bloated staff? Do you feel like our president is better informed? I think, in fact I know, he is not. Benghazi talking points come to mind.

Utopia is not to be found in liberalism or conservatism. (See blog 6 for more on centralization.) Both parties have worshipped at the altar of centralization. Humans and our complex civilization need regulation. But it has to be as little as possible. Centralization is the fuel for the growth of government which is, then, itself a motivator of more centralization. (In blog 3 I state we are a great nation not because of what immigrants brought with them but what they left behind.) We did have some experiments with European utopian settlements in America. They all failed. Unfortunately, the roots of socialism and totalitarianism have now come again in the name of progressivism and have largely taken over the leadership of the Democratic Party. We now have a government trying to centralize and manage all aspects of life, individual and national.

http://www.factsandfictions.com By the author of the Jack Brandon thriller series.