Pat Boone Calls The President A Marxist

[jmm99]

Slap,

Thank you for finding an online version. I've been a fan of Rules since it came out in the early 1970s (and its predecessor, Reveille, since undergrad days in the 1960s).

Alinksy starts his chapter "Of Means and Ends" with this quote:

We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought. -- Alfred North Whitehead

rather than one from a leftist oracle such as Bertrand Russell. Whitehead was Russell's mentor and co-author of the first edition of Principia Mathematica. They went separate ways when Whitehead (whose son, an RFC flyer, was killed in WWI) became a theist and non-pacifist.

I like (better than Alinsky's choice) this nugget from Whitehead's Adventures of Ideas (1933):

Now the intercourse between individuals and between social groups takes one of two forms, force or persuasion. Commerce is the great example of intercourse by way of persuasion. War, slavery, and governmental compulsion exemplify the reign of force.

I've always preferred persuasion, but recognize the value of force in exigent situations.

I've collected the "means and ends" rules into one quote. Alinsky explains them in detail (left those out). I could add to them, but won't.

My suggestion is to consider them in various contexts of Haves and Have Nots. For example, in present politics, the Dems are the Haves; the Reps are the Have Nots. Are these rules useful to the Rep Have Nots in the current cycle ?

I present here a series of rules pertaining to the ethics of means and ends:

[F]irst, that one's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue. ... Accompanying this rule is the parallel one that one's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's distance from the scene of conflict.
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The second rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.
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The third rule of the ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.
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The fourth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that judgment must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.
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The fifth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.
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The sixth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.

The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. ... There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.

The eighth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.
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The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.
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The tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments. ... All effective actions require the passport of morality.
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The eleventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that goals must be phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," "Of the Common Welfare," "Pursuit of Happiness" or "Bread and Peace."
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Means and ends are so qualitatively interrelated that the true question has never been the proverbial one, "Does the End justify the Means?" but always has been "Does this particular end justify this particular means?"

Those or similar rules (as interpreted and applied by me, not necessarily as Alinsky says) guided me in political action (long since a thing of the past) and legal action (a more recent thing of the past). In brief, both political practice and legal practice require hardball.

So, in that sense, I'd have to plead guilty to being an "Alinskyite".

Regards

Mike