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ten dollar bill
Such was the case in 1971, when Professor Saul Alinsky wrote
about being unable to give away a ten-dollar bill on the streets
of Los Angeles.
I’m serious. As chronicled in his book Rules for Radicals, (an
excellent read, by the way) his little social science experiment
began in front of the posh Biltmore Hotel, where Alinsky led a
handful of his students through a brief impromptu course in the
vagaries of human psychology. Alinsky held up the bill and,
walking the four blocks around the Biltmore, offered it to total
strangers with an innocuous, “Here, take this.”
The reaction of Alinsky’s would-be beneficiaries?
Most seemed stupefied. Some told him they didn’t have any
money on them, as though he were begging for cash instead of
trying to give it away. Others thought it was a con game. A
couple of females were offended, thinking they were being
propositioned. “Most of the people,” Alinsky wrote, ”responded
with shock, confusion, and silence, and they quickened their
pace and sort of walked around me.”
Somehow, it was impossible not to think of the implications of
the quirky liberal professor’s little experiment from so long ago
when considering another quirky liberal professor’s more recent
foray into the dark sphere of social science. Then again,
goodness knows, if anyone couldn’t sell free money on a city
street, he’d be a Democrat.
But at least this professor, who happened to be DNC head
Howard Dean, spiced his recent adventure into the fun world of
cultural politics with the drama of crossing enemy lines with a
jaunt over to the Christian Broadcasting Network’s CBN News to
grant a royal audience with a media outlet whose viewers
doubtless were stunned to see that the Democratic national
chairman lacked horns and a pointy tail.
“I’m a Democrat because of my values,” Dean told CBN. “My
values include inclusiveness — they include not leaving more
debt to our kids than we have ourselves. My values include
wanting our values to drive our public policies. My values
include not having kids going to bed hungry at night. Now those
are values that I bet I share with the vast majority of
evangelicals.”
Perhaps so, but are the evangelicals willing to share them with
Dean?
“I’m not saying we’re going to agree with everything,” said Dean
during an uncharacteristic bout of realism, ”between the more
conservative evangelicals and the Democrats, but there’s a lot
more common ground than most people realize, and we’re
willing to work with the evangelical community.”
Unfortunately, the work evangelicals seem most enthused about
doing lately is defeating Democrats. For many, the only common
ground they’d like to have would be that in which the Party of Bill
Clinton is buried. Worse still, Dean is leaning a bit far off his left-
wing base with this sort of kum-bay-yah style of politicking. In a
moment of warm geniality, Dean even said “The Democratic
Party platform from 2004 says that marriage is between a man
and a woman. That’s what it says.” Yikes! Obsessive bridge-
building is fine to a point but such comments are bound to leave
many lefties thinking that this one’s been erected a bit too close
to the River Kwai. And Dean doesn’t even have Alec Guiness’s
charm. So is the chairman’s white-flagged stroll across the
battle lines less a truce offer and more a surrender?
Well, not really. Actually, there’s much to be said for the plucky
little Vermonter. Dean may have the right idea but with the
wrong execution. Letting the general public know that
Democrats aren’t the soulless army of the undead one sees
from media like… media like… well, media like CBN, isn’t a bad
idea. Neither is striking common themes on issues like reducing
the number of abortions and stressing the idea that values can
play a role in why Democrats vote the way that they do. It is
important for Democrats to communicate that Christian values
are found on both right and left and that Democrats do not
oppose everyone with a fish emblem on their trunk or for that
matter a “Choose Life” sticker on their bumper. This is precisely
the divisive manner in which Republicans have painted the
issue of religion in America. And its been damned effective.
But this is a message perhaps best addressed to the sort of
Christians who don’t TiVo the 700 Club, not necessarily to the
foot soldiers of the far right. Dean must know thine audience.
Still, one can sympathize with the truth Dean speaks. Religious
contradictions in the modern Republican Party are startling to
say the least. Christian values and the economic ideas they
imply contain enough egalitarianism to choke Ayn Rand’s
Fountainhead right at the spigot. Yet, the Republican Party has
long managed the miraculous feat of amalgamating social
Darwinism and scientific creationism without the mixture going
into philosophical meltdown. Modern conservatism seems to
posit that we may not have evolved from a society of apes but
that doesn’t mean we can’t adopt their economic model.
And there goeth the ancient question that troubles liberals to
this day. With ideas this incompatible, how do conservatives do
it? Why can’t the left sell its theories as well as the right? Why
does penicillin move so much worse than snake oil? How can
the party that wraps itself in Biblical social values practice
Libertarian economic policies?
Alinsky knew that answer 35 years ago. He theorized that the
reason no one would take his money was because he went
“outside their experience.” They weren’t used to taking cash
from strangers. That meant he couldn’t communicate with them.
What he was doing was alien to their realm of understanding.
That’s a problem liberals have in buckets. So, like Alinsky their
pleas are greeted with suspicion, fear, confusion and ultimately,
indifference. These all lay in the vast chasm between Alinsky’s
offer and the life experience of the people with whom he spoke.
And the parallels are obvious. Radical liberals say, “You’re not
one of us.” Realistic liberals say, “Become one of us.” But it
takes a Republican to say, “We’re one of you.” Conservatism
knows the importance of stressing similarities and touching
common understandings, no matter how bad the idea being
sold. On the other hand, Democrats would do well to remember
that even free money is rejected when you go beyond someone’
s experience, when you don’t communicate. That’s the gap that
Dean must bridge between the secular left and the religious
right. And he must find a touchstone to do it, a common link, a
shared idea.
This is not a hopeless endeavor. If the GOP could build such an
unwieldy coalition on such a tiny plot of common ground, then
perhaps Dean can as well. He’s certainly taken the first baby
steps in that direction. To do that, liberals and Democrats must
communicate their values and their commonalities towards
religious folks, rather than stressing their differences. But
unless Dean can find that magic method of transmission, that
vital way to get “within the experience” of his target audience it
will be a tough row to hoe. For, in the end, CBN viewers know
the number one rule of politics:
Beware mysterious men bearing a ten dollar bill and saying
“Here, take this.”
Source: http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/060510a.asp
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