RULES OF MEANS AND ENDS

From the Handbook of the Left: Rules for Radicals you find:

Rules of means and ends ...situational ethics

1. One's concerns with the ethics of means and ends varies inversly with one's personal interest in the issue. One's concerns with the ethics of means and ends varies inversly with one's distance from the scene of the conflict.
So, in other words, as one's personal interest in an issue rises, the less the concern with the ethics involved. In addition, the closer one is to the scene of a conflict, the lower the concern of the ethics involved. In my view, ethics should be a constant.

2. The judgement of the ethics of means is dependent on the political position of those sitting in judgement.
So, it looks like according to Alinsky, two people could accomplish the same end using the same means, but if their political positions are opposite, judgement may be passed on only the incongruent person. This looks like a classic double standard.

3. In war, the end justifies almost any means.

4. Judgement must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.
So no one may pass judgment on Bill Ayers for blowing up a police station back in the sixties because apparently, back then, it needed to be done. Today, he's a retired professor from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

5. Concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice verca.
This one says that the more means you have available, the more you can afford to worry about ethics. Technically, you could choose the most ethical means.

6. The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.

7. Generally, success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics.

8. The morality of means depends upon whether the means is being deployed at the time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.
This employs the application of a survival instinct in a non life threatening encounter. In other words, if a person seems to be losing an engagement, any means may be used with no concerns of morality or ethics with the idea that there was no choice. Whereas, if one is finding themself victorious, more concern of morality or ethics may be afforded to avoid criticizism or end up losing, after all, to ridicule. This is seen sometimes in sports when one team defeats the other so badly and by so many points that criticizers will complain that it was unnecessary to accrue that many points to win and that the team could've moderated...please.

9. Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.

10. You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.

Okay? So this is how Obama and other serious Alinskyites look at themselves in the mirror. This is how they sleep at night after doing things to others where, if it were done to them, they would squeal like pigs about how it's unfair, or, they're disadvantaged, it's just them up against an entire entity. They're being bullied, etc. etc.

Situational ethics.