Alinsky On Innumeracy

clipped from article.nationalreview.com In a letter to the Boston Globe, Alinsky’s son wrote that “the Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style. . . .  Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.” As a tool for understanding the thinking of Obama, Alinsky’s most famous book, Rules for Radicals, is simultaneously edifying and worrisome. Some passages make Machiavelli’s Prince read like a Sesame Street picture book on manners. One of Alinsky’s first lessons is: “Radicals must have a degree of control over the flow of events.” Millions of Americans do not know how many million dollars make up a billion.