Home » Politicians and lying – and Alinsky revisited

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Politicians and lying – and Alinsky revisited — 57 Comments

  1. Lying is not all that recent. Wilson did it when said “He kept us out of war” when he knew he was about to enter the war, Roosevelt did much the same in 1940, knowing he was maneuvering us into war. Lyndon Johnson certainly did. I agree that Obama is the most recent flagrant example. Certainly about his health care bill.
    Trump, about Mexico paying for the wall ,probably planned to tax remittances to Mexico but that would require legislation. Paul Ryan is a recent example on the other side.

  2. I would encourage all followers of this blog to read the recently-published autobiography of the brilliant David Horowitz entitled Mortality and Faith: Reflections on a Journey through Time. Not only is there much to be learned about a gradual political conversion from left to right, but also (more importantly) much about what truly matters in life.

  3. You say whatever you need to say to get elected, then once in power you see this as a totally different circumstance.

  4. It seems contradictory to me to base a political movement on lies — or rather, on denying the issue of truth and falsehood. Perhaps I am more naive that I admit to, but it just seems to me as if the social contract is shredded if there is no adherence to truth and honesty. This is probably addressed in game theory, about which I know nothing, but it just seems beyond the pale that a leader could make a promise knowing it will not come to pass. How long before people come to the conclusion that the only way to deal with such a person/party is armed resistance?

  5. Note that Obama’s health bill, which was a bill written by Congress, was modeled after bills written and approved by Republicans [Romney in MA]. As a health bill it was more conservative than Truman’s or Nixon’s proposals which included something closer to a public option. As a health bill it’s hardly as leftist as Bernie Sanders’ proposals.

    Obama’s stance on gay marriage was more than flip flop. He was for it in 1996, against it in 2008 and then for it again. No double he was playing politics. But to voters when the option was Obama or McCain or Obama and Romney… well, you understand. There are only two options. Should voters completely change their vote because they choose to focus on one set of lies by one candidate but ignore the lies of the other? Look at the last election. Plenty of people hated both Clinton and Trump. But no Republican was going to vote Hillary and no Democrat was going to vote Trump no matter what either of them said. So many ended up voting to keep the other side out of the White House.

    Also every politician plays to the crowd. Beto [who has a whopping 3% of the Dem vote] has strong opinions on guns and churches because strong opinions get applause. He is hoping to get the same bump Trump got. Remember Trump began to distance himself from the other candidates when he talked about Mexican illegals as people being ‘sent’ by the Mexican government and bringing drugs and crime and being rapists. And that he would build a wall the Mexicans would pay for. Strong words. Conservatives ate that up. Even if they knew it was not all true it was rhetoric used to get attention. It worked. But most Democrats aren’t buying what Beto has to sell. Warren and Sanders appeal a little more to Democrats and at least they show their cards as leftists. Will be curious if they go back to moderate if they get nominated.

  6. Montage:

    I dealt with the arguments you’re offering in your comment here many many times in the past. Interesting that you’re trying to retread them now. Obamacare was fundamentally different than those bills proposed by the right. And Romneycare was the ever-so-slightly more conservative solution to the even more leftist bills that the Democrat-dominated Massachusetts legislature was wanting to pass at the time. Plus, that legislature stripped away all the protections Romney tried to build into it.

    I described all of that in great detail in many posts at the time. I’m not going to waste my time doing it again. Do some research here if you’re the least bit interested in learning where you err. I’ll help you out a bit by suggesting you start with this.

  7. Montage:

    Oh, and read the link I put in the post on the words “issue of gay marriage.” It’s about Axelrod’s admission that Obama lied about his stance on the subject.

    And actually, Obamacare itself was a sort of lie. The right was well aware it was just a stalking horse for a later move to some sort of single payer or Medicare For All.

  8. On Obama ‘s health bill, it was written by insurance company lobbyists and 25 year old left wing, Ivy League lawyers. The perception was that Hillary made a mistake by excluding the insurance companies. She excluded everyone who knew anything about delivery of health care, of course. I was at Dartmouth that year getting a degree in health care policy and the Dartmouth boys were all excited thinking they would run it. None had any experience with private care, other than a university clinic.

    When Pelosi and Reid decided to try again, they decided to reverse Hillary’s error and have the insurance companies write the bill. One important fact is that insurance companies HATE health insurance because it is prepaid care, not insurance.

    What they do like is called “Administrative Service” which means processing claims which someone else will pay. That is why they are fine with employer plans. They process claims which constitutes probably 30% of the claim since so many are small claims. They were happy to write Obamacare because they expected the old US of A to pay the bills. Furthermore, the law would make insurance mandatory. Remember employer plans were supposed to be rolled into it to help with the cost shifting.

    Then the Democrats chickened out on the employer plans after the disastrous rollout of enrollment and they feared the unions would be hunting Democrats with dogs if they tried to take their plans away after years of negotiating them with employers.

    There is no sensible reform proposal under review at this time. I have studied this and have some ideas at my own blog.

  9. Plus, that legislature stripped away all the protections Romney tried to build into it.

    Yes, I defended Romney on that issue. The Mass Legislature is farther left than Warren. After Romney left office, Deval Patrick left the provisions vetoed by Romney and over ridden by the Legislature, in place.

  10. I think the real tell in the Alinsky primer you conveniently posted, is that these people view politics as true war. Though, at this point in time, without the killing. In war you are supposed to deceive your opponent. You are supposed to use psychological tactics to demoralize the opponent, etc. Couple that with their goal of “heaven on earth” and it really explains everything they do. Kurt Schlichter is correct when he says they want us dead, metaphorically and in reality, and they will use any tactic available and have no qualms about it. And with something like 30% of the population taking that view, no wonder people are predicting CWII.

  11. Whenever I read those words from Alinsky, I’m reminded of the horrible things that have happened when the ends justify the means. Once the restraints on human beings are lifted, bad things happen — especially if you undermine or politicize the justice system.

    In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn quotes Nikolai Krylenko, People’s Commissar for Justice of the USSR:

    “A tribunal is an organ of the class struggle of the workers directed against their enemies” and must act “from the point of view of the interests of the revolution.”
    “No matter what the individual qualities [of the defendant], only one method of evaluating him is to be applied: evaluation from the point of view of class expediency.”
    “In our revolutionary court we are guided not by articles of the law and not by the degree of extenuating circumstances; in the tribunal we must proceed on the basis of considerations of expediency.”

    Solzhenitsyn continues: “That was the way it was in those years: people lived and breathed and then suddenly found out that their existence was inexpedient.”

  12. Also every politician plays to the crowd. Beto [who has a whopping 3% of the Dem vote] has strong opinions on guns and churches because strong opinions get applause.

    Doesn’t speak well of Beto’s audience.

  13. Neo,
    For what it’s worth the ACA ‘Obamacare’ is supported by more Americans than opposed by all the polls I’ve seen. More popular than the recent Republican tax cuts. That said, Obamacare is still fairly moderate by comparison of what Nixon wanted. Your post seems to indicate it’s leftist. In fact it’s not as left as Medicare and most Republicans are not ready to scrap that.

    Obamacare could be a stalking horse but that’s different legislation for another day. Let the future politicians decide. Or voters decide which politicians they want.

  14. Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato.

    You know him. He is a fascist.

  15. Bill Clinton ran on being a “third-way” politician who cared about a strong economy and knew how to do something positive about it. He was a member of Al From’s Democrat Leadership Council, and campaigned repeatedly on a middle-class tax cut as an economic stimulus. This whole bundle was a fundamental part of his campaign.

    About a week or two after he was inaugurated, the White House spin was “Oh, gee. The President didn’t know how terrible the federal balance sheet was. Not only can we not afford a tax cut, now we need a tax increase.” The GOP spent about 5 minutes talking about how Pres. Clinton is just another flippin tax-and-spend Democrat, and that was that. Move along.

    To be fair, the tax increase wasn’t huge and the totality of Clinton’s 8 years were pretty good for the economy. Though the Gingrich congress had much to do with some of that. Clinton’s whole record on the economy was massively better than Nixon’s which was stupid, destructive, and very leftist in many regards. Something else Montage can’t or won’t grasp.

  16. I think that a larger portion than in the past of the “audience” today is more coddled, and a lot less experienced in the world, less tough, and less practical, a lot less educated in the actual basics of our History and Constitution, is less acute in it’s perceptions, thinking, and analysis (and many of them likely a lot more stoned than in the past), is less patriotic and steadfast in it’s devotion to our traditional norms, is less realistic in it’s expectations, and that—sizing up this audience, it’s weaknesses and its credulity—today’s politicians are much more likely to let the mask slip, and to try to brazenly sell lies that earlier generations would have had a far easier time seeing through, and more of the guts necessary to reject them.

    Bottom line, our Educational System and the MSM have made many in today’s audience much more easily fooled and led.

    I also think that today’s politicians also realize that, as the good times have rolled on, decadence is starting to take it’s toll, and that they can now more successfully just outright bribe constituents (many of whom seem to think that there really is a “money tree” to be shaken) to vote for them, by making naked offers to them of supposedly “free stuff,”—now, for some Democrat candidates, approaching “free everything.”

  17. j e: “I would encourage all followers of this blog to read the recently-published autobiography of the brilliant David Horowitz entitled Mortality and Faith: Reflections on a Journey through Time.”

    Thank you. I didn’t know about that but will definitely get it. Several years ago I read his A Point In Time, which I would also recommend very strongly. A brief but profound and moving book. It surprised me–at the moment I can’t remember how it came to my attention, as I think of Horowitz as mainly a political pugilist and don’t generally read books of that sort. Radical Son of course is also very good.

  18. All this stuff is scary, the Alinsky stuff as warfare is well underway and the good old boy system, with a few good old gals, democracy as we think we know it might already be mortally wounded, bleeding out, and they killed it off while we were not even paying attention.

    I think Trump being elected was an incredible bit of good luck or perhaps even an act of God, I am old and confused because I am still, in my mind, living in the “Leave it to Beaver” world that I grew up in where the politicians mostly played by the rules and only lied and stole for their own personal benefit.

    This lying and setting stuff up for the “Better Good of Mankind”, while they personally benefit, is scary and it will probably in the next few decades, lead to some sorry sad wakeup for all of us “common folk”.

  19. TommyJay

    LOL, I liked your comment there for a bit. You were fairly honest that Clinton’s 8 years were pretty good for the economy. But my comment about Nixon was not directed toward your view on Nixon since I don’t even know you or your views. I was no fan of Nixon but he was the Republican candidate for president and he won twice so it would stand to reason that he stood for what Republicans between 1968 and 1972 stood for. So in my example I noted his health bill. He also rolled out the EPA. Political parties change over time. Nixon by today’s standard was a moderate. He was also an opportunist, which makes sense. He stood more on what he believed – in the world after LBJ – would win him votes more than on – say – a Barry Goldwater platform, which was disastrous for winning in that era. But recall that even Reagan signed a bill increasing Social Security benefits in 1983. He was no leftist but saw an opportunity to be bipartisan.

  20. Obamacare is still fairly moderate by comparison of what Nixon wanted.

    You’re not very good at this sort of gamesmanship, and these boards are definitely the wrong audience.

  21. For what it’s worth the ACA ‘Obamacare’ is supported by more Americans than opposed by all the polls I’ve seen. More popular than the recent Republican tax cuts.

    You are seeing polls loaded with the beneficiaries who are Medicaid, including the new expansion of Medicaid. The purpose of Obamacare was to shift the cost of paying for Medicaid, including the expansion, to those who were already insured, 85% of the population. Those who had small group or individual policies were the hardest hit,. They have useless “insurance” with $7,000 deductible and $1500 a month premiums.

    If the Democrats had tried to drive the employer plan members into Obamacare, they would have been wiped out in the 2018 election.

    As for the tax cuts, the gullible have been convinced by lies that they did not benefit. We’ll see how well those lies work next year.

  22. “… he [Nixon] won twice so it would stand to reason that he stood for what Republicans between 1968 and 1972 stood for.” — Montage

    It’s a nice left wing talking point (such things need to sound obvious without actually being accurate), but no. Not many Republicans outside the Rockefeller group thought that they stood for Nixonian economics. One would struggle a little to call Nixon as a whole a moderate, even in his day, but economically he was a left-wing train wreck. And health care plans are fundamentally economic plans, or at least should be.

    Probably Montage is not a leftist, but we all absorb big hunks of left wing propaganda and spin because we simple cannot avoid it (in the media), in varying degrees. The older stuff that we absorbed from our youth is perhaps the worst, for a variety of reasons. I’m really not trying to bust your chops, it just took me a longer time to figure out how terrible Nixon was as a president, entirely separate from Watergate. Just look at the stock market record with or without a 6 to 12 month cause and effect response time.

  23. Dependable political polls were invented and perfected during the 1940s and 1950s. Before then there was no real way to tell the difference between, say, a 60% to 40% split and a 50% to 50% split in public opinion. Hence politicians who wanted to lie did not know which lie to use, and often ended up sounding rather wishy-washy, usually losing to those who had real convictions. Once polls were perfected, however, liars knew which lies to tell, ending up with a decided advantage over those who were “burdened” with genuine political convictions.

    The solution is obvious, of course — the public has to start lying to pollsters on a routine basis, once again making it impossible for politicians to know what we really want short of holding an actual election. Once again lying politicians will be at a genuine disadvantage when running against the non-liars.

    I am waiting for the first politician in a close race who instructs his followers to start lying to pollsters about who they plan to vote for. At that point the entire media-political establishment will have to find a new game to play. Why should he do this? His opponent will no longer know what lies would fool some of his voters into switching their vote.

  24. Clinton’s years were good for the economy because of the computer revolution, dot com era and Newt’s Contract with America. Amazing how short people’s memories are. Clinton had absolutely nothing to do with any of that with the possible exception of staying out of the way.

  25. @TommyJay
    No US president outside of wartime had to face anything like the OPEC embargo that Nixon had. It caused a total dislocation of the US economy. TOTAL. Theoretically, I didn’t agree with his wage and price controls, but he was dealing with a lot of unknowns and there were few/no alternative short-term energy options open.

    You probably didn’t live through it. Nixon did about as well as anyone could have.

  26. Mike K on October 21, 2019 at 7:02 pm : +1

    I can’t read your own posting at the moment, but the tab’s opened to it and I’m ready to go!

    . . .

    Thanks for the recommendation of David H.’s latest memoir. I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since I first saw him on TV, just a few days after 9/11. Prodigal Son IMO is a fine book. A page-turner, a good description of his move from New Left to right, a good telling of the New-Leftian tale and its consequences, ditto Communism….

    Not everyone is all that concerned with trying to find the truth through the observation of actual reality, and acting in accordance with it. I admired and admire David most of all for being one of those.

    Neo, I’ve read most of David’s articles; many of them I have. I wish more of them were still available on-line. Anyway, thanks very much for posting so much of this one.

    .

    Some years after 9/11, on TV David mentioned his belief, which he’d explained many times, that the way to treat the Left was to use their combative methods against them (my paraphrase): “Let’s see how you like it when we do it to you!” (We all know that he can be confrontational! *g*)

    Anyway, on that broadcast, he gave a bit of sheepish grin and said, “maybe I was wrong about that.” (I’d say right in theory, wrong in practice, because the Enemy wasn’t about to let a few insulting remarks stop it. — Which was and is David’s point, of course, when he keeps saying “The Republicans are too nice.

    .

    Good posting altogether, and a good discussion. Especially about Obamacare and so-called “RomneyCare.”

    One thing: The Sith’s explanation that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” Now that is absolutely false as it turns out, but I’m not sure it was actually a lie at the time he said it. Obama lives in the land of beautiful poisonous unicorns and lovely evil fairies, don’t forget, and it’s not clear to me that he looks too carefully at the logic of his theories as they would work in Not-Obamaland, a.k.a. the real world. Also, he could argue that he didn’t mean that the LAW would specify directly what docs you could or couldn’t see.

    I hope nobody thinks I’m bloody endorsing or defending this sorry excuse for a human being. It’s just that if we say “Our enemy did/said/thought X,” and it turns out that there are reasonable arguments that he didn’t, then we risk coming off as liars, muckrakers, or worse.

    That, of course, is precisely the risk the present-day (at least) Dems have decided not to worry about AT ALL, which is why we are too “nice.” A lot of us are trained to try to be civil and to treat our fellow man decently, come what may, along with our dislike of looking like fools or knaves.

    Anyway, “…And the truth shall make ye free.” Well, I think most of us believe that, although I’d argue that it’s not all that obvious — at least for some value of the word “free.”

  27. @Julie near Chicago
    Jonathan Gruber. Remember him? Check out his videos if you’ve forgotten and it’s “not clear” to you. Obama knew exactly what Obamacare was about and he absolutely knew he was lying from the get go.

  28. Read Debunking Howard Zim by Mary Grabar. Perhaps the leftist wall will crumble down, one person at a time.

  29. Anyone who followed Obama’s activities before he was elected to any office will recall that he taught Alinsky tactics as part of his community organizing efforts. It wasn’t surprising that he increasingly kept his real goals under cover as he became more known as a public figure, particularly when people began to think of him as a possible presidential candidate.

  30. I have known since early on that to rely on either the internet or electronic storage devices to retain content is foolish. Yet we all do it, because everybody knows the sword won’t fall tomorrow.

    (Why are you fixing the roof? It’s not raining!)

    Unfortunately David’s 2009 article is not available via the link, not even with help from the Wayback Machine. (It shows hits in blue since 2014, but does not result in a link: nothing happens when you click. I have noticed this elsewhere in Wayback results lately. Be honest, Wayback. If the link is dead, don’t show it in blue.)

    Fortunately, it does exist (in a 56-pg pamphlet) on Scribd. You can read the pamphlet free online — scroll all the way down — or download as a pdf file if you have a Scribd account. I have an old one that I haven’t used in years, so tomorrow I’ll see if it works.

    https://www.scribd.com/document/61087685/Barack-Obama-s-Rules-for-Revolution-the-Alinsky-Model-by-David-Horowitz-pub-2009

  31. Astonishing insights by Horowitz, corresponding to objective reality, the implications of which are so often politely declined by polite people.

  32. Actually reading Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” — as opposed to reading bits out of context and paraphrased by a disillusioned leftist (as much as I admire David Horowitz) — is a different experience than you might imagine.

    Far from a shadowy Mephistopheles or a fiery Lenin, Alinsky emerges as a cheerful, idealistic yet practical fellow. speaking clearly from his particular trenches. He doesn’t sound crazy or fanatical or evil. For instance, take his most notorious rule.
    _______________________________________________________

    The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

    In conflict tactics there are certain rules that the organizer should always regard as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled as the target and “frozen.” By this I mean that in a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil. There is a constant and somewhat legitimate pass of the buck. In these times of urbanization, complex metropolitan governments, the complexities of interlocked corporations, and the interlocking of political life between cities, counties and metropolitan authorities, that that threatens to loom more and more is hat of identifying the enemy. Obviously there is no point to tactics unless one has a target upon which to center the attacks. One big problem is a constant shifting of responsibility from one jurisdiction to another–individuals and bureaus one after another disclaim responsibility for any change to some other force….

    It should be borne in mind that the target is always trying to shift responsibility to get out of being the target. There is a constant squirming and moving and strategy–purposeful and malicious at times, other times just for straight self-survival–on part of the designated target. The forces for change must keep this in mind and pin that target down securely. If an organization permits responsibility to be diffused and distributed in a number of areas, attack becomes impossible.

    –Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals” (1971) pp.130-132
    ___________________________________________________________

    Perhaps Trump supporters, in the midst of their current war with the Deep Swamp, might have a little “sympathy for the devil.”

  33. Huxley @12:37AM –

    Perhaps Trump supporters, in the midst of their current war with the Deep Swamp, might have a little “sympathy for the devil.”

    We Trump supporters, in the midst of our current war with the Deep Swamp, have zero sympathy for quislings. Cannot get below that for anybody else.

  34. huxley @ 1:00AM –

    Trump is our Alinsky.

    He fights.

    Then why suggest sympathy for Alinsky?

    Why not also suggest that defense of George W. Bush is essential?

    Maybe Carly?

    What is the value of profundity, or acceptability?

  35. Tonawanda: No idea what you’re on about here.

    I’m an ex-leftist who supports Trump. I see things from both sides. And one thing I see quite clearly is Trump’s playbook shares much with Alinsky.

    Hard-core Trump supporters have as much difficulty seeing that similarity as hard-core leftists from the other direction.

    Alinsky was no more the Great Satan than Trump is. Alinsky was a clever fellow who found unorthodox ways to disrupt his opponents just as Trump has.

    Alinsky wasn’t concerned with the “Marquess of Queensbury” rules anymore than Trump is — only Trump supporters are proud when Trump does it, though they spit on the floor when it comes to Alinsky.

    Alinsky was passionate about the Have-Nots in his life, who were indeed being treated unfairly then, just as Trump’s devotion to average Americans, who are indeed getting a raw deal today.

    I love this goddamn country, and we’re going to take it back.

    Alinsky said that then. Trump is saying it now.

  36. Wow, what great Alinsky quotes from David H. Makes me want to read more of both (but then how would I have time to rant here?)

    Trump haters often call him a liar liar liar, yet most folk have trouble coming up with any specific lies of his that are worth specifying.
    (Regrets.
    I’ve had a few.
    But then again,
    Too few to mention…)

    Mexico will “pay for the Wall” is the clearest Trump lie I can think of that’s worth mentioning. Most were true statements, like “I was wiretapped”, which the lying Dem media called lies. Or in other ways the Dem media misquotes or misstates what Trump actually said, into something close which is not true. Like him supporting Nazis because of Charlottesville (“good people on both sides”).

    The “pay for the Wall” was more a campaign promise, not yet fulfilled(?) / broken, more than a lie. Breaking promises is a bit different than lying, tho related.

    It’s a lie if, like in Obama’s “keep your doctor” case, you know that it’s not true as you’re saying it. It’s less of a lie, like Bush’s WMD accusation against Saddam, if you think it’s true when you say it. Both turn out to be false, but the intent from Bush was to be true, while from Obama it was to get power and pass the law.

    Trump’s been doing great on keeping, or trying to keep, campaign promises. He also exaggerates so much and so often that, since the exaggeration is not accurate, he can be and is accused of lying. Yet few Trump-haters will give an exaggeration as an example of his “lie” — since each specific exaggeration / inaccuracy is so trivially unimportant and is more to make a point.

    Those who hate Trump’s exaggerations think that’s a style which is very very
    .
    .
    .
    icky.

  37. “…shares much with Alinsky…”

    Maybe.

    But not this:
    “The mission of Alinsky radicals is a mission of destruction.”

    The question then is does it make much of a difference….

    (To be fair, some might claim that defending against the destroyers automatically makes one a destroyer oneself—or as bad as the destroyers one is protecting against. Some….)

  38. “. . . was passionate about the Have-Nots in his life, who were indeed being treated unfairly then . . .”

    Granted then.

    And due to Alinsky’s considered policies as a political theoretician the ranks of these unfortunate Have-nots have: 1) been diminished to near extinction owing to self-ownership, commercial enterprise and practicing civic virtues; 2) grown ever larger and more dependent on the state for their daily sustenance, due to a radical transformation of their condition; or 3) remained proportionately roughly the same owning to a residual human nature Saul’s inadequate teachings could not eradicate?

    Looks to me as though Alinsky didn’t understand what Machiavelli had in mind, at all. But little surprise there. Machiavelli was a winner. His enterprise (which Alinsky wholly mistakes) was — or is more like, since it endures into the present — a roaring success.

  39. “Mexico will “pay for the Wall” is the clearest Trump lie I can think of that’s worth mentioning.”

    I admit that I take your point- sort of- but as an early (and reluctant and surprised by my support) Trump voter I always thought that claim was merely a laugh line that no one could actually take seriously, anymore than anyone could take seriously an assertion that a room was “freezing” because the temp was slightly cold.

    Yet lately I’ve seen it noted that as a result of Trumpian policies Mexico has deployed thousands of troops at their southern border to prevent the influx of various migrant caravans with the ultimate intent of reaching Uncle Sugar’s Glorious Welfare Paradise.

    Whose paying for that, Trump haters?

    Spoiler: It ain’t us.

  40. “Mexico will “pay for the Wall” is the clearest Trump lie I can think of that’s worth mentioning.”

    The term ‘lie’ does not mean what you fancy it means.

  41. Alinsky was brilliant in defining the strategies with which to destroy decent societies. He also played well-meaning people like suckers for his own personal gain. I saw this firsthand in Rochester NY way back in the 1960s, after the blacks rioted and burned down most of their ‘hood.

    Alinsky dedicated his “Rules For Radicals” to Satan, whom he termed the first radical.

    Q.E.D.

  42. No US president outside of wartime had to face anything like the OPEC embargo that Nixon had. It caused a total dislocation of the US economy. TOTAL. Theoretically, I didn’t agree with his wage and price controls, but he was dealing with a lot of unknowns and there were few/no alternative short-term energy options open. You probably didn’t live through it. Nixon did about as well as anyone could have.

    The President and Congress did not. The appropriate response to the challenges faced between 1968 and 1975 would have been as follows:

    (1) Suspend the convertability of the dollar into gold and allow floating exchange rates,

    (2) make use of the discount rate and open-market operations to limit the rate of increase in the monetary aggregates,

    (3) align tax rates and spending so that the budget was balanced over the course of the business cycle and the size of deficits correlated with capacity utilization,

    (4) fix the minimum cash take home pay for employed persons at 1 / 10th of mean compensation per worker in the economy as a whole, providing for annual adjustments (nominal compensation being what it was in 1971, that would have meant $0.44 an hour for wage-earners, $3.43 per day for per diem employees, and $70 a month for salaried employees),

    (5) institute cost-of-living-adjustments for Social Security benefits,

    (6) replaced the re-imbursement formulae for Medicaid and Medicare with dollar values adjusted annually pari passu with nominal compensation for physicians and limited Medicare and Medicaid spending to a given level of gdp by instituting deductibles adjusted annually.

    (7) replaced a bevy of welfare programs with matching funds for earned-income delivered through tax rebates,

    (8) Amend the personal income tax as follows: a person’s liability would be equal to the following formula: (0.12 x a) + (0.37 x b) – (m x c), where ‘a’ would be any income you had below a certain thresh-hold, ‘b’ any income in excess of the threshold; ‘m’ the sum of yourself, your spouse (if any), and your dependent children; and ‘c’ the $ value of a general credit. The nominal value of the income thresh-hold would be adjusted annually according to the change in nominal compensation per worker and the nominal value of the general credit would be adjusted annually according to the change in nominal personal income per capita. Many people would in those circumstances have a negative liability. The value of the income thresh-hold and the general credit in 1971 would have been around $16,000 and $180.

    (9) Instituted and maintained NO price controls on any good or service not produced by the federal government (and pricing those so produced on an average-cost basis).

    (10) Amended federal labor law to require incorporated enterprises which were (a) subsidiaries of foreign companies or (b) employing people outside the state which issued their original charter (some itinerant sales people aside) to gradually institute statutory bonuses for their employees. Such a bonus would be equal to a fixed % of quarterly earnings (defining labor costs as those paid out aside from any bonuses) which would be distributed among all employees who had passed a six month probation; each employee would be assigned a fractional value and his bonus would be calculated as follows: T x f / S, where “T” is the total pool for bonuses, ‘f’ is the employee’s fractional value, and ‘S’ is the sum of fractional values of the whole body of employees. Bonuses would be declared quarterly and paid out in installments over the quarter.

    (11) Let the chips fall where they would, weathering any recessions induced by price shocks or by restrictive monetary policy. No U turns.

  43. Alinsky dedicated his “Rules For Radicals” to Satan, whom he termed the first radical.

    Q.E.D.

    Cicero: Alinsky was no more a Satanist when he wrote that than Mick Jagger was when Jagger wrote “Sympathy for the Devil.” Alinksy, again like Trump, had a sense of humor and rejoiced in tweaking people to get reactions.

    Alinsky was not a sinister mastermind with infernal intentions to destroy Western Civilization. He was not a big-idea person at all. He was not a Marxist, a Leninist, or a Communist. He was deeply skeptical of any rigid belief system.

    “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.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky

    Alinsky was simply a shrewd organizer who put together a pragmatic toolkit for Have-Nots to push back.

    My problem with Alinsky is, as Horowitz noted above, is the Have/Have-Not framework is valueless, therefore dangerous, once you get beyond Have/Have-Not.

    I wouldn’t want to live under unfettered Alinskyism any more than I would want to live under unfettered capitalism. Unfortunately, progressives today have chosen to run with unfettered Alinskyism.

  44. I submit that until recently they haven’t tended to lie about their most fundamental political agendas.

    I will grant you that, but this is debatably a difference in degree, not in principle. I guess you could argue the extent of Obama’s lying represents a “phase change” that equates to a difference in principle, but I’m squishy about that one.

    I mean, you go back quite a ways, and you’ll still find fundamental differences between what they say and what they do… part of it is that people didn’t tolerate it when politicos lied… “Read my lips, no new taxes” cost Bush substantially with his own base… possibly enough that he lost the re-election because of it.

  45. Some other interesting articles regarding Obama and Alinsky:

    Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis
    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

    Barack Obama and Alinsky’s Rules for Psychopaths
    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2008/09/barack_obama_and_alinskys_rule.html

    The Cloward-Piven Strategy, Saul Alinsky, and Their Influence on Obama
    http://www.floppingaces.net/2011/07/30/the-cloward-piven-strategy-saul-alinsky-and-their-influence-on-obama-reader-post/

    And just because it fits in with the topic of “Obama” and “Great articles by American Thinker”:

    Stop It Already — He’s Not So Smart
    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2011/06/stop_it_already_–_hes_not_so_smart.html

    Plus Hillary and Alinsky:

    Reading Hillary Rodham’s hidden thesis
    http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17388372/ns/politics-decision_08/t/reading-hillary-rodhams-hidden-thesis/

  46. Her adherence to Alinsky explains all the lies weve heard from Hillary over the years. I even recall when Bill was pres & getting some flack over something she would give us that annoying laugh & accuse the vast right wing conspiracy, using ridicule to put down a request for a serious explanation. Alinsky espouses ridicule in his “R for R”

  47. OBloodyHell.

    I consider it a HUGE difference. It was also something I noticed quite early on about Obama.

  48. OBloodyHell:

    And that was not a lie of Bush’s. A lie is when you know it’s a lie. That was a promise that he made that he should not have made because he couldn’t keep it (and didn’t keep it) when pressure was applied.

    Here’s the way it went down:

    Although he did oppose the creation of new taxes as president, the Democratic-controlled Congress proposed increases of existing taxes as a way to reduce the national budget deficit. Bush negotiated with Congress for a budget that met his pledge, but was unable to make a deal with a Senate and House that was controlled by the opposing Democrats. Bush agreed to a compromise, which increased several existing taxes as part of a 1990 budget agreement.

    In the 1992 presidential election campaign, Pat Buchanan repeatedly cited the pledge as an example of a broken promise in his unsuccessful challenge to Bush in the Republican primaries. In the general election, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton, running as a moderate, also cited the quotation and questioned Bush’s trustworthiness. Bush lost his bid for re-election to Clinton, prompting many to suggest his failure to keep the pledge as a reason for his defeat…

    The passage was written by leading speechwriter Peggy Noonan, with Jack Kemp having suggested the basic idea. Including the line caused some controversy, as some Bush advisers felt the language was too strong. The most prominent critic was economic adviser Richard Darman, who crossed the phrase out on an initial draft calling it “stupid and dangerous.” Darman was one of the architects of Reagan’s 1982 tax increase, and expected to have a major policy role in the Bush White House. He felt that such an absolute pledge would handcuff the administration.

    Upon the advice of others however, especially Roger Ailes, the line remained in the speech. It was felt the pledge was needed to keep conservative support in a campaign that was trying to position itself as centrist. It was also hoped it would add an element of toughness to a candidate who was suffering from a perception of being weak and vacillating. At the time Bush was significantly behind Michael Dukakis in the polls, and Darman later argued that the campaign was far more concerned with winning than governing. The strategy appeared successful…

    When in office, Bush found it challenging to keep his promise. The Bush campaign’s figures had been based on the assumption that the high growth of the late 1980s would continue throughout his time in office. Instead, a recession began. By 1990, rising budget deficits, fueled by a growth in mandatory spending and a declining economy, began to greatly increase the federal deficit. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act mandated that the deficit be reduced, or else mandatory cuts unpalatable to both Republicans and Democrats would be made. Reducing this deficit was a difficult task. New cuts of any substance would have to come either from entitlement programs, such as Medicare or Social Security, or from defense.

    The budget for the next fiscal year proved far more difficult. Bush initially presented Congress a proposed budget containing steep spending cuts and no new taxes, but congressional Democrats dismissed this out of hand. Negotiations began, but it was clear little progress could be made without a compromise on taxes. Richard Darman, who had been appointed head of the Office of Management and Budget, and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu both felt such a compromise was necessary. Other prominent Republicans had also come out in favor of a tax increase, including Gerald Ford, Paul O’Neill, and Lamar Alexander.

    At the end of June, Bush released a statement stating that “it is clear to me that both the size of the deficit problem and the need for a package that can be enacted require all of the following: entitlement and mandatory program reform, tax revenue increases, growth incentives, discretionary spending reductions, orderly reductions in defense expenditures, and budget process reform.” The key element was the reference to “tax revenue increases” now being up for negotiation. An immediate furor followed the release. The headline of the New York Post the next day read “Read my Lips: I Lied.” Initially some argued that “tax revenue increases” did not necessarily mean tax increases. For example, he could mean that the government could work to increase taxable income. However, Bush soon confirmed that tax increases were on the table.

    Some of the most enraged over the change in policy were other Republicans, including House Whip Newt Gingrich, the Senate leadership, and Vice President Dan Quayle. They felt Bush had destroyed the Republicans’ most potent election plank for years to come. That the Republican leadership was not consulted before Bush made the deal also angered them. This perceived betrayal quickly led to a bitter feud within the Republican Party.

    A stupid pledge to begin with, then an attempt to compromise with a Democratic Congress, and then the GOP circular firing squad.

    I really don’t think it’s a good example of a lie, though.

  49. https://acim.org/workbook/lesson-26/

    For those dealing with fear of the Leftist alliance:

    1. It is surely obvious that if you can be attacked you are not invulnerable. You see attack as a real threat. That is because you believe that you can really attack. And what would have effects through you must also have effects on you. It is this law that will ultimately save you, but you are misusing it now. You must therefore learn how it can be used for your own best interests, rather than against them.

    2. Because your attack thoughts will be projected, you will fear attack. And if you fear attack, you must believe that you are not invulnerable. Attack thoughts therefore make you vulnerable in your own mind, which is where the attack thoughts are. Attack thoughts and invulnerability cannot be accepted together. They contradict each other.

    3. The idea for today introduces the thought that you always at­tack yourself first. If attack thoughts must entail the belief that you are vulnerable, their effect is to weaken you in your own eyes. Thus they have attacked your perception of yourself. And because you believe in them, you can no longer believe in yourself. A false image of yourself has come to take the place of what you are.

    4. Practice with today’s idea will help you to understand that vulnerability or invulnerability is the result of your own thoughts. Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Noth­ing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulner­able. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so.

    5. Six practice periods are required in applying today’s idea. A full two minutes should be attempted for each of them, although the time may be reduced to a minute if the discomfort is too great. Do not reduce it further.

    6. The practice period should begin with repeating the idea for today, then closing your eyes and reviewing the unresolved ques­tions whose outcomes are causing you concern. The concern may take the form of depression, worry, anger, a sense of imposition, fear, foreboding or preoccupation. Any problem as yet unsettled that tends to recur in your thoughts during the day is a suitable subject. You will not be able to use very many for any one practice period, because a longer time than usual should be spent with each one. Today’s idea should be applied as follows:

    7. First, name the situation:

    I am concerned about _________.

    Then go over every possible outcome that has occurred to you in that connection and which has caused you concern, referring to each one quite specifically, saying:

    I am afraid _________ will happen.

    8. If you are doing the exercises properly, you should have some five or six distressing possibilities available for each situation you use, and quite possibly more. It is much more helpful to cover a few situations thoroughly than to touch on a larger number. As the list of anticipated outcomes for each situation continues, you will probably find some of them, especially those that occur to you toward the end, less acceptable to you. Try, however, to treat them all alike to whatever extent you can.

    9. After you have named each outcome of which you are afraid, tell yourself:

    That thought is an attack upon myself.

  50. I saw this firsthand in Rochester NY way back in the 1960s, after the blacks rioted and burned down most of their ‘hood.

    I grew up there. There was never a time in my memory when the slums weren’t there and passably populated. Shabby, but there.

  51. FWIW — I was a third-string organizer back in the 80s. Nothing big. I tabled on street corners, attended demos, worked with my affinity group, volunteered at the Nuclear Freeze office and oversaw Congressional letter-writing campaigns. (How quaint!)

    Anyway. I read Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” then and thought nothing of it. I still have a copy. I’ve read or browsed books which horrified me — “Mein Kampf” and the Koran for two — but RFR was not one of them.

    I just don’t recognize the Alinsky I once read as the Evil Guy Behind It All conservatives are agog about. In the chapter “Of Means and Ends,” which seems to be the basis of the Alinksy lie accusations, Alinsky cites and quotes historical monsters like Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Gandhi for the distance between what they said at one time and something different they said later.

    Alinsky chides his readers for expecting something better and advises them that producing political results usually entails things you don’t see in Disney family entertainment. (Though the Disney bit is me.)

  52. Have been off the grid a lot this fall, but this conversation calls out for an excerpt on David Horowitz about his turn from the Left. It’s very long, but it covers a lot of the territory Neo addresses often in her blog. DH is kind of a one-man-band for the Left-Right contest. It also shows that many of the political and social events of current interest are NOT NEW.

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/11/david-horowitz-journey-left-right/

    The Life and Work of David Horowitz
    By JAMIE GLAZOV
    November 10, 2015 5:00 PM

    In 1956, when Horowitz was 17, the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, delivered a secret speech in the Kremlin about the crimes of Stalin, causing a crisis among the faithful. Party members who had previously dismissed as “slander” claims by their opponents that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions now had no choice but to admit that the charges were true. They left the party in a mass exodus that killed the CPUSA as a force in American political life, although for many it was impossible to give up the socialist faith.

    In September 1974 he recruited the Ramparts bookkeeper, Betty Van Patter, to maintain the accounts of the tax-exempt foundation he had created to manage the Panther school. In December, Van Patter’s bludgeoned body was found floating in San Francisco Bay. The police were convinced she had been murdered by members of the Panther Party, but local prosecutors were unable to bring an indictment, and the federal government, under siege from the Left, steered clear of this crime, as did the press, which had largely bought into the notion that the Panthers had been targeted for destruction by racist law enforcement.

    Entering what would become a ten-year, slow-motion transformation from theorist of the Left to its worst enemy, Horowitz undertook his own inquiry into the murder. As he collided with denial and threats of retribution if he continued to search, he was forced to confront three stark facts: His New Left outlook was unable to explain the events that had overtaken him; his lifelong friends and associates on the Left were now a threat to his safety, since they would instinctively defend the Panther vanguard; and no one among them really cared about the murder of an innocent woman, because the murderers were their political friends.

    Forced to look at his own commitments in a way he had never allowed himself to do before, Horowitz realized that it was the enemies of the Left who had been correct in their assessment of the Panthers, just as they had been correct in their assessment of the Soviet Union, while the Left had been disastrously wrong. The Panthers were not political militants and victims of police repression. They were ghetto thugs running a con on credulous white supporters and committing crimes against vulnerable black citizens. It was the Left and its “revolution” that had conferred on them the aura of a political vanguard, protecting them from being held accountable for their deeds.

    In pursuing his investigation of Betty Van Patter’s death, Horowitz discovered that the Panthers had murdered more than a dozen people in the course of conducting extortion, prostitution, and drug rackets in the Oakland ghetto. And yet, to his growing bewilderment, the Panthers continued to enjoy the support of the American Left, the Democratic party, Bay-area trade unions, and even the Oakland business establishment.

    In his essay “Still No Regrets,” Horowitz wrote: “A library of memoirs by aging new leftists and ‘progressive’ academics recall the rebellions of the 1960s. But hardly a page in any of them has the basic honesty — or sheer decency — to say, ‘Yes, we supported these murderers and those spies, and the agents of that evil empire,’ or to say so without an alibi. I’d like to hear even one of these advocates of ‘social justice’ make this simple acknowledgement: ‘We greatly exaggerated the sins of America and underestimated its decencies and virtues, and we’re sorry.’”

    More peasants were killed in Indochina in the ?rst three years of Communist rule than had been killed on both sides during the 13 years of the anti-Communist war.
    As the Indochinese tragedy unfolded, Horowitz was struck again by how the Left refused to hold itself accountable for the result it had fought so hard for — in this case, a Communist victory. It evidently could not have cared less about the new suffering of the people in whose name it had once purported to speak. He became increasingly convinced, as Peter Collier had tried to persuade him, that “the element of malice played a larger role in the motives of the left than I had been willing to accept.” If the Left really wanted a better world, why was it so indifferent to the terrible consequences of its own ideas and practices?

    Ends really are inextricable from means.

    The rest of his story tells you all you need to know about the Left’s subversion of American institutions. NOTE: DH was more than just a “former believer” – he was a major figure intellectually and a media super-star for the Left, whose change in beliefs was research & reality based, deeply thoughtful, and devastatingly challenging.

    In November 1984, Horowitz turned another corner. He cast his ?rst Republican ballot, for Ronald Reagan. Shortly thereafter he learned that Peter Collier had done the same. On March 17, 1985, he and Collier wrote a cover story for the Sunday magazine of the Washington Post, “Lefties for Reagan,” and explained their vote by describing what they had seen and done while fighting against “Amerikkka” as part of the Left. As they expected, the article inspired vitriolic responses from their former comrades and forced them to re-enter the political arena to wage what became a two-person war against the Sixties Left.
    Dissecting the Left’s hypocrisy now became a Horowitz métier. As a former believer, he could attack the progressive myth with the familiarity of an insider. He and Collier delivered their ?rst stunning blow in Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts about the ’60s, a 1989 book in which they analyzed the legacy of the New Left and its corrosive effects on American culture. Destructive Generation represented the ?rst dissent from the celebration of the 1960s that had been issuing forth in volume after volume from publishing companies headed by former New Leftists.
    Before Collier and Horowitz turned on the Left, they had enjoyed front-page reviews in the New York Times Book Review and bestseller status for their multi-generational biographies. But Destructive Generation marked their eclipse in the literary culture. As Horowitz later recalled, “Our books, once prominently reviewed everywhere, were now equally ignored. With a few notable exceptions, we became pariahs and un-persons in mainstream intellectual circles.” The last review of a Horowitz book in The New York Review of Books was in 1985, the very spring that he and Collier announced they had voted for Reagan.

    Horowitz’s next work, Radical Son, published in 1997, was powerful enough that even his enemies had to admit that it called up comparisons to Whittaker Chambers’s Witness and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon.

    A central theme of The Politics of Bad Faith [1998 book of essays] is the refusal of radicals to accept what the implications of the collapse of Communism are for the future of socialism. “For radicals, it is not socialism,” Horowitz writes, “but only the language of socialism that is ?nally dead. To be reborn, the left had only to rename itself in terms that did not carry the memories of insurmountable defeat, to appropriate a past that could still be victorious.” Thus leftists now called themselves “progressives,” and even “liberals.”

    Horowitz’s next book, Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes, published in 1999, quickly became the most controversial work the author had written.It addressed the new cultural dimensions of the radical cause, specifically the determination to make race function the way class had in the traditional Marxist paradigm. White males were demonized as an ersatz ruling class responsible for every social disparity between racial groups and genders. Behind the idea that all blacks are victims all the time, according to Horowitz, lies the desire to perpetuate the failed Marxist vision and the social war it justifies.

    Conservatives generally, and Republicans in particular, either fail to understand that there is a political war taking place, or disapprove of the fact that there is. Conservatives approach politics as a series of management issues, and hope to impose limits on what government may do. Their paradigm is based on individualism, compromise, and partial solutions. This puts conservatives at a distinct disadvantage in political combat with the Left, whose paradigm of oppression and liberation inspires missionary zeal and is perfectly suited to aggressive tactics and no-holds-barred combat. Horowitz’s political strategy is to turn the tables on the Left, framing “liberals” and “progressives” as the actual oppressors of minorities and the poor.

    In How to Beat the Democrats and Other Subversive Ideas (2000), Horowitz returned to these themes.
    In the spring of 2001, Horowitz put his own advice to the test by launching an effort to oppose the Left’s campaign to secure reparations for slavery 137 years after the fact as “bad for blacks and racist too.” Horowitz conducted his opposition by taking out ads in college newspapers across the country — or attempting to. Forty college papers refused to print the ad, generating a furor over free speech.Donald Downs, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, summed up the reaction: “The Horowitz controversy has laid bare the cultural and intellectual splits that rivet the contemporary university.” When Horowitz was scheduled to speak at the University of California, Berkeley, university officials assigned 30 armed guards to protect him. Subsequently, and for the rest of his career, Horowitz was unable to speak on campuses without a security presence. In the fall of 2001, he published an account of these events, which he called Uncivil Wars.

    The reparations campaign exposed the hostility of American campuses to ideas that challenged the orthodoxies of the Left. One consequence of this was the absence of any interest on campus in Horowitz’s own work. To provide a guide to the growing corpus of his writings, he decided to publish a representative selection of his articles and excerpts from his books along with a bibliography of his writings. The book, titled Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey, was published in 2003.

    in the spring of 2003 he drafted an “Academic Bill of Rights” based on the classic 1915 statement on academic freedom by the American Association of University Professors. Over the next seven years Horowitz attempted to persuade universities to adopt a code to ensure that students would have access to views on more than one side of controversial issues and that faculty would conduct themselves professionally in the classroom, and refrain from using their authority to indoctrinate students in partisan agendas.

    Having himself once been part of a progressive movement that identified with America’s enemies, Horowitz was struck by the Democrats’ reluctance to stop Saddam Hussein’s aggression during the first Gulf War: Only ten Democratic senators supported the coalition that George H. W. Bush had assembled to reverse Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait. This was a sign of the commanding role the Left had assumed in the Democratic party. Since Saddam Hussein was one of the true monsters of the 20th century and did not justify his atrocities by appeals to “social justice,” it also revealed the disturbing lengths to which the Left would go to act on its hostility to America.

    In 2014, Horowitz resumed his strategic lessons for Republicans and conservatives in Take No Prisoners: The Battle Plan for Defeating the Left, which is a summary statement of his 20 years of thinking about political warfare. According to Horowitz, conservatives fail to employ a political language that speaks to voters’ emotions, and fail to highlight the moral imperative of opposing policies that are destructive to the poor and the vulnerable, and ultimately to all Americans. Progressives view themselves as social redeemers, as missionaries seeking to transform the world, which inspires their will to win. Conservatives are pragmatists whose goals are specific, practical, and modest by comparison. But it is only by embracing an inspiring mission as defenders of freedom and champions of the victims of progressive policies that conservatives can confront the fire of the Left with a fire of their own.

    In You’re Going to Be Dead One Day, we see how far Horowitz has escaped from his father’s shadow and from the destructive discontent that lies at the heart of the radical creed. While looking unflinchingly at human limitations and the death that awaits us all, his story is nonetheless one of tenuous hope, even joy.

    Some sectors of intellectual conservatism have kept a distance from Horowitz, re?ecting a discomfort with his aggressive political and literary style. Norman Podhoretz, the former editor of Commentary, observes: “There’s his polemical style, which still resembles the one invented by the left. Even though it has made the left its target, there are conservatives, I think, who feel uncomfortable with it.”
    The historian Richard Pipes agrees: “It may have to do with style and decorum. Conservatives do not like aggressive argumentation — they prefer to stand above the fray. For the same reason they ignore Rush Limbaugh, for all his enormous success and in?uence. It is a weakness of the conservative movement, this fear of giving battle.”

    Yet while some conservatives have kept him at arm’s length, it cannot be denied that Horowitz has enjoyed signi?cant support in the conservative movement generally and even from the conservative media.

    Contains what looks like a full bibliography & ample biographical details.

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