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“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.” Saul Alinsky

So reads the 3rd acknowledgment at the beginning of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals–a work inspired by the devil.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but, you know, when I’m casting about for an inspiration or something motivational, the devil just doesn’t come to mind.  I would have to suspend everything I know about evil, somehow wall that off in my mind, before I could look for something good about the devil to inspire me.  Maybe I’m lacking in a mental capacity that great thinkers possess.  Maybe Alinsky was a world-class sociopath who would stoop to any low to justify himself.

I am not a member of a monolithic “other” group of people who are not LGBT, who are not pro-Obama, who are not secular humanists, who are not haters of George Bush and Sarah Palin (or is it Sarah Palin and George Bush in the hierarchy of hates?), who are not anti-Christian, who are not pro-Palestinian, who are not anti-Jew, who are not believers in single-payer health care systems, who are not believers in global warming mythology, who are not Malthusian eco-doomsaying Luddites, and who are not militant in their political causes.

I and many others are not defined by what we are not.  Do you hear that Margaret Cho and all you jack-booted marching Leftists?  Just because you get off on organized militant communities of like-minded believers doesn’t mean the rest of us do!  You’ve got everyone neatly sorted out into your camps and their camps, and you couldn’t be more wrong about the rest of the people who you have judged to be not like you–people who you know precious little about–the people who you lump together as the “other” who you constantly fight, marginalize, minimize, demean, insult, ridicule and degrade.

Your insular moral code does not transcend the boundaries of your own interests.  Oh, it translates well enough inside your own movement, it just doesn’t work too well in the broader scheme of interests that all humans share for survival, thriving, fair play, opportunity, and peaceful coexistence.

The fact is you’re smart and this leaves us two possible explanations.  Either you know full well that your moral code doesn’t work for all of humanity and you press on anyway with conscious intent to subjugate all of us non-believers, or, you have an incredibly sophisticated form of brainwashing that affords you the delusion that your relative morality really is applicable to all of humanity.  Neither one offers much hope.

Throw the broad brushes away that you use to paint everyone you have judged to be not rainbow colored.  They are needlessly harmful and divisive.  If you want to get rid of hate in the world, stop hating people who are not like you.  Really.  Don’t pretend.  Don’t wear one face inside your movement and another one outside.  Stop pushing people away.  Stop creating enemies.

I know that your morality, your situational ethics, need an enemy to enervate your secular belief system.  I know that your basket of philosophies don’t stand on their constructive merits, that they only seem reasonable under emergency conditions that overwhelm the voices of cooler heads.  Still, you’ve got to start considering the rest of humanity beyond your own private interests.  We’re all getting too old for the Left’s dead-end histrionics.

The big totalitarians in history solved your moral dilemma by rubbing out the opposition by the hundreds of millions.  Unless you plan to follow their example, you’d better snap out of it.