The new Tea Party Bible

www.politico.com...

Rules for Radicals,” the iconic liberal organizing manifesto by Saul Alinsky, was an unlikely bible

for tea party activists as they tried to mobilize their movement last year. Now, as they struggle to demonstrate their impact and staying power, they have another unlikely book to live by — a kind of management guide written by a couple of Stanford MBAs that extols the virtues of decentralization.


“The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations,” has a thesis with understandable attraction for tea partiers — that poorly funded groups and companies loosely organized around basic shared ideas can change society, often by outmaneuvering governments or mega-corporations.

I wanted to know what this book says so here is a quick overview:

"One thing that business, institutions, governments and key individuals will have to realize is spiders and starfish may look alike, but starfish have a miraculous quality to them. Cut off the leg of a spider, and you have a seven-legged creature on your hands; cut off its head and you have a dead spider. But cut off the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new one. Not only that, but the severed arm can grow an entirely new body. Starfish can achieve this feat because, unlike spiders, they are decentralized; every major organ is replicated across each arm.

But starfish don't just exist in the animal kingdom. Starfish organizations are taking society and the business world by storm, and are changing the rules of strategy and competition. Like starfish in the sea, starfish organizations are organized on very different principles than we are used to seeing in traditional organizations. Spider organizations are centralized and have clear organs and structure. You know who is in charge. You see them coming.

Starfish organizations, on the other hand, are based on completely different principles. They tend to organize around a shared ideology or a simple platform for communication- around ideologies like al Qaeda or Alcoholics Anonymous. They arise rapidly around the simplest ideas or platforms. Ideas or platforms that can be easily duplicated. Once they arrive they can be massively disruptive and are here to stay, for good or bad. And the Internet can help them flourish.

So in today's world starfish are starting to gain the upper hand."

Starfishandspider.com




My personal take is that they have decided that a decentralized and non-hierarchal based organizations, groups and governing body are the best form of political system.

This concludes that the Tea Party is laying heavily into States' rights politics, abolition of Federal Agencies and greatly minimizing the powers of Washington. I am beginning to wonder if this is the path of the new Conservative movement not just here in America but also in Great Britain for example.

David Cameron will announce this morning that he hopes to liberate four areas from the strictures of red tape and central government as he attempts to deliver his idea of the "Big Society".

Liverpool, the Eden Valley in Cumbria, Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire and Sutton in south-west London will become "vanguard communities". All four authorities approached the government to experiment with running the parts of their public services they think they can administer better.

They may have central government budgets handed over to them to administer at street level, attempt to improve local transport links themselves, take over command of local assets such as pubs and community services, have a greater say over planning permission or local transport and, in the case of Liverpool, allow volunteers to keep a popular local museum open for longer hours.

Guardian

This would mean that the new political divide is not only between economic and social issues but also the power structure. While traditionally all forms of Socialism and Communism have their roots in decentralization this has not been the case within the past century with the UK Labour Party leading a fight, alongside the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, to centralize the economy and power. While this contrasted with the original Socialist views it has been widely accepted by the majority of Western Center-left parties.

Could this be a new political aligning similar to what occurred in the 1960's for both the United States and United Kingdom? Where the 'Old Right' in America of Anti-War Libertarians and Paleoconservatives, alongside Liberal (Rockefeller) Republicans were destroyed by the Interventionist Conservatives and Neoconservatives, alongside the Christian (Evangelical) Right.

It is also the time when the Democratic Party abandoned Social Democracy and Populism in favor of Liberalism and Centrism.




What do you think?

[edit on 7/31/2010 by Misoir]

Bible? What?! The Tea Party has no atheists? No Jews? No Muslims? I smell a new viral hate campaign a-brewing

As for the old centralization/decentralization debate? This always goes in cycles. The U.S. is probably due for a decentralization cycle, which I am interpreting as the return of more government control to the states and less control for the federal.

[edit on 7/31/2010 by ~Lucidity]

Thanks for putting this out there. It is interesting. Sad fact is that it is not new, though. Insurgents have been using the concept for years , although nawadays we call them "terrorist cells".

Originally posted by ~Lucidity
Bible? What?! The Tea Party has no atheists? No Jews? No Muslims? I smell a new viral hate campaign a-brewing

[edit on 7/31/2010 by ~Lucidity]

Not sure if you were intentionally spinning this for giggles or you just didn't understand the way the term "bible" was being used, that being a definiive document of instruction and/or reference.

Originally posted by ~Lucidity


As for the old centralization/decentralization debate? This always goes in cycles. The U.S. is probably due for a decentralization cycle, which I am interpreting as the return of more government control to the states and less control for the federal.

I'm all for states rights and decentralization but without federal dollars in the form of grants, loans, payments for housing military bases and other federal offices; most states except for Texas would fold up like an paper origami rabbit. If the states want control they will have to pony up some big bucks.

Most states don't have anykind of manufacturing left. Farm states are subsidized by the USDA. How exactly will states generate income if they breakaway from the feds? Taxes? Isn't that what all this current whining about federal control is about?

Are the states going to pick up the tab for the USPS, social security, medicare? If the federal jobs in almost every state dried up...so would the state incometaxes. Does anyone even have any idea how much federal grant money comes into states for law enforcement? It's huge.

Sounds like the TPM has let their ideology get in the way of their common sense with this "Bible"

This is a much more complex issue than just knee jerk action/reaction.








[edit on 31-7-2010 by whaaa]

reply to post by rogerstigers

Intentional spins for giggles. Because it honestly wouldn't shock me if someone picked up on that word and ran with it