AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT

English: President Obama with White House Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel in the parlor of Air Force One (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The full quote, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opprotunity to do things you think you could not do before.” is by Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff under President Obama. This reflects the thinking of Saul Alinsky, who wrote “Rules for Radicals.” “Rules for Radicals” is the default position the President, and Emanuel operate under. If you understand this, it will be easier to analyse everything they say and do.

Here is the template. 1) Use a tragedy as a crisis, or create a crisis where none exists. 2) Paint the crisis with as much emotion as possible, and throw logical analysis out the window. 3) Propose the one and only solution to the problem, which just happens to coincide with what you’ve wanted to implement for many years. 4) Paint anyone who opposes your one and only solution as evil, uncaring, not smart enough to understand the nuanced brilliance of your solution, or in the pockets of …. you pick the evil entity. 5) Force the solution on the people by any means, whether legislatively, by executive order, or through the legal system. 6) When the unintended consequences of your solution rear their ugly head, use them as a reason for more brilliant solutions to the made up crises .

This administration used this template during the “Health Care Crisis”, which was a “crisis” that didn’t exist before the administration created it. If you remember it was about 30 to 40 million people who weren’t insured, and others who couldn’t get insured because of preexisting conditions. The emotional violins were playing in full concert mode. The solution could only come from government, in the form of a 2500 page bill that nobody read. The Tea Party movement, among many others, were painted as the radicals. The legislation was forced through using the reconciliation process. The unintended consequences are just starting to appear, read here. This template was also used during the B.P. oil spill.

Forgive my cynicism, but, when I heard the President’s emotional address on the radio about six hours after the shootings in Connecticut, I thought about the “Rules for Radicals” template.  “You never let a serious crisis go to waste” is in full operation, because this is who politicians are in general, and who the President is in particular. Politics is the world in which they operate, and the lens through which they view everything. Because of this underlying reality, and because they have the power of Government behind them enforcing their edicts, you should never trust what they say or do, and always question their motives.

Stats about, “How People Are Murdered In The U.S.“, at Economic Policy Journal.

Read this analysis by Nick Gillespie at Reason.com.

For more analysis read “Child Safety and State Failure”, by Ninos P. Malek at Mises.org.

This entry was posted on December 18, 2012 at 3:04 am and is filed under Government and Politics, Hall of Fame. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Barack Obama, Connecticut Shootings, Obama Care, Rahm Emanuel, Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky