PrintMay 6, 2008
Barack Obama and Karl Marx
Why is Barack Obama so comfortable with so many Marxists? The question has long intrigued me. Despite being repudiated by history, Marxism remains powerful in the halls of elite academic institutions, where Obama imbibed so much of his worldview. Investor's Business Daily today connects some dots.
Obama himself began his career as a Chicago community organizer and worked on projects there influenced by Saul Alinsky. The Marxist Machiavellian of the Chicago scene advised budding revolutionaries in his 1971 book "Rules For Radicals" to conceal their radical affiliations to attain greater power. That works well for Marxists.Wright is an adherent of black liberation theology, an explicitly Marxist interpretation of the Bible whose aim is to stir up class and race hatred to advance communism.....Ayers has since lectured the Marxist dictator of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, on using public education as an instrument for advancing "revolution." Meanwhile his stepson, Chesa Boudin, has gone to Caracas as an "adviser" to the anti-American Chavez. [....]When an Obama precinct captain in Houston flew a Cuban flag bearing Guevara's likeness, Obama said only it "disappointed" him and "does not reflect (his) views." He never publicly ordered the flag down, nor rejected Guevara's blood-soaked communism.Obama himself has promised to meet with the hemisphere's Marxist dictators who have systematically dismantled or are in the process of dismantling democracy all across our hemisphere.
In addition to the points IBD identifies, I would add that Obama's father, whose name he bears and whose dreams informed the title of his first autobiographical book, was a fairly out-of-the-closet Marxist. If Obama has ever bemoaned his father's Marxism, I have never heard of it.
IBD asks the money question:
Why does someone who says he represents "change" have so many Jurassic Marxists in his camp calling the shots? He needs to repudiate this crew now.
I have another question for Obama. It is one that Tim Russert would never ask. But maybe, just maybe if Obama enters Bill O'Reilly's no spin zone, the cable news bigfoot will see his way to ask:
"You're a highly educated man, Senator. Do you think Karl Marx was wrong? If so, what did he get wrong?"
