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Watching the powerful “speak truth to power” — 14 Comments

  1. Molly NH:

    There’s a trick to it.

    Google the title, and click on the link, and it will usually get you there. I’m not a subscriber, and that’s how I usually do it. It doesn’t always work, but most of the time it does.

  2. Neo: “Most members of the press were/are fully on board, and they don’t think there’s any chance the crocodile will ever eat them.”

    They are crocodiles. The Narrative contest for the zeitgeist is a main creative destructive component of the activist game.

    Of course, too, to stretch the analogy, crocodiles are cannibals.

  3. Powerline has these excerpts . . .

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/04/the-alinsky-way-of-governing.php#!

    BEGIN PASTE

    Since the article is behind the Journal‘s paywall, a couple of excerpts:

    Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, recently caused a stir by sending letters to seven university presidents seeking background information on scientists and professors who had given congressional testimony that failed to endorse what is the conventional wisdom in some quarters regarding climate change. One of the targets was Steven Hayward, a colleague of mine at Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy. . .

    How did it come to this? The inability of politicians to confront another’s argument, much less to attempt to persuade the other side, has become standard operating procedure. Now this toxic approach is extending to the broader world of policy–including scientific research. Instead of evaluating the quality of the research, opponents make heavy-handed insinuations about who funds it–as though that matters if the science is sound. And now just about every climate scientist employed by an American university knows that Washington is watching.

    More broadly, what has happened is that a generation of American politicians who came of age during Saul Alinsky’s lifetime has moved into positions of institutional power that he so often derided as “the enemy.” They are showing an inability to leave behind Alinsky’s tactics that were intended for the weak against the strong. Civil discourse and academic freedom suffer while the “Prince” becomes more powerful.

    END PASTE

  4. “They are showing an inability to leave behind Alinsky’s tactics”

    “Inability”?

    Why would they do that regardless of ability to leave it behind? It’s competition. That’s how they win the activist game and the activist game is the only social cultural/political game there is.

  5. }}}Makes you wonder why the MSM didn’t expose the fact that Obama was an Alinskyite, what that meant, and why it was something to worry about.

    And I will point out right here, Hillary is an even BIGGER Alinskyite than Obama.

  6. Good old Alinsky, the bastard who dedicated his book to Satan.

    Yes, really. Because he was the “first rebel” and all.

    We’re going to have to develop a taste for guerrilla war.

  7. Neo: “Most members of the press were/are fully on board, and they don’t think there’s any chance the crocodile will ever eat them.”

    True, very true. Sorry I can’t remember who said it. But, I believe it was one of the commenters here:

    “The problem with those who support dictatorships is that they think they will get to be the dictator.”

    I’ve taken that exact phrasing and used it when talking to liberals who support any kind of “our betters know better” attitude and it seems to have opened a couple of eyes. But, they do seem to close shut again.

    I think the press is very much like that.

  8. If you type the headline of the WSJ article into your browser and pick it up that way, usually you can get in.

    What does ‘speaking truth to power’ mean?

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