"The Peasants Are Revolting"

Your Chicago Sun-Times asks the musical question, "Why is GOP sneering at Obama's work as community organizer?":

Republicans insist that people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Communities should take care of their own and not depend on big government to do the job. And the folks who do make it should give back.

We agree wholeheartedly.

But on what is the job of community organizer premised, if not those very principles?

Community organizers come into poor neighborhoods and try to get people knocked down by life back up on their feet.

They tell them where to find jobs, where to send their kids for day care, where to get drug counseling.

They show residents how they can organize to protest poor housing conditions, low pay and other inner-city woes.

When the job is done right, a community organizer helps the most powerless among us gain some small sense of power over their lives.

And that, gentle reader, is why the GOP fears and loathes community organizing.

They see power as a zero sum game and know that when common folks gain power over themselves, their communities and their lives, a dangerous little crack forms in the ruling class's power monopoly.

That is what this election is all about.