Copies of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 1969 political science thesis, written in partial fulfillment of her B.A. degree at Wellesley College, is said to be making the rounds on the Internet. It is titled: “‘There Is Only the Fight…’: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.” On reading it Edward Cline found kinship between the relationships of (power-seeking arch villain) Ellsworth Toohey and (his niece) Catherine Halsey in Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead, and of Saul D. Alinsky and young Hillary D. Rodham, college student. Saul David Alinsky (1909-1972) was of course a real-life “radical” who specialized in organizing “communities” for local political agitation rather than attempting the broader political machinations of Toohey. Although unlike Toohey on certain levels, Cline writes, Alinsky’s “fundamental methodology of acquiring power – not for himself, he always said, but for whomever he deemed the “dispossessed” – is essentially the same as Toohey’s.” Most fascinating about Cline’s essay is the likeness between Alinsky and Clinton, and the implications thereof relating to her boundless political ambitions. Here are excerpts: The important point here is that Alinsky remains one of her primary ideological mentors, her denials and those of her defenders to the contrary notwithstanding…Carl Bernstein, who wrote a biography of Hillary, A Woman in Charge…claims that she is not an ideologue of the collectivist or any other stripe. “One of the real problems Hillary has had is a difficult relationship with the truth”…But the power hungry do subscribe to an ideology of sorts, one of opportunism, of snatching at every issue or chance that would boost one’s place in the political power grid. Hillary found that opportunity in Bill Clinton, himself a consummate opportunist… Whether she was slavishly working to apply Alinsky’s rules of thumb, to work both from “within” and “without” the system,” to effect change by organized confrontation, or adhering to some other leftist ideologue’s formula for acquiring power, is a moot issue. It is interesting to note that [bolding mine] during Bill Clinton’s two administrations, Hillary’s Wellesley thesis was kept locked up by the school at the request of the White House, doubtless to prevent the public from getting the “wrong” ideas concerning her ideological leanings. But her actions before and since have tipped everyone off to her true leanings. The school did not need to keep her thesis a secret… [E]vident in Hillary’s…thesis…[is] a kind of inverse narcissism, or a concern for what she thinks of herself through others’ eyes [unlike that which motivates Catherine Halsey].… All this augurs disastrously for a Hillary presidency, Cline concludes:I do not think Hillary suffered from a crisis of self-respect, as Catherine Halsey did; I do not think she ever had a self to respect… Like Alinsky, like Toohey, she wishes to crush the individualist independence of Americans and replace it with dependence on the state – and she would be the state – chiefly because she has grown to fear and hate independence in anyone… This is a would-be dictator, and dictators, as I have noted in other commentaries, are only as real to themselves as the number of people they need to rule and command.