Obama Everywhere!

Pamela Geller reports in her Atlas Shrugged blog that high school students in Massillon, Ohio (no doubt elsewhere as well) have received recruiting materials to become interns for Obama's Organizing for America. The National Organizing Internship Program (ever hear of that?) has changed into a local organizing program and it's using the schools. Geller includes the 15-page training manual and the sign-up form.

This is not a program for helping out the community. It is not even for learning about "How Government Works" or how the political party system operates. In the fine print, it is labeled a "Project of the Democratic National Committee" but also includes this disclaimer: "This communication is not authorized by any candidate or any candidate's committee." Does that mean Obama isn't yet running for another office, such as emperor of the world, or maybe God?

The examples of community organizing in the material have to do with recruiting more volunteers, publicizing — not questioning — Joe Biden should he come to town, collecting data (on what?), and promoting the health care bill. The program is supposed to be all about "change" and learning to organize. Change what? Organize whom?

Obama is asking kids "to believe" on the web site Organizing for America — not just in him, though that's basic. "Believe" is one of those words people carve into stones for their gardens, wear on rubber bracelets, and attached to inspirational calendars with scenic photographs, but the content of the belief is always fuzzy. In Obama's world, it starts with the belief that things here are bad and have to change.

Kids will learn to organize, which is all about "building relationships" and "getting buy-in," which means agreement. Very much like cult recruiting techniques. All smoke and mirrors. They will learn to talk about health care without knowing anything about medicine or science or business or insurance or finance. They will talk about energy without knowing the science or economics of technology. They will talk about education without reading anything but political tactics and methodology.

The Web site says Obama Everywhere, as on Facebook, Twitter, and DNC Partybuilder. Obama is still campaigning against McCain on the web site, but even if they update the site, it will be Obama campaigning against half of Congress.

This "internship" requires 12 hours a week from the children (who may, however, be old enough to drive; the registration form asks if the applicant has a car). The required reading material does not include any history of the United States, or anything about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. It's all from far left writers such as Saul Alinsky, a seminal influence on both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The Alinsky who dedicated his book Rules for Radicals to —

"Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer"

Now there is an organizer. (Should we file a complaint about religion in the schools in Massillon?) Chances are the internship will have no room for discussion of history, purpose, or differing political opinion. And why should it, if we can't distinguish between mythology and history, says the Father of Lies?

If this Democratic project were truly intended to be a non-political sort of WPA program, it might simply be one more instance of pouring money into something that looks like a job but is not. Not that the "interns" get paid, and what real-life job are they interning for? Work with the Democratic Party? Or in tax-payer funded government jobs? "Organizing" anything is basically a clerical job. Organizing organizers has motives other than teaching kids to make lists and phone calls.

Even Obama has written that his community organizing, which consisted of getting and spending grant money, produced no results. He was disappointed. But real life has had no bearing on his past, present, or future goals. His career has been all about campaigning, all about sounding good and repeating platitudes about hope, change, and health care, and he wants to train another generation to do the same, with no knowledge of history and no experience of real work, just some mushy theories about how the country has to change because it's no good now.

Obama, along with William Ayers, worked on the Annenberg Foundation project to spend $150 million on improving Chicago schools. One Annenberg report said:

"Achievement trends in Annenberg schools did not differ from those in demographically similar non-Annenberg schools. There were no statistically significant differences in reading or math at any grade level in any year between 1995 and 2001. Although Annenberg schools appeared to outperform non-Annenberg schools in some years at particular grade levels, the reverse appeared to occur in other years. None of those differences were statistically significant."

This is the community organizing that Obama and his wife recommended to college grads instead of jobs in corporations: a program that does nothing except spend other people's money, whether private or public, and produces nothing. The goal is to recruit Democrats, progressives, leftists, and ideologues, without giving the interns real lessons in history, philosophy, and critical thinking.

If these kids come to your door collecting "data," you might take the opportunity to educate them, or at least ask some pointed questions.

My own experience with community organizing of this type goes back about 35 years when my Marxist friend, a generation older than me, collected a bunch of young people in Akron to start a community grocery store. We cleaned a small storefront and tried to collect money. What was the point? The neighborhood was not without access to grocery stores. The food would not be cheaper than in the commercial groceries and would not be fresher or more natural or organic than in the health food store. Its sole purpose was to "organize" and to teach us that corporate America wasn't as good and meaningful as the wholly useless work we were doing. The thing didn't last, of course. I don't remember if it ever opened for business. It was a sort of hippy party with a Marxist underlay, which was its true purpose, not providing anything useful for "the community" or "the people" or anybody.  The corporate grocery stores, the health food and vitamin stores, the convenience stores, and the mom-and-pop stores all provided real goods and services that we never would. The project was all part of radicalizing the young people, which included making them feel good about themselves, excited about some vague Utopian future, and at least subconsciously suspicious and hostile toward everyone else.