My Community Organizer

Below is a fictional scenario. This scenario may be starting now all over our country and may be the outcome of the strategies being put into effect by President Obama. It is happening under the guise of creating a better world, but it requires the acceptance of the idea of collectivism which has historically been a very destructive idea. The beginning stages today involve the government’s takeover of financing of all college loans and the government's creation of massive government-funded volunteer programs. It represents a future that must not become reality.

I received a visit today from a disheveled young man who asked me if I would support President Obama’s plans for healthcare. I asked him which organization he represented and he said that he had just graduated from college with a political science degree and was being considered for the post of community organizer of the local “Citizens” group.

I told him that I disagreed with the government being responsible for health care. He told me that was a lie; that the health care program would only provide more choice for Americans.

I shut the door in his face.

Fast Forward:

I received a visit today from the same young man who had come before. He was now wearing a suit and had cut his hair to look more “business-like.” He told me that he was now the local community organizer and he wanted to sign people up to come to an event supporting the President’s Cap and Trade Bill. He asked me if I wanted a cleaner planet. I told him “No”; that I disagreed with the President’s policies on climate change and didn’t think it was necessary for the government to interfere in our energy choices.

He told me that was a lie; that the President was only trying to be a good global citizen of the planet.

I shut the door in his face.

Fast Forward:

I received a visit today from a man who asked me to volunteer for the local Citizens group. They were gathering over the weekend to clean up the local homeless shelter. He stated that we should all volunteer to help the homeless. I told him this was a free country and I did not have to volunteer for anything. He asked me if I cared for the homeless. I told him I had more important things to do. He told me that the homeless should be more important than anything. They are homeless, he said, because of the greed of big corporations.

I began to shut the door in his face and he stuck his foot in the door. He told me that I was being talked about by other volunteers, it was being said I was not a good citizen and there were certain reports being made about me.

I planted my hand firmly on his chest and pushed him away from my door and closed it.

Fast Forward:

I received a visit today from our community organizer. He told me he was collecting information about every home in order to determine what the community group could do to improve the neighborhood. He asked me if it was ok if he took a walk around my home to take some notes. I told him “No”. He said that he had an order from the mayor to conduct the survey. I shut the door in his face and watched him as he took a walk around my property and made notes on a clipboard.

Fast Forward:

I received a visit from my community organizer and was told that he was collecting information about the inside of every home to assess whether there were any possible conditions that might contribute to disease in the neighborhood. He showed me an order from the mayor that authorized him to conduct the survey. I tried to shut the door in his face but he wedged his body in the door and stopped it from closing. He told me the survey was mandatory and was for the good of the community. He pushed me back and I fell onto the floor. He came into my home and began taking notes. After he finished, he told me he would be back.

Fast Forward:

I received a visit from my community organizer and was told that the local women’s shelter needed a television set. He reminded me that during his last visit he had noticed I had a nice television set. He wanted to know if I’d like to donate it to the shelter and I said “No.” He told me that I was being very anti-social and that the entire neighborhood hated me for being so negative about having a better community. I told him that this was a free country and he told me that I was being old fashioned.

Fast Forward:

I came home from work to find 10 people in front of my house carrying signs. They began yelling at me that I was anti-social. One of the signs said that “Anti-social behavior is strictly punished.” Another said, “We are watching you.” Another said, “Obama wants you.” I looked at the community organizer and he said, “It may be mean but it is very clever.”

When I got into my house I noticed that my television set was gone.

Fast Forward:

I received a visit from my community organizer and he told me that his previous visit had discovered some violations in my home and that he had gotten a court order to evict me and confiscate my possessions for the sale of the neighborhood. He was going to move a family into my home that had a more “socially acceptable” attitude. He told me that he had talked to my boss and they had fired me from my job and I had 30 minutes to get out of the neighborhood. I protested that I had rights and he said that no one had rights who was unwilling to help others.

I asked, “Who’s going to help me now that I’m homeless?” He told me I should have thought about that the first time I was asked to volunteer. He pointed to the local highway and said there were some places under the overpass.

You may think the above could not happen here. I’d like to point out that similar things have taken place in other countries when the government was empowered to impose “collective” solutions for individual problems. Collectivism empowers a government to destroy any individual who is not willing to sacrifice his time, energy and property to the collective.

Collectivism invalidates individual rights, contract rights and property rights. It creates a government with no limits. Under the guise of making better communities, collectivism demands sacrifice and, through this demand, destroys society and the basis of civil cooperation. In a collectivist society, all citizens are required to do what the government demands or suffer the ostracism that goes with “anti-social” behavior. Beware of community organizers.

Certainly, many people think that the above scenario betrays a tinge of paranoia and fear about what are often considered valuable programs that make for a better community. But I remember a time when the idea of the government doing anything other than defending the rights enumerated in the Constitution was a matter for grave concern. Today, many of us have been indoctrinated to accept the idea that the government is our caretaker rather than our protector. We've taken the idea of "the common good" and used it to empower government to do, at first, benign things, while we set the precedent that opens the door for the use of coercive force to expropriate our time, energy and property. Do we really want to lose our freedoms? When we get beyond benign things like cleaning homeless shelters, we may not like what we are required to do.

You may not agree, but I think it is true that Barack Obama is the leader of a totalitarian movement. Anyone who pushes a large number of collectivist programs, like those pushed by the President, who demands that we impose those programs without question, without debate, without even reading the bills, as a matter of historical timeliness ("Now's the time..."), is trying to deceive us; is trying to bring totalitarian control without giving us the time or the right to stop it. Anyone who denigrates and belittles principled opposition, who claims that such opposition is nothing more than political obstruction, cannot have our best interests at heart. In her famous book, Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, she writes:

“Totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals. Compared with all other parties and movements, their most conspicuous external characteristic is their demand for total, unrestricted, unconditional, and unalterable loyalty of the individual members. This demand is made by the leaders of totalitarian movements even before they seize power. It usually precedes the total organization of the country under their actual rule and it follows from the claim of their ideologies that their organization will encompass, in due course, the entire human race.”(1)

There is hope. We can stop the future that Obama wants for us, the organized community-based collectivism that will make slaves or homeless people of us all. If we do not stop it we will be plunged into decades of resistance and drudgery that will destroy many lives. As Arendt says:

“Nothing is more characteristic of the totalitarian movements in general and of the quality of fame of their leaders in particular than the starling swiftness with which they are forgotten and the startling ease with which they can be replaced.”(2)

(1) Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich
(2) Ibid