The American Spectator

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…”