Mr. Obama’s Shabby Profession

Someone suggested I explain the term “ward heeler,” which I used to describe Barack Obama, who used to perform this function in Chicago.

A ward heeler is a flunky for a political boss. They are close kin to bagmen; some do both jobs. In the past, bosses hired scary goons to do this stuff; I suppose they still do. Ward heelers roam around town, convincing people to “vote the right way.” They keep people in line. They find out the concerns of the citizens, and they try to turn them to advantage. They may exchange money and alcohol for votes. They sometimes stand as near to polling places as they can, staring down voters who disagree with them, and making it clear that they will be remembered. They “help” us make the right political and social decisions. Bosses are too busy counting their money to attend to these matters.

Ward heelers are now called “community organizers,” for a very important reason: it sounds better. They’re more sophisticated and less violent than they used to be, but it’s still a fairly slimy gig. They have community organizers in Cuba. They exhort others to support the regime, and they spy on the people in their neighborhoods, and they have them sent to prison for things like buying meat. The Nazis had community organizers. Some were called Hitler Youth; others were called capos. The concept is associated with contrived political philosophies imposed from the top down; the very opposite of grass-roots movements, which arise spontaneously from below. Obviously, Barack Obama is not a Nazi collaborator or a corrupt communist stooge, but he belongs to a broad class which includes such people. He was a professional busybody, paid to keep the citizenry under control. This doesn’t have to be done by coercion or intimidation; you can do it by building “food banks” and organizing marches, but the aim is fundamentally the same. Reward the faithful. Punish those who disagree.

According to Wikipedia, Saul Alinsky is a seminal thinker in the area of “community organizing.” You may not remember Mr. Alinsky. He was the subject of Hillary Clinton’s thesis at Wellesley. He wrote a book on the concept. It was called Rules for Radicals, and he dedicated it to Lucifer, “the first radical.” If you want to learn about Mr. Alinksy, buy Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism. I don’t recall all the facts, but the general impression I got was that this man had a Khmer-Rouge-style philosophy, in which morality was defined solely by the leftist results one’s actions produced.

Oddly, a lot of people who know nothing about the Bible call Jesus a community organizer. The truth is that Jesus was a great disappointment to the Jews, precisely because he was not a community organizer or any other type of political operative. First-century Jews were sick of Roman rule, and they hoped for a Messiah who would be a political ruler, more like Saul or David than Moses. The rejection of Jesus was partly based on this distinction. He came and went, and the Romans were still there. Jesus was not a community organizer. He organizes individuals, one at a time. From within.

Jesus was an evangelist. He did not organize protests. He did not tell people how to vote. He spoke up against civil disobedience. He never made any effort to expel the Romans. In fact, he left them pretty much alone, reserving most of his criticism and exhortation for his fellow religious Jews. He preached a form of religion based on each individual’s personal relationship with God, not a community-centered movement fueled by the power of organized groups.

It’s pointless to explain this to people who are unfamiliar with the Bible, i.e. leftists. They think Jesus and Buddha and Gandhi were basically fungible, and that they agreed on all the essentials. In reality, the similarities are few, and the differences are obvious and irreconcilable.

It’s odd that a man with a Harvard law degree would become a professional lackey for a notorious political machine, but that’s what Barack Obama did. Yet somehow he is considered exceptionally pure, and Sarah Palin is considered a hack, because she thinks we should drill for bad old oil, which may make money for old white guys. The world is a funny place, and that goes double for Cook County.

Now you know what a ward heeler is. Wouldn’t it be great to have one in the Oval Office?

More

The point is illustrated nicely, over at Sondra’s place.

Correction

A commenter points out that Obama got his law degree after his stint as a Chicago machine flunky, not before.