But from what you provided, suspicions are somewhat confirmed that there’s more going on than simple Biblically based disapproval of O’Keefe’s methodology.

evangelium-vitae_en.

Dawn seems to be implying some kind of equivalency between what ACORN was obviously up to, and what the two “pranksters” did to expose it. “Using their same Alinsky tactics against them”. You’d almost think they MURDERED someone so they could expose other murderers.

I guess it leaves many of us wondering just what might really be motivating such an article. Perhaps some clarification regarding Dawn’s opinion of ACORN, THEIR tactics, and “community organizing” or “social justice” in general.

Hannah’s father has responded to you here:

http://tinyurl.com/ye63s5a

The country at large already had a foundation for distrusting and suspecting ACORN, but it needed that up close and personal moment to really drive it home.

This is what James and Hannah provided.

I don’t think the authors here fully realize the true nature of the agenda of these folks, and the window they currently have for achieving it. I don’t think they realize that it’s really now or never, for us, mainly, but also for them, although they’ll change and morph and keep their wheels grinding. It’s kind of like Jack Bauer time.

I always cheer for Jack, just like I’m sure do millions of perfectly good and righteous Christians.

Should Christians Use Saul Alinsky’s Tactics in Exposing Corruption?by Doug Giles
A Christian pundit, Dawn Eden, thinks my daughter Hannah Giles and her partner James O’Keefe should not have used Saul Alinsky’s deceptive tactics against ACORN because Saul was “evil,” his methods sneaky, and he dedicated his book, Rules for Radicals, to Lucifer.

In addition, Eden took a swipe at Lila Rose, Planned Parenthood’s main pain in the butt, for being deceptive in her undercover vids which exposed Planned Parenthood’s illegal activity. Oh, and I almost forgot: Dawn also busted on Hannah for being un-Christlike for wearing a miniskirt and dressing like a hooker. Sounds a little catty to me—and a wee bit like Dana Carvey’s Church Lady—but I digress.

First off, Ms. Eden, if you ever drum up the nerve to expose a scandalous multimillion dollar Obama-backed, taxpayer-funded organization for doing illegal crap and then undergo death threats (versus sitting on the sidelines and simply critiquing those who have the cojones to do so) you will find that the lawbreakers are rather reticent in telling journalists, who are intent on exposing and destroying their world, exactly how they’re breaking the law. Yeah, I know. It’s weird, eh?

You’d think that nefarious organizations would just spill their guts, throw up their hands, give up their hard drives, refrain from dumping tens of thousands of documents in a dumpster, and just cooperate to the fullest extent with the FBI and the DOJ, but alas, they don’t because they’re criminals, and criminals, generally speaking, aren’t known for truthfulness, contrition and full disclosure with cops.

Therefore, most of the time when journalists, Christian or not, want to get the 411 on a reprehensible group, they usually have to fly under the radar, you know, by being misleading, going stealth, acting like serpents, slithering in and getting the apple in front of the culprit and seeing if they’ll take the bait. Deception is a given in the truth seeker’s toolbox when it comes to dealing with slippery critters who won’t easily spill the beans. It’s called hunting. Haven’t you ever watched a Jason Bourne movie, seen Barney Fife in action, or read Joshua or Judges? Geez, Dawn. Come to speed, why don’t cha?

For frail Dawn, the deceptive tactics Giles, O’Keefe and Rose employed in exposing crappy cabals like ACORN and Planned Parenthood present a pious conundrum because she sees deceit, in all forms, as evil; according to her read of the Bible, sweet Jesus would never give the thumbs-up to a believer to participate in that kind of devilish activity.

No, for Dawn, we must pray, be more “mature,” take the high road, wait a million years, come through the front door with a press pass around our neck, and tell the twisted that the USA and Jesus would really appreciate it if ACORN and Planned Parenthood would confess their sins, close down their operations, and become a Ben & Jerry’s.

Here’s my take on whether or not Jesus and the Bible are cool with deceit for righteous purposes. First off, when I’m talking about Jesus, I’m talking about the one in the Bible who methodically made a whip and beat the religious hucksters out of the temple (that’s not very Christlike, eh Dawn?), purposely picked fights with sanctimonious toads and political pukes, and instructed his disciples to be “shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Mt. 10:16). Or, as my King Doug Contra Mundus Translation interprets the original Greek text, “be as clever as the Devil.” Yep, good old Jesus said it’s okay to imitate the serpent in regard to cleverness; just be righteous in spirit and desired goals.

From what I know from my own serious Christian kid and O’Keefe (as well as Rose, via several interviews with her), their motivations were pure in that they wanted to sink these two sucky organizations—organizations, mind you, that are on tape aiding and abetting underage prostitution, home loans for multiple whorehouses, money laundering, tax fraud, millions of abortions, and not just any old abortions but abortions for underage girls (without their parents’ knowledge or consent) who have been the victims of statutory rape.

The reason I believe Jesus wouldn’t give a flip about these three heroes’ mad methods but would instead applaud their efforts is because the Scripture doesn’t condemn:

Rahab, a real whore, for her sleight of hand with the Canaanites
Gideon’s pretense with his small army
Abraham’s lie regarding his wife
King David’s feigned madness before King Achish.
Real life is war, sweetie pie, and I hate to burst your smug balloon, my dear Dawn, but sometimes playing dirty for noble reasons is the right thing to do.

With Eden’s edict banning deception, it follows that Christian cops couldn’t do their fabulous undercover work; Christian soldiers couldn’t wear deceptive camo or take on local dress in order to whack the Taliban; Christian CIA ops would have to wear dove and fish T-Shirts instead of their Simon Templar garb; and the amazing Christians who lied to the murderous Nazis would all be uniformly condemned for fibbing about the whereabouts of precious Jews they were hiding.

Lastly, Dawn, at the end of the day, I believe Hannah, James and Lila will get mad applause in heaven as they are here on earth for exposing ACORN and Planned Parenthood’s hellish practices. I know, as a Christian, I prefer their ways of doing things to your way of not doing them. Amen.

Often, we need to use deception to expose evil in society and to protect the innocent from that evil. Many people lied to the Nazi’s in order to protect Jews. Today, adults pose as children on the internet in order to protect children from pedophiles.

Ms. Eden, you write, “For those seeking a more fruitful path of activism, a higher and nobler form is one that emphasizes prayer, fasting, reparation and charity,…” Do you know that O’Keefe doesn’t do these things in addition to his public actions?

Jesus does tell us we need to be cunning as serpents, and gentle as lambs.

I remember that when I was first on the Daily News, the great Liberal organ of the Nonconformists, I took the trouble to draw up a list of fifteen falsehoods which I found out, by my own personal knowledge, in a denunciation of Rome by Messrs. Horton and Hocking. I noted, for instance, that it was nonsense to say that the Covenanters fought for religious liberty when the Covenant denounced religious toleration; that it was false to say the Church only asked for orthodoxy and was indifferent to morality, since, if this was true of anybody, it was obviously true of the supporters of salvation by faith and not of salvation by works; that it was absurd to say that Catholics introduced a horrible sophistry of saying that a man might sometimes tell a lie, since every sane man knows he would tell a lie to save a child from Chinese torturers; that it missed the whole point, in this connection, to quote Ward’s phrase, “Make up your mind that you are justified in lying and then lie like a trooper,” for Ward’s argument was against equivocation or what people call Jesuitry. He meant, “When the child really is hiding in the cupboard and the Chinese torturers really are chasing him with red-hot pincers, then (and then only) be sure that you are right to deceive and do not hesitate to lie; but do not stoop to equivocate. Do not bother yourself to say, “The child is in a wooden house not far from here,” meaning the cupboard; but say the child is in Chiswick or Chimbora zoo, or anywhere you choose.” I find I made elaborate notes of all these arguments all that long time ago, merely for the logical pleasure of disentangling an intellectual injustice. I had no more idea of becoming a Catholic than of becoming a cannibal.
CCC CW3:89-90

I think, that, though we may do a horrid thing in a horrid situation, we must be quite certain that we actually and already are in that situation. Thus, all sane moralists admit that one may sometimes tell a lie; but no sane moralist would approve of telling a little boy to practice telling lies, in case he might one day have to tell a justifiable one. Thus, morality has often justified shooting a robber or a burglar. But it would not justify going into the village Sunday school and shooting all the little boys who looked as if they might grow up into burglars. The need may arise; but the need must have arisen. It seems to me quite clear that if you step across this limit you step off a precipice.
[GKC ILN Jan 4 1908 CW28:19]

Apply the same standard. Is it permissible for a journalist to misrepresent himself? Yes, in the context of undercover investigative journalism – the purpose of which is to bring to light that which is hidden. Is it permissible for a undercover detective to lie when going into a drug cartel? I think you get the picture.

The issue isn’t simply means and ends, but rather it is also professional duties.

I know that Father Trigilio expressed reservations about journalists and police using entrapment–but what James O’Keefe did does not qualify as entrapment. To entrap is to induce someone to commit a moral act that they would not otherwise have committed. James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, on the other hand, caught ACORN workers in the act of applying ACORN standards. In other words, that organization had already committed to this criminal behavior, and O’Keefe/Giles merely gave them the opportunity to apply an ACORN-approved policy. Moreover, they were not really cooperating in an evil act because O’Keefe and Giles did not really intend to open up an underage brothel. If that had been their intention, then the cooperation with evil charge would have been warranted.

He was, among other things, an employee of the Church in Chicago for years, organizing largely Catholic poor neighborhoods. The man who was to become Pope Paul VI brought him over to Italy for a while to help keep the reds from taking over the unions. He was also a lifelong friend of Jacques Maritain, and the University of Notre Dame Press published a collection of their correspondence a few years back.

I am continually surprised by people’s willingness to mount this silly Alinsky hobby horse, which has nothing to do with the man himself and everything to do with potential damage it could do to the current president. If this doesn’t hurt Obama (and it’s looking like it won’t) everyone will suddenly move on and stop caring about Alinsky again–just like they did with Bill Ayers.

Do check out the Alinsky/Maritain correspondence, though. A good read.

David, you write,

“There are many examples of the Saints and Jesus himself tricking people so as to stay out of trouble or to stay alive.”

“Tricking” in self-defense is not the same as deceptions undertaken to expose other deceptions. In any case, I do know an example from the saints, but when did Our Lord do such a thing? Making his way through a crowd without getting stoned is not “tricking”–it’s receiving the benefits of His Father’s protection. It’s not like He put on a fur coat and sunglasses or something.

And you write:

“Chesterton himself gives the example that if you‚Äôre hiding someone in your house who is unjustly being sought after, you not only have the moral option of lying, but you are morally obliged to lie and tell them that the guy is on the other side of the world if they‚Äôll believe you.”

This hypothetical example is much-argued by philosophers–but where did Chesterton say such a thing? Citations, please.

Yes, O’Keefe may be guilty of some naivete in the phone scam, and some hamming it up with ACORN pimpery, and perhaps went too far in brandishing Alinsky (I haven’t seen those quotes). But he also clearly was out to bravely fight the evil that we all have seen, and deserves more support from conservatives. It takes all levels of activism to defeat the insidious Marxist beast, just as it took both Reagan and JPII to defeat the Soviet Union. O’Keefe’s humor has also helped to buoy the spirits of conservatives, so please let’s not we in our armchairs shoot him down so easily. I hope more young people will sacrifice themselves so generously.