Topic: WorldNetDaily
An Aug. 26 WorldNetDaily article highlights right-wing blogger Gateway Pundit's claim that Michelle Obama's use of the terms "the world as it is" and "the world as it should be" in her Democratic National Convention speech "appear[s] to have been drawn from 'Rules for Radicals,' a book by dedicated socialist Saul Alinsky."
We'll let Sadly, No! handle the response:
Okay, without getting all elitist and educated and stuff, I can’t help but point out that anyone who’s read a single page of philosophy, ethics or theology has run across the comparison of the “world as it should be” to the “world as it is.” Thousands of writers, all of whom knew how to spell “piqued” and “curiosity,” have used this formulation, and it isn’t any more original to Alinsky than the words “and” and “the.”
But the stupid never stops with [Gateway Pundit blogger] Mr. Hoft, who apparently didn’t even read or understand the two passages he cited. He saw the same two phrases in the speech and was so busy whooping and hollering about his groundbreaking discovery and his literary prowess that he didn’t notice that Michelle and Alinsky use the two phrases in exactly opposite ways — Alinsky calls the “world as it should be” a “fantasy,” whereas Michelle sees it as an ideal to be fought for.
Needless to say, WND also fails to note both that the question is common in philosophy and that Obama's use of it is completely opposite from Alinsky's.
