Interesting Article
>
> Obama's Society of Beggars
>
> Jeffrey Lord
>
www.spectator.org
> 26 February 2008
>
>
> Oh pleeeeze, sir!
>
> In three words, this is the driving force behind Barack Obama's vision for
> America. A vision epitomized by the famous words written by Charles
> Dickens
> for the young Oliver Twist of 19th century England. "Please, sir, I want
> some more."
>
> As America is beginning to learn, the young prince of Chicago began his
> career as what is euphemistically called a "community organizer." One has
> to
> have grown up in the 1960s, I suppose, to know what this is. For those who
> missed out, a community organizer is someone who spends their time begging
> from the government. The motives, at least in theory, are always pure.
> Mrs.
> Jones needs heat, Joe Smith needs a job, Sally Bell needs milk for her
> baby.
>
> The problem, of course, is that after decades of practical experience it
> is
> now obvious to most Americans that the guiding light behind community
> organizing is some variant of socialism -- which is to say a philosophy
> that
> effectively guarantees a lifetime of poverty and dependence, always at the
> mercy of a government that by the very nature of big bureaucracies can be
> arrogantly uncaring if not deceitful, slow as molasses, frequently
> incompetent and, in the end, completely lacking in an ability to help
> people
> escape the grinding poverty in which they find themselves.
>
> Barack Obama made his first mark in Chicago by choosing to be a community
> organizer, inspired by left-wing theoretician Saul Alinsky, the so-called
> "father" of community organizing. As a United States Senator he has,
> according to the non-partisan National Journal, emerged as one of the
> Senate's most liberal Senators. This is another way of saying that Obama
> supports all those programs that keep community organizers busy with
> places
> to go begging, insuring from the top that all those on the bottom are
> effectively kept in a closed loop of poverty. Unable to break out, poorly
> educated by government-owned, union-run local schools, housed in
> government-owned, crime-infested public housing, dependent for everything
> from food to heat to a job, the cycle rewards dependency. Dependency on
> government, and in turn dependency on community organizers like Barack
> Obama
> once was and on politicians like Barack Obama now is.
>
>
> THE BEST PLACE to take a look at this cycle in terms of Obama is to read
> his
> writings and the glowing accounts in liberal journals that have been
> written
> about him by enamored journalists. They provide an X-ray of the way Obama
> sees what American life should be -- a life that effectively consists of a
> society of beggars. Here are but four selections.
>
> * From Ryan Lizza in the New Republic: "Obama's work focused on helping
> poor
> blacks on Chicago's South Side fight the city for things like job banks
> and
> asbestos removal."
>
> * From David Moberg in the Nation: "Often by confronting officials with
> insistent citizens -- rather than exploiting personal connections, as
> traditional black Democrats proposed -- Obama and DCP protected community
> interests regarding landfills and helped win employment training services,
> playgrounds, after-school programs, school reforms and other public
> amenities."
>
> * From David Moberg in the Nation: "One day a resident at Altgeld Gardens,
> a
> geographically isolated public housing project surrounded by waste sites,
> brought a notice about planned removal of asbestos from the project
> manager's office. Obama organized the community to find out if there was
> asbestos in their apartments. They persisted as officials lied and
> delayed,
> then took a bus -- with far fewer people than Obama had anticipated -- to
> challenge authorities downtown. Ultimately, the city was forced to test
> all
> the apartments and eventually begin cleaning them up."
>
> * From Barack Obama in "Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner
> City" first published in the August/ September 1988 Illinois Issues
> (published by then-Sangamon State University, which is now the University
> of
> Illinois at Springfield):
>
> "This means bringing together churches, block clubs, parent groups and any
> other institutions in a given community to pay dues, hire organizers,
> conduct research, develop leadership, hold rallies and education
> campaigns,
> and begin drawing up plans on a whole range of issues - jobs, education,
> crime, etc. Once such a vehicle is formed, it holds the power to make
> politicians, agencies and corporations more responsive to community
> needs."
>
> Listen to what is being said here.
>
> * "...fight the city for things like job banks and asbestos removal..."
>
> * "Often by confronting officials..."
>
> * "They persisted as officials lied and delayed, then took a bus -- with
> far
> fewer people than Obama had anticipated -- to challenge authorities
> downtown. Ultimately, the city was forced..."
>
> This is the language of a society of beggars. The need to "fight the city"
> or "confront officials" or persist "as officials lied and delayed" or
> "challenge authorities" is pre-eminently the language of human beings made
> to depend on government. To beg from it as Oliver Twist was made to beg.
> "Please, sir, I want some more." It may have once had a certain allure in
> the 1960s -- forty years ago and even longer before that -- but the idea
> of
> creating big government programs and then creating "community organizers"
> whose sole purpose is to make citizens more effective beggars of those
> government programs has long since been discredited by the results -- or
> lack thereof .
>
>
> YET THIS IS PRECISELY the vision that Obama wishes to extend across all of
> America. And the question that becomes relevant for Obama's vision is a
> version of the question Ronald Reagan once asked Americans about the
> presidency of Jimmy Carter: "Are you better off now than you were four
> years
> ago?" Is the South Side of Chicago better off today because Barack Obama
> and
> his fellow community organizers accepted the status quo of big government?
> Is the community where Obama "organized" better off today than it was when
> he arrived? Has he done anything with his philosophy that has lifted the
> people of the South Side of Chicago out of poverty, and has the philosophy
> itself worked anywhere else in America?
>
> One need go no further than the Nation magazine's same loving profile of
> Obama to learn this:
>
> "Despite some meaningful victories, the work of Obama -- and hundreds of
> other organizers -- did not transform the South Side or restore lost
> industries."
>
> In other words, the Nation answers the Reagan question in a word: No.
>
> This is important when understanding that Obama's vision of America is to
> make of America one big South Side of Chicago. A nation where he raises
> taxes ("Please sir, may I keep some more of my money that I worked for?"),
> bureaucratizes health care ("Please, sir, will you pay for my medicine?"),
> and tells automobile manufacturers how to make energy-efficient cars
> ("Please sir, may I make my car my way?").
>
> All of this is, of course, the same old, same old. It is nothing more --
> or
> less -- than the old socialist stew which has failed everywhere from the
> South Side of Chicago to the Ninth Ward of New Orleans to the North Side
> of
> Moscow. There is nothing new about any of this except the messenger. And
> the
> messenger, according to the impeccably left-wing pages of the Nation, has
> already served up this stew in Chicago and -- surprise, surprise --
> failed.
> He has been utterly unable to do in his own public service what he once
> advocated for others in Alinskian te
