Rules for Conservative Radicals

I offer these 15 Tactical Rules for Conservative Radicals , which I recommend for consideration by all Conservative Radicals, in addition to 9 of Saul Alinsky’s Tactical Rules that are as relevant for today’s Conservative Radicals as they are for today’s Left Wing Radicals.

The Conservative Radical’s Tactical Rules

1. It is better to be 85% right and quick than 100% right and slow.

2. Do what you can right now with the technologies, resources, and time immediately available to you.

3. Use free and cheap technologies at every opportunity

4. Observe Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment – do not engage in personal attacks of fellow conservatives in public forums. Anything you say will be ammunition for the left. Personal disputes among fellow conservatives are best handled privately.

5. When communicating through any public forum on the internet--Twitter, blogs, websites – remember that anything digital lives forever, so refrain from the use of profanity, personal attacks, or statements that are factually unsupportable.

6. Publicly engage with the left only when there is a clearly identified goal that has a reasonable likelihood of being accomplished through the engagement.

7. Privately engage with the left when you are confident you are dealing with a person of honor and good will whose personal integrity has not been compromised by Saul Alinsky’s moral nihilism.

8. When engaging with the left let no falsehood go unchallenged.

9. When dealing with the left, look for opportunities to persuade open-minded opponents of the merits of conservatism.

10. When evangelizing to open minded members of the left, be a friendly teacher guiding your students towards conservatism, not an argumentative and arrogant haranguer bent on demonstrating your intellectual superiority.

11. Seek out opportunities to collaborate with like-minded conservatives through self organizing projects.

12. You earn a seat at the table of a self organizing project by showing up, doing the work, and collaborating effectively with your project colleagues.

13. Successful self-organizing projects are characterized by:

(a) rapid response consensus development of goals and tactics
(b) transparent real time communication between project colleagues
(c) rapid implementation of tactics by a core group of the most engaged project colleagues
(d) whose personal conduct is guided by the principles of project servant-leadership.

14. Once you have earned a seat at the table, you have a right to participate in the development of a consensus. But if you don’t show up to participate, you lose the right to complain about decisions made by the group in your absence. The process drives forward relentlessly on a 24-7 time clock

15. When conflict arises within your self organized project, and the conflict is not resolvable, leave the project, start your own new project with those who are of like mind, and wish your former project colleagues Godspeed.

Copyright 2009 by Michael Patrick Leahy

To be included in my new book Rules for Conservative Radicals, to be published by C-Rad Press on July 31, 2009

9 Tactical Rules from Saul Alinsky that are as relevant for today’s Conservative Radicals as they are for today’s Left Wing Radicals

1. Never go outside the experience of your project colleagues

2. Wherever possible, go outside the experience of the opposition

3. Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

4. A good tactic is one that your project colleagues enjoy.

5. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag

6. Keep the pressure on

7. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

8. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

9. Make the opposition live up to their own book of rules.

Note: I have changed the word “people” in rules 1 and 4 to the words “project colleagues”, and the word “enemy” in rules 2 and 9 to “opposition”.

Source: Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, 1971