Though some student activists of the 1960s may have idolized Alinsky, he didn't particularly idolize them.
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Although some Clinton biographers have been quick to label Alinsky a communist, he maintained that he never joined the Communist Party.
I was not an activist.
But there was not a job that could say that Luther Allison didn't do his job.
Most black leaders, whether left, right or center, from Frederick Douglas and Martin Delaney on in the middle of the 19th century have not even wondered about the merits of the capitalist system.
Alinsky's 1971 book, 'Rules for Radicals,' is a favorite of the Obamas. Michele Obama quoted it at the Democratic Convention. One Alinsky tactic is to 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.' That's what the White House did in targeting Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer.
The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.
Writers who are activists are very rarely taken seriously as artists.
You don't see artists sitting around a lot, talking about ideology. They find out what they believe, and what they're doing, by doing it.
In college I studied '60s and '70s radicalism, student activism, forms of political violence, groups like the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New Left.
I'm a member of the 1960s generation. We didn't have any wisdom.
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