BARACK OBAMA’S RULES FOR REVOLUTION – David Horowitz (2009)

It is a well known that President Obama is an admirer of the late Saul Alinsky.  Better put, he is an advocate of Alinksy’s political ideology.  Just before Obama was elected as President, he uttered these words that should be permanently etched onto every American mind: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”  Americans should remember these words because this is an important promise that the president has kept.  He is indeed, fundamentally transforming America.  David Horowitz demonstrates how Obama’s worldview is a reflection of Saul Alinksky is his thought-provoking book, Barak Obama’s Rules For Revoltution.  

Horowitz introduces readers to Saul Alinsky, a Chicago native who died in 1972.  Alinsky blamed our capitalist society for creating dangerous criminals and maintained, in the words of Horowitz that “Criminality was not a character problem but a result of the social environment, in particular, the system of private property and individual rights, which radicals like him were determined to change.”  So from the onset, readers get an inside look at the Marxist worldview that is part of the warp and woof of Alinksy’s worldview.  In typical Marxist terms, Alinksy’s goal was “to take power from the Haves and give it to the Have-nots.”

The author notes, “Within the framework of their revolutionary agenda, they are flexible and opportunistic and will say anything (and pretend to be anything) to get what they want, which is resources and power.”  An example of this strategy may be seen in President Obama’s insistence that Americans are free to keep their health care.  On July 17, 2009 the president stated emphatically, “If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance, period.  End of story.”  In fact, one journalist chronicled how the president made similar affirmations at least 36 times!

While the president never met Alinksy, he was hired by the Alinksy team in 1986 where he became popular as a community organizer.  Horowitz alerts readers to the political ideology of Alinksy by defining what a true radical is.  He says, “He [the radical] is not a reformer of the system but its would-be destroyer.  In his own mind, the radical is building his own kingdom which to him is a kingdom of heaven on earth.”  Again, this is simply rehashed Marxism put into contemporary terms, the building of a utopian society.

Alinsky, a self-proclaimed admirer of Lenin and Castro believes that the radical organizer “does not have a fixed truth – truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.  He is a political relativist.”  He adds, “While liberals are most adept at breaking their own necks with their tongues, radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of conservatives.”

Horowitz focuses for the most part on Alinksy and gives readers the freedom to determine what extent his disciples will adhere to his worldview.  The book is a reminder that Marxism, Socialism and Communism always results in devastation.  It should serve a wake-up call for Americans who cherish their liberty.