Quotes from Paul Kengor

Alinsky offered this curious opening acknowledgment: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history … the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer.

Yes, Saul Alinsky, icon of the political left, whose admirers include Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, commenced his magnum opus—the one for which he is hailed by progressives, a book not only read by Clinton but used as a text by Obama in Chicago as a teacher of community organizing—with an acknowledgement of the devil.

Ronald Reagan, from his governorship to his presidency, kept a sign on his desk that read, "There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit.

Sheen said that the communists had failed to convince the world that there is no God. Rather, he quipped, they had succeeded only in convincing the world that there is a Devil.33

At a more material level, one might better accuse communists of fashioning a golden calf than channeling an unclean spirit. What communists effectively bowed down to was just that: a material idol forged and focused on money, property, gold. It was not about the soul. The key to the communist-Marxist utopia would be economics. Solve the economic problem, the communists believed, and you would solve the human problem.

Communists are also, curiously, utopians—secular utopians. They sought a heaven on earth—for them, an earth without religion. They did so without realizing that utopia is not only elusive but such a literal self-contradiction that it does not exist. The Greek roots of the word are ou topos, or "no place." In other words, there is no utopia, at least not in this world and realm. And yet, communists would pursue this no place with religious-like zeal.

Mr. Johnson: Yes; that is true, because I know from my own experience in working in labor organizations, for example, that we had an organization with 10,000 members, and there were only about 60 or 70 Communists, and we controlled the organization. So with small minority of ministers who work in an organized manner, they can always win over and subvert and dupe the majority who are disorganized and are individualistic.

The burning objective of Kate's "consciousness-raising" was "the destruction of the American family," as she deemed it "a patriarchal institution devoted to the oppression and enslavement of women and children.

More than that, the Communists hated those whom the liberals loved. As this book will make clear, the Communists maligned the Democratic presidents whom liberals adored. Throughout the twentieth century, each and every Democratic leader was a target for Communist vilification, beginning with Woodrow Wilson, whom Lenin called a "shark" and a "simpleton." The Communists, whether American or Soviet, demonized icons of the Democratic Party.

Indeed, Marx and Engels willingly conceded that this program would require despotism. They stated of their ten points, "Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads.

He stated emphatically that "Socialism cannot be brought into existence without revolution.

Such is the totalitarian task of communism. Indeed, the textbook definition of totalitarianism, which I have scribbled on the chalkboard every fall semester at Grove City College since 1997, is to fundamentally transform—specifically, to seek to fundamentally transform human nature via some form of political-ideological-cultural upheaval.

At the sessions of the organization department, the importance of establishing good contacts with the religious organizations so that the Communists could infiltrate the missions in China and use them for Communist purposes, was given serious consideration and special attention was drawn to the effective work which Dr. Harry F. Ward did for communism in China.

Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and a long line of implementers candidly admitted that force and violence would be necessary. In the close of the Manifesto, Marx said, "The Communists … openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions" (italics added).

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, the preeminent US-based center for detailing communist crimes, cites the figure of 100 million deaths. Numerous others agree and could be listed here. Dr. Malia aptly noted that the communist record offers the 'most colossal case of political carnage in history.

And particularly infuriating for the world's Methodists is that among the first groups booted from Mao's China were the Methodist missionaries. No other group of Western missionaries had made greater inroads, but Mao and his Marxists—the buddies of Rev. Ward and his radical Methodist Federation for Social Action—sent them packing. They showed them the road out of China. To this day, of course, China remains communist and suffers under religious repression.

The so-called cultural element of Western Europe and America," averred Lenin, speaking of the elite, "are incapable of comprehending the present state of affairs and the actual balance of forces; these elements must be regarded as deaf-mutes [idiots] and treated accordingly." These so-called useful idiots—the title of a bestselling book on the Cold War by Mona Charen9—were to be major components of the Communists' campaigns.

Quite significantly, Gitlow here affirmed what many had suspected regarding just how far left and pro-Moscow were Ward's Methodist Federation for Social Action and the united-front organizations "set up by the Communist Party." These organizations recruited thousands of ministers, most of them presumably dupes, through which American Marxists in the Communist Party carried out their infiltration of religion "on a grand scale.

This was their religion, their faith. Che was their Jesus Christ: "Like a Christian seeking to emulate the life of Christ," Rudd remembered, "I passionately wanted to be a revolutionary like Che, no matter what the cost."36

Gitlow's words jarred every member of Congress in that hearing room. He confirmed the worst fears and suspicions: the Rev. Harry Ward and his cell of Marxist-socialist clergymen had sought nothing less than to convert the Methodist Church and Christianity as a whole into an instrument for socialist victory.

FDR misjudgment, one frequently ignored by historians: the president's refusal to concede Soviet culpability in the Katyn Wood massacre, one of the worst war crimes of the twentieth century.

Throughout American history our presidents have invoked our nation's founding fathers. This is particularly true of recent presidents.

The people who influence our presidents matter.

journalists—American Communists targeted the 1968 Democratic National Convention, in part for the purpose of trying to advance their own far-left third party. Bear in mind that they did not target the Republican National Convention that year. It was the Democrats they looked to unravel.