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This ACORN thing is quite the story. I like this piece because it actually went beyond the standard conservative characterization of Saul Alinsky (who they claim Obama is using as a source).
It sounds as though "they meant well" but got caught up in the epicenter that is cynical and corrupt politics. And they either naively or willingly jumped in. I'm not gonna sit here and argue it's just another corrupt left-wing organization because we can't say with any authority its right-wing opposites are any better.
Alinsky, after all, was always a decentralist at heart. He distrusted government planners, and while he was by no means opposed to redistribution in itself he was an acute critic of the welfare state as it functioned in practice. He regularly denounced "welfare colonialism," and in one speech he described LBJ's poverty program as "a huge political pork barrel and a feeding trough for the welfare industry, surrounded by sanctimonious, hypocritical, phony, moralistic crap." Above all, he argued that political action had to be driven by the people directly affected, not by professionals—including professional activists—acting on their behalf. If ACORN really followed the Alinsky model, it would have been on the other side of the barricades in Brooklyn. But then, if it followed the Alinsky model, it would have been a different group entirely.
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