ACORN: from Radicals to Rulers

It is "the story of the planned decline of the United States that is now in progress."
It "celebrates and promotes the worst pathologies in society in an effort to kill the American experiment in self-government."
It is "a vast, well-funded, multi-national criminal enterprise."
It is "an international conglomerate devoted to undermining democracy and the capital system.”
It is "a strange, complex political creature with tentacles that slither into the highest levels of the United States government, the Democratic Party, corporate America, the labor movement, the non-profit world, the media, foreign governments, and academia."

What is it?  Matthew Vadum explains what it is, in his new book Subversion, Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.  It is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN.

Here, a future President of the United States trains ACORN cadres in power-and-money-grabbing tactics.  The top of his diagram reads POWER ANALYSIS, followed by RELATIONSHIPS BUILD ON SELF INTEREST.  Below that, money and power are extorted from the business sector.  Obama was teaching the principles of Saul Alinsky.

As recounted in my previous article about Subversion Inc.-- from Al Capone to Barack Obama -- Obama learned his political warcraft from Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals.

Dedicated to "Lucifer, the very first radical," the book emphasizes deception and distraction.  Among the twenty-four rules: "All issues must be polarized if action is to follow” and "Pick a target, freeze it, personalize it and destroy it."  Alinsky wanted an “eternal war” for political power and viewed the community organizer as "a godlike being who is trying to build paradise on earth... a kind of superman, a leader of leaders, more monumental than the ego of the leader."  No wonder Obama made himself Alinsky’s star pupil!

In 1966, Alinksy, along with two Columbia University professors, Richard Cloward and Frances Piven, established the National Welfare Rights Organization.  Financing the operation were the UAW, the Teamsters, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.  The NWRO was not radical enough for one staffer, Wade Rathke, a former organizer for Students for a Democratic Society, forerunner of the Weather Underground terrorist organization.  Cloward and Piven were his mentors, but Rathke wanted to be his own boss.

In 1970, Rathke planted ACORN, in Arkansas.  Said the mayor of Little Rock: "I have never seen a group so secretive.  They refuse to tell where their money comes from."  In 1979, Ronald Reagan called ACORN "dangerous."  ACORN endorsed Bill Clinton in his first campaign for governor, and the Clintons have returned the favor many, many times.  He was the keynote speaker at the 25th anniversary celebration of ACORN's New York chapter, and Hillary has addressed an ACORN national convention.

Despite its claims of being a democratic grassroots organization, as Vadum quotes David Horowitz: "Wade Rathke is the lifetime ruler.  How’s that participatory democracy?  It’s like all communist organizations, the dictatorship of the elite."  Yes, three years ago Rathke had to step aside for a figurehead, Bertha Lewis, but he is still involved with at least four ACORN affiliates, publishes ACORN’s magazine and is in charge of global outreach.  He remains El Supremo.

Subversion Inc. describes how in October 2009 two real journalists -- as opposed to DNC stenographers -- made a series of surreptitious videos that revealed ACORN's depravity and criminality.  The next year, ACORN went out of business.  Or did it?  Bertha Lewis made the announcement on April Fool's Day.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) called ACORN "the largest corruption crisis in the history of America."  Rathke knew what he was doing when he modeled ACORN after the Mafia: "We would be wise to resist grants and/or contracts directly to ACORN, Inc. but try and either set up separate corporations... or use existing corporations... that are less overtly moving the money directly into ACORN Inc., though in truth it would be going there in other ways."

The appendix of Subversion Inc. lists hundreds of ACORN affiliates.  Vadum knows that "even though each ACORN affiliate may be legally separate, it is subject to centralized control... through overlapping boards of directors and large intra-network financial transfers."

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) understands: "Just because they change their name, doesn’t mean anything has really changed at all... Whatever they decide to call themselves, they are still the same corporation with the same board, staff and people."

As explained in another Grand Old Partisan article, ACORN and the Ku Klux Klan, like the KKK, ACORN did not really disappear.  Instead, like the KKK, though officially disbanded, ACORN became part of the Democratic Party apparatus.

Vadum quotes an insider: "ACORN served unofficially as an appendage of the Democratic Party in the 2008 election cycle."  Alinksy’s son, writes Vadum, said the 2008 Democratic National Convention -– styrofoam pillars and such -– "had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinksy style."  Vadum adds that "the rules from Rules for Radicals are practiced in varying degrees by ACORN and the Obama administration... The Obama administration lives and breathes the thirteenth [pick a target] rule."  And it gets worse, President Obama's political director is a former ACORN operative.

What do ACORNistas want?  A command-control thug-ocracy, that's what.  Will they get their way?  Will the American people surrender their liberties?  We'll know sooner than you think. 

See Back to Basics for the Republican Party and Grand Old Partisan for the horrid history of the Democratic Party contrasted with the heroic heritage of the GOP.