The left took over many of our institutions by effectively applying Saul Alinsky’s rules.
The climate change movement has managed to closely associate themselves with the left of the political spectrum, producing a huge boost for their campaigns. After all, the majority of mainstream media are left of center and so this results in climate alarmists having a massive unpaid communications arm supporting their crusade.
But most “progressives” fail to realize that following climate catastrophists’ agenda results in outcomes that violate causes leftists hold dear, or at least want us to believe they hold dear. This would include support for social justice and environmental protection, issues I dealt with in parts one and two of this three-part series (“To Win the Climate Debate, We Must Use The Same Tools That Were Used To Defeat Science and Common Sense,” Jan 13 and “Catch the left violating their own “book of rules” in the climate debate,” Jan 20). And, by pointing this out to them in front of public forums, we are employing Saul Alinsky’s rule #4 from “Rules for Radicals – A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals,” which is as follows:
Two other ideas the left have historically championed and would be loath to admit they no longer support are:
Demonstrating, very publicly, that following the climate alarmist agenda works against both of these ideals would also be an effective application of Alinsky’s rule #4. It will also help sway well-intentioned leftists, at least those who are not also climate change fanatics, to distance themselves from the climate scare.
Historically, liberals have tended to reject absolute authority and often ridiculed conservatives for being inflexible about morals, politics and even science. For example, Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was supported by the German left, while those on the right opposed it, believing it threatened their cultural worldview (which, ultimately, it did).
In fact, the assertion that science discovers truths about nature, not merely opinions based on empirical evidence that is always subject to interpretation, led to the ‘science wars’ of the late 20th century. In that conflict the intellectual left were the sceptics of the idea that we could have absolute knowledge in science. To learn more about this, watch the superb course “Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It” by Dr. Steven L. Goldman, the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Lehigh University in Chicago.
But this expected approach—relativism and scepticism from liberals and absolutism from conservatives—has been turned upside down in the climate debate. While right-wingers call for open debate about the causes of climate change, the left generally consider such discussion intolerable and behave as if we know the future of climate decades in advance, a position that is indefensible, scientifically and philosophically.
So, climate campaigners try to shut down debate about the causes of climate change, regarding it as a Pandora’s Box they desperately want to keep firmly shut. Why else would they steadfastly refuse invitations from climate realist scientists to engage in public debates? If the public regularly heard about the vast uncertainty in climate change science, arguably the most complex science ever tackled, their patience for the $1.27 trillion USD devoted in 2022/2023 to climate finance would quickly evaporate. So, instead, most of the left ignore the thousands of well-qualified experts who do not support the scare (for example, see World Climate Declaration There is no climate emergency) and enthusiastically support the confident, but nonsensical, climate change forecasts of people like United Nations Secretary General António Guterres and former vice-president Al Gore with his “Inconvenient Truth.” We must regularly call them on this, pointing out that it violates one of the left’s fundamental axioms.
So, we need to bring up forcefully in public sessions, the fact that unquestioning acceptance of ‘truth’ in science—in the sense of fulfilling Plato’s definition that truth is universal, necessary and certain, characteristics impossible in science—has impeded human progress throughout history. For example, when the Greco-Egyptian writer Claudius Ptolemy proposed his Earth-centered system, he did not say it was physical astronomy, a true description of how the universe actually worked. He promoted it as mathematical astronomy, a model that worked well for astronomical observations, astrology and creating calendars.
It was the ultra-conservative Catholic Church that, relying on a literal interpretation of the Bible, specifically Joshua 10:12-14, promoted the Ptolemaic system as truth to be questioned at one’s peril. Here is that Biblical passage:
It is important to understand that Joshua’s army had marched all night the 20 miles from Gilgal to Gibeon to do battle with their enemies, the five strong kings who had pooled their resources to fight the Israelites. Joshua’s army had prevailed in the battle and his enemies were in retreat. But Joshua did not want them to be able to get back to their fortified cities to regroup. More daylight was needed for Joshua’s troops to finish them off. To prevent their return, he asked God to lengthen the day (see painting below).
There are many interesting interpretations of this Biblical passage, some of which can be read here, but, it was clear that the Church wanted the public to believe that it was the Sun that moved, not the Earth about the Sun. According to many writers, this was why Nicolaus Copernicus, a Canon in the Church, waited until he was on his death bed before he allowed his revolutionary book showing the Sun to be the centre of the universe to be published, even though the text was completed 30 years earlier. To read more about this, including an alternative theory about why the book was so delayed, see here.
This is also why Galileo ran into so much trouble when he claimed that the Church was wrong and that Copernicanism was the truth, a position that Galileo could not really know with certainty either (to be fair, it should be noted that the Church was already dealing with the unrest of the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, so maintaining doctrinal control was crucial for them. Galileo's opposition to the Church's geocentric teachings was viewed as a threat to their authority and theological doctrines, an understandable position, given the times).
Similarly, the assumed truth of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and law of universal gravitation eventually acted to slow the advancement of science until Einstein showed them to be incomplete. We need to remind leftists, at least those who are not climate extremists, that when authorities preach truth about science, progress stops. They should welcome, not condemn, questioning of the status quo. Science advances through fearless investigation, not frightened acquiescence to fashionable thinking, let alone the smearing of intellectual opponents as “deniers.”
I did this a few years ago in a Government of Ontario public meeting ostensibly set up to identify obstacles to progress on “climate action.” After several members of the public were roundly booed and harassed for voicing doubt about the science being relied on by the government, I went to the microphone and said:
“We have just seen a demonstration of what I think is the greatest obstacle to progress on this file—it is the intolerance of alternative points of view about this highly complex science. We should welcome and discuss skeptical inquiries, not try to silence them!”
The reaction? Dead silence. You could hear a pin drop. The government representative had nothing to say and the audience recognized that the activists had violated what is supposed to be a fundamental tenant of progressivism, namely keeping an open mind to different perspectives.
And, of course, the reliance on consensus to determine what is truth in science is simply a “bandwagon logical fallacy” when we base the validity of our argument on how many people believe it. A show of hands does not decide the validity of scientific hypotheses. When Albert Einstein was told about a book titled Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein), published in 1931, he replied, “Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.”
The award-winning American author and filmmaker Dr. Michael Crichton also put it well in his January 17, 2003 lecture, “Aliens Cause Global Warming,” presented at California Institute of Technology:
“I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
“Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.
“In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
“There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
The left took over many of our institutions by effectively applying Saul Alinsky’s rules. It’s about time conservatives read his “Rules for Radicals – A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals,” available for free on the web, and then got out and raised Cain at public events. Our children will never forgive us if we do not.
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