Principles for Defeating Alinsky Tactics

1. Anticipate that the tactics will be used against you. You MUST be prepared with a response that does four things: (1) The response must adequately answer and/or deflect the charge; (2) The response must be sincere and honest; (3) The response must reveal the tactics they are using; (4) The response must flip the tactic and transfer the pressure from you to your opponent.
2. Define yourself positively before your opposition has the chance to define you.
3. Use ridicule to your advantage.   There are two things to keep in mind when using ridicule: (1) ridiculing your opponent can be effective if it is funny and not mean-spirited; (2) ridiculing yourself in a self-deprecating manner can be just as effective as ridiculing your opponent.
4. Emulate their use of Alinsky’s fourth rule – make them live up to their own book of rules.
5. Force your opponent to back up any and all accusations made against you.
6. Refuse to be targeted, and refuse to be smeared with the deeds of others.
7. Fight fire with fire.
8. Embrace religion, and not run from it.
9. Use what your opposition gives you.
10. Take away their talking points.
11. Be open and honest about your faults and failures from the outset. If your position on an issue has evolved, then admit it and explain what changed your mind. Remember, even Ronald Reagan was a Democrat at one time.
12. Never apologize for success, and extol the virtues of opportunity and individual achievement.
13. Always to make your argument, and your candidacy, about America. America’s best days are still square in front of her. NEVER apologize for America!
14. Not to allow yourself to be lumped in with any group or any less than flattering ideology.
15. Always to project America as strong.
16. Think more than one move ahead.
17. Know both sides of the issue.
18. Control the pressure.   Always force your opponent to react.
19. “Don’t fall for ‘implied’ attacks”.
20. Remember that the sooner you reveal anything that can be used against you – the sooner it will become old news.

Source: Rules for Radicals Defeated: A Practical Guide for Defeating Obama/Alinsky Tactics (2012) by Jeff Hedgpeth.

Good advice to anyone debating the Left especially conservative politicians even if Obama is out of office. The Left still use Alinksy tactics. Hillary Clinton sure does.

6 Stories of Super Successes Who Overcame Failure

From Entrepreneur.com (Dec. 8, 2014):

Failure is not the alternative to success. It’s something to be avoided, but it’s also only a temporary setback on a bigger, more significant course. Everybody encounters failure at one point or another. What truly matters is how you react to and learn from that failure.

Take the stories of these six entrepreneurs. Their stories end in massive success, but all of them are rooted in failure. They’re perfect examples of why failure should never stop you from following your vision.

1. Arianna Huffington got rejected by 36 publishers.
2. Bill Gates watched his first company crumble.
3. George Steinbrenner bankrupted a team.
4. Walt Disney was told he lacked creativity.
5. Steve Jobs was booted from his own company.
6. Milton Hershey started three candy companies before Hershey's.

Draw inspiration from these stories the next time you experience failure, no matter the scale. In the moment, some failure might seem like the end of the road, but remember, there are countless successful men and women in the world today who are only enjoying success because they decided to push past the inevitable bleakness of failure.

Learn from your mistakes, reflect and accept the failure, but revisit your passion and keep pursuing your goals no matter what.  [read more]

 

Marijuana Use Linked to Increased Risk of Dying from High Blood Pressure

From Live Science.com (Aug. 9):

Smoking pot is often considered safer than smoking cigarettes, but a new study suggests that marijuana use may increase a person's risk of death from high blood pressure.

Over the two-decade-long study period, marijuana users, whose level and frequency of smoking was not assessed in the study, had a more than threefold greater risk of dying from hypertension than nonusers. This increase in risk was greater than that associated with cigarette smoking, the researchers said.

"Support for liberal marijuana use is partly due to claims that it is beneficial, and possibly not harmful, to health," lead study author Barbara Yankey, a doctoral student of epidemiology and biostatistics at Georgia State University, said in a statement. "However, there is little research on the impact of marijuana use on cardiovascular and [stroke] mortality." [read more]

Thoughts of Max Picard

Only in a world of total discontinuity could a nullity such as Hitler become Führer, because only where everything is disjointed has comparison fallen into disuse. There was only Hitler, the nullity, before everybody’s eyes, and in this instable world wherein everything was changing at every moment one was glad that at least the one nullity, Hitler, remained stable before one’s eyes. An orderly world, a hierarchy, would automatically have placed the nullity, Hitler, into nothingness; he could not have been noticed. Hitler was the excrement of a diabolical world; a world of truth in its order would have pushed him aside. . . .

There is no permanence in this world of discontinuity. The ego exists only in the moment and for the moment. The individual, therefore, can have no evolution in the dimension of time. Everything has to be done in far too little time; hence, the individual gets restless and nervous. In discontinuity the individual also lacks context with his own personal history; he is lacking in the possibility of joining an experience with the context of previous experiences. Since life is lived solely in the moment and for the moment, the moment must carry all the burden; if the experience of a moment is grave, the individual is hit all the harder because the burden cannot be distributed through context with other things. That is what aggravates, exhausts, and unnerves the individual. The ego cries out loud; unable to expand in the dimension of time, the ego in its crying need explodes itself into the dimension of space. Then Hitler came and took over the job of crying into space for all the others, and because his was the loudest cry, he was accepted by all.

Western capitalism doesn’t have any humor either, today, and that comes from the fact that the West has lost its faith. A sense of humor can exist only in a world of faith. For in humor is a trace of the smile with which God observes the mistakes of man. That trace of God’s smile, in man, is our sense of humor.

Source: “Max Picard: A Man of Vision in Our Time.” The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].

From Kleenex to Zippers: The Unpredictable Results of Entrepreneurs

Commentary from Burton W. Folsom on FEE.org:

The 1920s was a decade that taught us many lessons in economics—perhaps foremost among them is that cutting tax rates encouraged entrepreneurs to invest in a variety of revolutionary products, from radios to refrigerators.

A corollary lesson, however, is also important: When entrepreneurs are turned loose and their property rights are protected, what they eventually produce can’t be predicted—even by them. I want to describe four products that became part of American life in the 1920s—Kleenex tissues, the zipper, air conditioning, and Scotch tape.

Kimberly-Clark developed the material in Kleenex tissues from wood pulp in World War I as a substitute for cotton, which was in short supply. Originally called cellucotton, it was first used in wadded form as a surgical dressing. Later in the war, in its modern tissue form, it was used as a filter in gas masks.

After the war Kimberly-Clark had large supplies of cellucotton on hand and the company searched for years for new uses for their product. Finally, in 1924 the cellucotton became Kleenex tissues. The marketing staff at Kimberly-Clark believed the tissues had a niche market for removing cold cream and other cosmetics. Endorsements from Hollywood stars such as Helen Hayes and Gertrude Lawrence promoted Kleenex as soft and efficient for cleaning their faces.

Fortunately for Kimberly-Clark, their marketers were wise enough to read their mail, and expand their market. Many letters from customers asked,“Why don’t you ever say it’s good for blowing your nose?” That led the company to do test-marketing—and yes, indeed, more customers preferred Kleenex tissues to handkerchiefs. In fact, the company now boasted that tissues were healthier because they were disposable. “Don’t put a cold in your pocket” was the theme of the next wave of advertising. In 1929 Kimberly-Clark introduced the pop-up box. Sales grew further and were even strong during the Great Depression of the 1930s. [read more]

No planned economy can create products like those named in the article above. Why? Because socialism and communism cannot manufacture creativity and innovation. Although a planned economy can hamper creativity and innovation.

It is interesting to note that the most inventions came out of the 1920s when conservative Calvin Coolidge was president. Coincidence? I’ll let the reader decide.

Cannabis reduces creativity, but user generally not aware

From Science Daily.com (October 4, 2016):

Regular users of cannabis are less aware of their own mistakes, and they are not good at creative thinking. This is the conclusion drawn by psychologist Mikael Kowal from his research on the effects of cannabis. PhD defence 6 October.

Dopamine

Kowal conducted experiments on 40 regular users of cannabis. The control group of 20 non-users were given a placebo. Kowal studied the direct and chronic effects of cannabis on dopamine-related functions, such as creative thinking and the ability to recognise one's own mistakes. The brain chemical dopamine is important for the proper working of the brain and also plays a role in learning performance.

Less good at brainstorming

Kowal's research showed that cannabis users were less able to brainstorm, a mental process that is crucial for creative performance: 'There is a widespread belief among users that these drugs enhance creativity. This experiment disproves that belief.'

Poor at recognising mistakes

Kowal also demonstrated that for chronic users the brain processes involved in monitoring mistakes also work less effectively. A high dose of cannabis seems to influence both the unconscious processing of mistakes and also the later and more conscious stages of error processing. Kowal: 'It is important that we gather more knowledge about the effects of cannabis on a person's ability to detect mistakes. This can help with putting together a treatment programme for drug addiction.'  [read more]

I don’t think the dopers are aware of much around them unless they are low on Doritos. Or dope for that matter.

Thoughts of George Santayana

Individualism is the only ideal possible; and if individuals are subordinated to the state, it is only that they may fulfill their devotion to things rational and impersonal, a higher individualism. For a time, democracy and individualism exhibit a parallel growth; but presently democratic legislation presumes to regulate all things, and industrial liberalism, supported by democracy, aspires to replace individuality by efficient standardization; thus the man who loves beauty and variety will endeavor (like Socrates in Dialogues in Limbo) to puncture the bubbles of social planners who have forgotten the real aim of society, the life of mind and art.

“If you refuse to move in the prescribed direction, you are not simply different, you are arrested and perverse. The savage must not remain a savage, nor the nun a nun, and China must not keep its wall.”

“A man without traditions, if he could only be materially well equipped, would be purer, more rational, more virtuous than if he had been an heir to anything. Weh dir, dass du ein Enkel bist! Blessed are the orphans, for they shall deserve to have children; blessed the American!”

“Liberalism has merely cleared a field in which every soul and every corporate interest may fight with every other for domination. Whoever is victorious in this struggle will make an end of liberalism; and the new order, which will deem itself saved, will have to defend itself in the following age against a new crop of rebels.”

Source: “George Santayana Buries Liberalism.” The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].

The text in quotes are the actually thoughts of George Santayana about the Left believes.

Old Planned Parenthood pamphlet: Abortion is ‘dangerous’ to the ‘life and health’ of women

From Live Action.org (June 11):

An undated pamphlet from Planned Parenthood Federation of America, formerly named the Birth Control Federation of America, reveals that abortion is not health care, as the abortion giant now unabashedly claims. Instead, the pamphlet, housed online by Smith College Libraries, describes abortion as a procedure that “kills life after it has begun” and “dangerous” to the “life and health” of the mother.

In discussing birth control, it reads: “Abortion kills life after it has begun. … Abortion is dangerous to your life and health.”

The back of the pamphlet also contains Planned Parenthood’s iconic slogan, “every child a wanted child,” which may stem from the eugenics movement. Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a staunch eugenicist who held racist affiliations and believed in the elimination of certain groups of people. Sanger, who despised the poor, the sick, the disabled, and immigrants, noted that one of the methods to “weed out the unfit” and breed a “pure” human race is through birth control. [read more]

Interesting. Planned Parenthood would probably say now, unlike back then, abortions are safe.

How Trump Could Force Congress and Its Staff to Live Under Obamacare

From The Daily Signal.com (July 31):

President Donald Trump could have Congress in an uncomfortable corner over the lawmakers’ exemption, and that of their staff, from Obamacare.

“This is one more instance of Congress passing an unpleasant, expensive, onerous law on citizens and then conferring a valuable benefit on itself,” Joe Morris, former general counsel for the Office of Personnel Management, told The Daily Signal.

Over the weekend, Trump tweeted that he could take away the exemption, granted by the Obama administration’s Office of Personnel Management, to prod Congress toward agreement on getting rid of Obamacare.

The provision provides what critics say is tantamount to an unconstitutional waiver for members of Congress and their staff from rules mandated by the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.

To exempt themselves, the 535 lawmakers and their more than 13,000 staffers are treated as if they were a small business employing fewer than 50 workers.

The exemption policy was created in an OPM directive under President Barack Obama, and could easily be overturned by Trump, said Morris, who worked at the agency during the Reagan administration.

How the Exemption Works

Not a single Republican voted to pass Obamacare. Under a subsection of the Affordable Care Act, Democrats voted Congress out of its own employer-sponsored Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. The provision required members and House and Senate staff to enroll in the new health insurance exchanges created for other Americans under the law.

Obamacare subsidies are capped so that no one with income higher than $48,000 gets a subsidy. Members of Congress earn $174,00 annually.

On Aug. 7, 2013, the OPM—which administers the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program—determined that members of Congress and staff still could enroll in the program through the SHOP Exchange, a health insurance exchange set up to provide special insurance subsidies for small businesses in Washington, D.C., with fewer than 50 employees. [read more]

It seems the Ruling class always exempt themselves from laws they make for everyone else. Obamacare is no exception. President Trump gave plenty of time for Congress to repeal and replace the Unaffordable N0-Care Act. He should take Congress’ exemption away. Maybe, that’ll give them an incentive to get rid of the crappy socialized healthcare bill. Besides they should live under the stupid law they created.

Orestes Brownson and the Just Society Part 2

To the Socialist, says Brownson, poverty, obscurity, and physical suffering are positive evils, because the Socialist does not perceive that these challenges are put into the world to save us from apathy and sloth and indifference. The Socialist would condemn humanity to a condition of permanent injustice, in which no man could hope for what is his due, the right to exercise his talents given him by God; the Socialist would keep us all in perpetual childhood:

Veiling itself under Christian forms, attempting to distinguish between Christianity and the Church, claiming for itself the authority and immense popularity of the Gospel, denouncing Christianity in the name of Christianity, discarding the Bible in the name of the Bible, and defying God in the name of God, Socialism conceals from the undiscriminating multitude its true character, and, appealing to the dominant sentiment of the age and to some of our strongest natural inclinations and passions, it asserts itself with terrific power, and rolls on its career of devastation and death with a force that human beings, in themselves, are impotent to resist. Men are assimilated to it by all the power of their own nature, and by all their reverence for religion. Their very faith and charity are perverted, and their noblest sympathies and their sublimest hopes are made subservient to their basest passions and their most groveling propensities. Here is the secret of the strength of Socialism, and here is the principal source of its danger.

The United States was not brought into being to accomplish the work of Socialism. For every living nation, Brownson wrote in The American Republic, “has an idea given it by Providence to realize, and whose realization is its special work, mission, or destiny.” The Jews were chosen to preserve traditions, and so that the Messiah might arise; the Greeks were chosen for the realizing of art, science, and philosophy; the Romans were chosen for the developing of the state, law, and jurisprudence. And the Americans, too, have been appointed to a providential mission, continuing the work of Greece and Rome, but accomplishing yet more. The American Republic is to reconcile liberty with law:

Yet its mission is not so much the realization of liberty as the realization of the true idea of the state, which secures at once the authority of the public and the freedom of the individual—the sovereignty of the people without social despotism, and individual freedom without anarchy. In other words, its mission is to bring out in its life the dialectic union of authority and liberty, of the natural rights of man and those of society. The Greek and Roman republics asserted the state to the detriment of individual freedom; modern republics either do the same, or assert individual freedom to the detriment of the state. The American republic has been instituted by Providence to realize the freedom of each with advantage to the other.

Source: “Orestes Brownson and the Just Society.” The Essential Russell Kirk. Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].

Character and Destiny

An excerpt from a Hillsdale College lecture from historian David McCullough (February 15, 2005):

Now those who wrote the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia that fateful summer of 1776 were not superhuman by any means. Every single one had his flaws, his failings, his weaknesses. Some of them ardently disliked others of them. Every one of them did things in his life he regretted. But the fact that they could rise to the occasion as they did, these imperfect human beings, and do what they did is also, of course, a testimony to their humanity. We are not just known by our failings, by our weaknesses, by our sins. We are known by being capable of rising to the occasion and exhibiting not just a sense of direction, but strength.

The Greeks said that character is destiny, and the more I read and understand of history, the more convinced I am that they were right. You look at the great paintings by John Trumbull or Charles Wilson Peale or Copley or Gilbert Stuart of those remarkable people who were present at the creation of our nation, the Founders as we call them. Those aren't just likenesses. They are delineations of character and were intended to be. And we need to understand them, and we need to understand that they knew that what they had created was no more perfect than they were. And that has been to our advantage. It has been good for us that it wasn't all just handed to us in perfect condition, all ready to run in perpetuity—that it needed to be worked at and improved and made to work better. There’s a wonderful incident that took place at the Cambria Iron Company in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the 19th century, when they were building the first Bessemer steel machinery, adapted from what had been seen of the Bessemer process in Britain. There was a German engineer named John Fritz, and after working for months to get this machinery finished, he came into the plant one morning, and he said, ”Alright boys, let’s start her up and see why she doesn't work.“ That’s very American. We will find out what’s not working right and we will fix it, and then maybe it will work right. That’s been our star, that’s what we've guided on.

I have just returned from a cruise through the Panama Canal. I think often about why the French failed at Panama and why we succeeded. One of the reasons we succeeded is that we were gifted, we were attuned to adaptation, to doing what works, whereas they were trained to do everything in a certain way. We have a gift for improvisation. We improvise in jazz; we improvise in much of our architectural breakthroughs. Improvisation is one of our traits as a nation, as a people, because it was essential, it was necessary, because we were doing again and again and again what hadn't been done before.

Keep in mind that when we were founded by those people in the late 18th century, none of them had had any prior experience in either revolutions or nation-making. They were, as we would say, winging it. And they were idealistic and they were young. We see their faces in the old paintings done later in their lives or looking at us from the money in our wallets, and we see the awkward teeth and the powdered hair, and we think of them as elder statesmen. But George Washington, when he took command of the continental army at Cambridge in 1775, was 43 years old, and he was the oldest of them. Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. John Adams was 40. Benjamin Rush—one of the most interesting of them all and one of the founders of the antislavery movement in Philadelphia—was 30 years old when he signed the Declaration. They were young people. They were feeling their way, improvising, trying to do what would work. They had no money, no navy, no real army. There wasn't a bank in the entire country. There wasn't but one bridge between New York and Boston. It was a little country of 2,500,000 people, 500,000 of whom were held in slavery, a little fringe of settlement along the east coast. What a story. What a noble beginning. And think of this: almost no nations in the world know when they were born. We know exactly when we began and why we began and who did it. [read more]

Back when America was new the country was really an experiment.

India's Gruesome New Welfare Trend

From FEE.org (July 12):

The welfare state is bad news for both taxpayers and recipients.
Pervasive handouts also are a mistake because they create incentives for very bad behavior.
And I’m not just talking about the incentive not to work. Welfare enables and encourages utterly horrifying examples of misbehavior.

• Such as the guy who cut off his own foot to ensure continued handouts.
• And the awful people who tried to impregnate a 12-year old to boost handouts.
• Or the various and sundry terrorists who have been subsidized with handouts.

But there’s a new example that probably would win the prize if there was a contest for the most sickening behavior enabled by governments giveaways.
People in India apparently are feeding their older relatives to tigers is order to get cash payments from the government.
……………………….
Imagine the conversation around the dinner table. “Good news, Granny, we’ve arranged an overnight trip for you to the nature preserve.”
It’s even more chilling if the old people are actually willing participants. “Son, make sure to make the scene look realistic after you move my body out of the preserve.”  [read more]

This is what happens when citizens become addicted to their gov’t’s handouts.

Orestes Brownson and the Just Society Part 1

“In most cases,” Brownson continued, “the sufferings of a people spring from moral causes beyond the reach of civil government, and they are rarely the best patriots who paint them in the most vivid colors, and rouse up popular indignation against the civil authorities. Much more effectual service could be rendered in a more quiet and peaceful way, by each one seeking, in his own immediate sphere, to remove the moral causes of the evils endured.”

The humanitarian, or social democrat (here Brownson uses those terms almost interchangeably), is by definition a person who denies that any divine order exists. Having rejected the supernatural order and the possibility of a Justice more than human, the humanitarian tends to erect Envy into a pseudo-moral principle. It leads him, this principle of Envy, straight toward a dreary tableland of featureless social equality--toward Tocqueville’s democratic despotism, from which not only God seems to have disappeared, but even old-fangled individual man is lacking.

The just society will seek to give unto each man his due: not through the release of selfish impulse, not through a sentimental and enervating socialism, but by recognizing both the Christian virtue of charity and the profound natural differences that distinguish one human being from another. The just society will not repudiate democracy, properly understood, though it will turn away from both the atomistic “Jacksonian” democracy and the oppressive humanitarian democracy:

“Democracy, understood not as a form of government, but as the end government is to seek, to wit, the common good, the advance in civilization of the people, the poorer and more numerous, as well as the richer and less numerous, classes, not of a privileged caste or class, is a good thing, and a tendency toward it is really an evidence of social progress.” Such a democracy, if it is to remain just, must be restrained by solemn and prudent constitutions and by an enlightened faith. Nevertheless, its government will not hesitate to conduct itself with courage or to undertake large projects. It is shallow sophistry to say that government is a necessary evil: government is no evil, but a device of divine wisdom to supply human wants. The function of government is not repressive merely:

Its office is positive as well as negative. It is needed to render effective the solidarity of the individuals of a nation, and to render the nation an organism, not a mere organization—to combine men in one living body, and to strengthen all with the strength of each, and each with the strength of all—to develop, strengthen, and sustain individual liberty, and to utilize and direct it to the promotion of the common weal—to be a social providence, imitating in its order and degree the action of divine providence itself, and, while it provides for the common good of all, to protect each, the lowest and meanest, with the whole force and majesty of society. . . . Next after religion, it is man’s greatest good; and even religion without it can do only a small portion of her work. They wrong it who call it a necessary evil; it is a great good, and instead of being distrusted, hated, or resisted, except in its abuses, it should be loved, respected, obeyed, and, if need be, defended at the cost of all earthly goods, and even of life.

Source: “Orestes Brownson and the Just Society.” The Essential Russell Kirk. Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].

Four Principles of American Freedom

Excerpts from a lecture by Dr. Arthur Shenfield at Hillsdale College (December 2, 1982):

First, the state is not society. Society and the state are two different entities, even though their members may be the same and even though they may intermesh with each other intimately. The state is the entity charged with the task of protecting society, but the society overflows the bounds of the state into fields where the state has no right to go. A society cannot be free if it is synonymous with the state. For if it were, all human activity would not only be governed by law. It would also be prescribed and licensed by law, which is the meaning of totalitarianism.

Secondly, liberty is a negative, not a positive, concept. It has been a sad misfortune that a few not undistinguished thinkers have espoused the positive concept, because they have thus induced demagogues to bemuse the people with nostrums such as “freedom from want.” The negative concept teaches us that liberty is freedom from coercion, not power over desires or desired resources. It includes the freedom to seek the satisfaction of one’s wants, subject to the like freedom of others, but not the power to command that satisfaction.

…………………..

Thirdly, the only form of equality which may be sought by the state is equality before the law. With equality before the law, the goddess of justice is rightly depicted as blind as she holds the scales evenly; blind because she is no respecter of persons. To her all, rich or poor, strong or weak, high or low, come for equal protection.

…………………….

Notice that though the free society does not seek equality of opportunity, it does produce abundance of opportunity; and in that abundance there is a closer approach to equality of opportunity than is known in any unfree society.

Fourthly, the state may not command, direct, control or regulate the economic activity of the people, except where it can be convincingly shown that such a measure is an essential means of preventing the people from encroaching upon each other’s liberty or rightful property. [read more]

Source: A Durable Free Society: Utopian Dream or Realistic Goal? lecture by Dr. Arthur Shenfield.

Informative and interesting speech. The doctor also talks about how economic and political liberties are inseparable and the connection between utopians and barbarians among other topics.