We are flooded with facts. But we are wanting in principles. Facts alone provide us with a wilderness of confusion. We are not educated if all we have at our disposal are facts. We would like to organize our facts into a meaningful whole. Facts give us information, but not understanding, and certainly not wisdom.
At the recent Republican National Convention, Dr. Ben Carson created considerable controversy when he presented a jarring fact. Carson told the audience in Cleveland and the millions of tele-viewers that Saul Alinsky, an apparent role model for Hillary Clinton, stated, in his 1971 book, Rules for Radicals, that “the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom [was] — Lucifer.” This fact is juxtaposed with another fact, namely that the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis at Wellesley College in 1969 was entitled, “‘There Is Only the Fight…’: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.” These two facts might lead one to be convinced, as Carson states, that Saul Alinsky was, indeed, a role model for Hillary. Yet Hillary has made it clear that she does not accept Alinsky’s thesis that all social change must come from the outside. She argues that it must come through the government.
How do these facts square with the fact that Jacques Maritain expressed his gratitude to Saul Alinsky in his book, Reflections on America (1958)? Maritain was the foremost Catholic philosopher of the 20th century. Alinsky was an agnostic. Nonetheless, these two disparate characters became close friends. Alinsky admired Maritain for his deep scholarship, Maritain admired Alinsky for his boldness and forthrightness. Both were committed to social justice. Maritain insisted, however, that ethics must always be the basis of politics and warned Alinsky against the use of force and torture. Despite their radical differences, Maritain referred to his friend as “one of the truly great men of this century.” One may read the letters they exchanged in Philosopher and the Provocateur: The Correspondence of Jacques Maritain and Saul Alinsky (1944).
Statements of fact do not help us to grasp Saul Alinsky, the person. Former governor of Illinois and presidential candidate, Adlai E. Stevenson, found that Alinsky’s aims “most faithfully reflect our ideals of brotherhood, tolerance, charity and the dignity of the individual.” On the other hand, a Time magazine essay commented that “it is not too much to argue that American democracy is being altered by Alinsky’s ideas.” And the New York Times remarked that Saul Alinsky is “hated and feared in high place from coast to coast.” Another problem with “facts” is that they are not always facts, but often mere opinions.
More facts add confusion to the matter. In an interview with William F. Buckley, the Catholic TV host challenged Alinsky’s views that he would rather steal than accept charity, and that all power must be wrested away from those who have power, that there can be no evolution without a revolution, and that reason is not an effective tool on overcoming conflict. Nonetheless, Buckley acknowledged Alinsky as “twice formidable, and very close to being an organizational genius.”
It is a fact that Melania Trump plagiarized words that Michelle Obama used in her 2008 speech. Yet, it also seems to be a fact that the First Lady plagiarized from Saul Alinsky. Michelle referred to “the world as it is” in contrast to “the world as it should be”. Alinsky once wrote, “The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for-fantasy of the world as it should be.” What can one make of all of this? We do know that when he was a community organizer in Chicago, Obama faithfully applied the principles laid down by Saul Alinsky.
Despite his commitment to the poor, Alinsky avoided any involvement with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. A few months before he passed away, June 12, 1972, he was interviewed in Playboy, a magazine not known for its commitment to social justice. At the close of the interview, he made the curious statement that “Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I’ve been with the have-nots. Over here, if you’re a have-not, you’re short of dough. If you’re a have-not in hell, you’re short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I’ll start organizing the have-nots over there.”
A jumble of discordant facts leads to a wilderness of confusion. Let us enumerate four principles that might help us to avoid drawing unwarranted conclusions from an array of seemingly conflicting facts: 1) An association with a person does not mean an endorsement of his ideas. 2) A rejection of a person’s ideas do not mean a rejection of the person. 3) People change their ideas over their life span and should not be judged by a particular set of ideas they held for a brief period of time. 4) The person who is tolerant is not indifferent to the truth but harbors the hope that others will, in some way, in their own time, come to accept the truth.
People, being desirous of knowing the truth of things, are often quick to leap from facts to an unjustifiable conclusion. We should be slow in coming to conclusions. Politics is very different from courtship. Politicians are concerned about making a favorable first impression. Time is not their ally and they can slip from popular acceptance in the twinkling of an eye. Courtship is about making a lasting impression. It requires a great deal of time and much interpersonal discussion. Yet, even under these circumstances, people may come to the wrong conclusion. We need to wed facts to principles in both politics and personal arrangements. The choice for the right political leader as well as the right spouse goes far beyond facts and demands considerable understanding and no small dollop of wisdom.
Dr. Donald DeMarco is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, CT, and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That is Going Mad and Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart are available through Amazon.com.
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