The Book of Saul

Over at NR, the conservative historian Ronald Radosh reviews Nicholas von Hoffman's recent book about Saul Alinsky. He winds up giving the lefty rabble-rouser a mixed but fairly friendly assessment. The essay has a rather tentative air, and while Radosh generally refrains from challenging von Hoffman's views, he also tends to stop short of claiming those opinions as his own. Still, at a time when much of the right believes Alinsky was one of the great villains of American history, it's a change of pace to see a magazine like National Review airing the thesis that Alinsky was "a man with a libertarian sensibility who supported all the little men fighting against any large structure."

Elsewhere in Reason: My own post about the von Hoffman book, and my article arguing that the core problem with ACORN is that it wasn't Alinskyan enough.