Markadelphia Comments

Kevin, you are completely wrong. Barack Obama is not a socialist nor is he a communist. The central problem here is that when you are as far right as you are..everyone...even us good capitalists are communists.

One need only spend a few minutes on Barack Obama's web site, looking at his economic plans and ideas to see that your views are way off the mark and I really can't figure out why. It doesn't make any sense because you are bright, engaged, and clearly a competent person. I suspect that it has something to do with the "Dogma" line "You can change an idea but you can't change a belief." Your belief system, fed by some who post here, has careened off into a bizarre reality that has no bearing on the facts.

Given the fact that Senator Obama has the strong support of people like Warren Buffet and a slew of corporate donors, I find it hard to believe that they would chuck all that to be subservient to a communist or socialist state. It's not going to happen.

From a comment to an earlier post.

In that post I said,

One of the choices we have for President has been surrounded since childhood by avowed Marxists/Socialists. I realize that Antonio Gramsci has won, and that our educational system has been suborned into cranking out large quantities of people who think socialism is a marvelous idea, but now we appear to be at a point where we are about to elect to the highest office in the land a man who would not otherwise pass an FBI background check for a job at the CIA or the Pentagon due to his known associates.

Let's review, shall we?

Obama's father who left him was a supporter of Marxism, according to this IBD editorial:

(Obama's) father's critique of Kenya's economic policy was published in the East Africa Journal under the title "Problems Facing Our Socialism." One discovers — after reading just a few pages into his eight-page tract, where he waxes quixotic about "communal ownership of major means of production" — that he wasn't criticizing the government for being too socialistic, but not socialistic enough.

Obama Sr. described his own economic plan, his counterproposal, as it were, as "scientific socialism — inter alia — communism." Yes, Obama's father was a communist who wanted to put socialist theory into action — by "force."

He trusted the collective over the individual, a theme he successfully instilled in his son, also Harvard-educated, with whom he visited once for a full month in Hawaii, even speaking to his prep school class. He kept up correspondence with his son through his college years.

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Listen to what "the Old Man," as Obama and his siblings called him, wrote in proposing government-run farms: "If left to the individual, consolidation will take a long time to come. We have to look at priorities in terms of what is good for society, and on this basis we may find it necessary to force people to do things they would not do otherwise."

He explained that "the government should restrict the size of farms that can be owned by one individual throughout the country."

More evil than individuals, Obama's father believed, are heads of corporations. More evil still are the bankers and investors, who conspire to control the world through their evil capitalist system.

"One who has read Marx cannot fail to see that corporations are not only what Marx referred to as the advanced stage of capitalism," he wrote. "But Marx even called it finance capitalism by which a few would control the finances of so many, and through this, have not only economic power but political power as well."

It's clear from Sen. Obama's own writings and speeches that he too is no fan of business or our system of "chaotic and unforgiving capitalism," as he wrote in "Audacity." He's fond of bashing Wall Street "greed" and the post-Reagan rise of individual investing over government investing. He wants to roll back the "Ownership Society." He resents the profit motive and individuals "on the make."

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Obama wrote in "Dreams From My Father" that he was trying to impress his father by taking a low-paying job organizing and agitating in the Chicago ghetto right out of college. "I did feel that there was something to prove to my father," he said.

Yet, suspiciously, he does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory. No doubt he wanted to keep that hidden.

Gee, ya THINK?

Accuracy in Media reports:

In his biography of Barack Obama, David Mendell writes about Obama's life as a "secret smoker" and how he "went to great lengths to conceal the habit." But what about Obama's secret political life? It turns out that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.

In his books, Obama admits attending "socialist conferences" and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a "hard-core academic Marxist," which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.

However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his "poetry" and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just "Frank."

The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.

But he's just "Frank."

Obama spent twenty years in Trinity United Church of Christ where Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached every Sunday. Wright married Barack and Michelle and baptized their daughters. Obama has called Wright "his mentor." Evidence suggests that Obama attended Trinity United because of Wright's political activism, but what exactly is Wright's political position?

It's Black Liberation Theology as espoused by James H. Cone. Newsvine reports:

When Jeremiah Wright got into a spitting contest with right wing TV host Sean Hannity last year, he at one point refused to answer Hannity's badgering questions and kept asking Hannity "Have you read James Cone, what do you know about black theology? Have you read Cone? Have you read Cone?Have you read Cone?"

James Cone is one of he founders, some say the founder, of Black Liberation Theology. Rev. Jeremiah Wright's ministry, his beliefs about America, and about life itself are formed by his attraction to and acceptance of the writings of James Cone.

Let's look at some quotes from James Cone.

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"The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people."

"All white men are responsible for white oppression. "

"Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.'"

"Any advice from whites to blacks on how to deal with white oppression is automatically under suspicion as a clever device to further enslavement."

"Black suffering is getting worse, not better. . . . White supremacy is so clever and evasive that we can hardly name it." (2004)

"Jesus Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants."

"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him."

"The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

"What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal."

But wait! There's more!

American Thinker has an interesting post concerning Cone, Wright, and the Obamas you might want to read. A FrontPage Magazine piece states:

Until ABC News picked up the story months later, Black Liberation Theology remained a rather obscure discipline, confined to the syllabi of liberal seminaries. But after Wright's sermons were broadcast again and again on the news and the Internet, Black Liberation Theology once again commanded popular attention. After all, Barack Obama had joined Trinity twenty years earlier, had been married in the Church, and had his daughters baptized there. Obama and his wife had donated $22,500 to Trinity in 2006. The presidential hopeful even took the name of his memoir, The Audacity of Hope, from the title of one of Wright's sermons. The beliefs held by a presidential candidate's longtime pastor and spiritual advisor are therefore of great national interest.

And what are those beliefs? Like the pro-communist liberation theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.

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It is troubling that Barack Obama's closest friends and allies subscribe to an explicitly racist doctrine. Even more worrying is that the main exponent of Black Liberation Theology sees Obama as a kindred spirit. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Obama's pastor and Church, Cone said: "I've read both of Barack Obama's books, and I heard the speech [on race]. I don't see anything in the books or in the speech that contradicts black liberation theology."

Troubling? Pish-tosh! No one in the major media seems concerned! Why should we worry our little heads?

While that same media seems to consider William Ayers the equivalent to Charles Keating, politically, they gloss over a few pertinent facts. Obama called Ayers, according to the New York Times:

"a guy who lives in my neighborhood," but "not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

He also described Ayers as "a Professor of English in Chicago." He is not. He is a Professor of EDUCATION - a man who teaches future teachers. What Obama also neglected to mention was that when he began his run for State office he did so from William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn's living room. This suggests a somewhat closer relationship that just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood." Both Ayers and Dohrn were members of the Weather Underground, an avowedly Marxist organization dedicated to overthrowing the U.S. government.

Let's see. . .

Obama senior, Frank Marshall Davis, Rev. Wright, William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn; who else do we have? According to this American Thinker piece:

Obama's Official campaign blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, a former writer for the leftist Nation magazine and a contributor to the Socialist Viewpoint, is certainly a believer in class warfare.

The capitalist ruling class of the United States exercises a virtual dictatorship not only over American society, but also over the entire world. This capitalist class rule is the basic cause of the poverty, wars and the degradation of the natural environment.

After being expelled from Socialist Action in 1999, we formed Socialist Workers Organization in an attempt to carry on the project of building a nucleus of a revolutionary party true to the historic teachings and program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

Socialist Viewpoint

Sam Graham-Felsen, hired to run Obama's blog, writes about Noam Chomsky in a Marxist publications that openly calls for revolution against the American government. This is a Presidential candidate's choice to run the on-line portion of his campaign. That speaks volumes of his character and worldview. Contradicting what he says in public, Obama is surrounding himself with poeple who never seem to learn that their absurd ideologies end in misery and ruin.

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The adults in the Obama campaign expect us to believe that a campaign staff filled with Marxists and radicals does not reflect the candidate.

That would be people who hang Cuban flags and Ché posters in their campaign headquarters. But no reflection on Obama!

Then there's the news (completely ignored by the major media) that Obama was a member of The New Party. Erick Erickson explains:

Most of the New Party’s history has been lost in the digital age. It was established in 1992 and started to die out in 1998, well before Google and the modern web were established. But through lengthy searches of the Nexis archive and microfilm at the local university library, I’ve been able to piece this together.

The New Party was established in 1992 “by union activist Sandy Pope and University of Wisconsin professor Joel Rogers,” USA Today reported on November 16, 1992. The paper wrote that the new party was “self-described [as] ‘socialist democratic.’”

The seeds, however, had been sown all the way back in 1988. Quoting John Nichols in the March 22, 1998 issue of In These Times, “The roots of the New Party go back to the aftermath of Jesse Jackson’s run for president in 1988. At that time, Dan Cantor, who had served as labor coordinator for the Jackson campaign, and University of Wisconsin sociology professor Joel Rogers began talking about how to formulate an alternative between the increasingly indistinguishable Democratic-Republican monolith.”

Joel Rogers sought to use the idea of “fusion” as a way to get the New Party into power.

Fusion is a pretty simple concept. A candidate could run as both a Democrat and a New Party member to signal the candidate was, in fact, a left-leaning candidate, or at least not a center-left DLC type candidate. If the candidate -- let’s call him Barack Obama -- received only 500 votes in the Democratic Party against another candidate who received 1000 votes, Obama would clearly not be the nominee. But, if Obama also received 600 votes from the New Party, Obama’s New Party votes and Democratic votes would be fused. He would be the Democratic nominee with 1100 votes.

The fusion idea set off a number of third parties, but the New Party was probably the most successful.

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Fusion, fortunately for the country, died in 1997. William Rehnquist, writing for a 6-3 Supreme Court, found the concept was not a protected constitutional right. It was two years too late to stop Obama.

On December 1, 1994, after the Gingrich revolution swept the Democrats from congress and forced Bill Clinton to triangulate, the Chicago Tribune ran an article by Steve Mills entitled “Looking for the Left: The Old Progressives and Marxists Still Breathe Idealist Fire, but They’re Too Splintered to Generate Any Heat.”

"'The Left is in crisis, and it has been for some time,' said Carl Davidson, the former national secretary for the radical Students for a Democratic Society. 'I don't know if it's even bottomed out yet,'" he reported to Mr. Mills. Mills continued, "The Socialist Workers Party is in this corner; the International Socialist Organization is in this one. The [communist group Committee of Correspondence] is in another. The radicals, or even the liberals with some radical leanings -- so-called 'soft radicals' -- seem to find it hard to abandon individual issues for a broader movement."

But, Mills reported, "It is amid this political confusion that The New Party would like to step in. 'If there’s anything that defines the American Left, it’s fragmentation,' said Dan Cantor, the party’s national organizer.… The New Party aims to change that. By uniting the progressives behind a cohesive ideology, one that, in theory at least, will have room for all the factions that now litter the landscape of the Left, The New Party is confident progressives can again be strong."

In 1995, the New Ground, the newsletter of the Chicago Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, noted, “In Chicago, the New Party's biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN.

"Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag. On one hand, in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize some of the most depressed communities in the city. Chicago organizers for ACORN and organizers for SEIU Local 880 have been given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New Party members. On the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for fundraising, it's easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled former employees. And ACORN has not had the reputation for being interested in coalition politics -- until recently and, happily, not just within the New Party."

Naturally, Barack Obama was an active part of ACORN at the time, helping it legally in court and helping it organize voters. By 1996, ACORN and the New Party were essentially the same body. Along with the Democratic Socialists of America, the New Party endorsed Barack Obama in his State Senate bid.

Obama began seeking the New Party endorsement in 1995. He had been running in a four way primary against his former boss, Senator Alice Palmer, herself a far left radical, and two other individuals. But an election law quirk gave Obama the upper hand. In order to get on the ballot, candidates had to collect signatures of voters. Printed names were not allowed. Obama challenged the petitions of his rivals and was able to get every one of them thrown off the ballot. By the time the ballot was drawn up for the 1996 election, Obama’s was the only name in the race.

Nonetheless, Obama still coveted the New Party endorsement. The New Party required candidates who received the endorsement sign a pledge of support for the party. Obama did not need to support a party that was, in effect, a front group for communists; yet he still chose to. The July issue of the New Ground noted that 15% of the New Party consisted of Democratic Socialists of America members and a good number of Committee of Correspondence members.

Barack Obama, not needing to, chose to affiliate himself with this band of quasi-communists. As the nation moves closer to the election, it is clear that Obama chose to affiliate with assorted anti-American radicals. Machiavelli once noted that we can know a leader by the people he surrounds himself with. What does that say about Barack Obama, who chose to surround himself with people committed to overthrowing the United States and capitalism?

Think Progress reported on April 14:

In his New York Times column today, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol claimed that Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) now-infamous "bitter" remarks sound like Karl Marx's "famous statement about religion." On the Brian and the Judge radio show today, Fox News' senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano asked Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) if Obama is "a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case?"

"I must say that's a good question," replied Lieberman, before stepping back to say that he would "hesitate to say he's a Marxist"

Hesitate how long?

Then there's this piece from US News by James Pethokoukis today that includes this pithy bit:

A while back I chatted with a University of Chicago professor who was a frequent lunch companion of Obama's. This professor said that Obama was as close to a full-out Marxist as anyone who has ever run for president of the United States.

That would fit the available evidence.

Then also today Investor's Business Daily reports:

America's Communist Party is giddy over current political events, saying its movement has reached a "turning point." There's no mystery why. Their candidate is the White House front-runner.

Part of the Communist Party USA's glee can be attributed to the current economic turmoil. The radicals who make up its membership have long rooted for capitalism to fail.

But it can't be denied that the popularity of Barack Obama, the most far-left candidate to run for president as the nominee of a major party, is a big part of the Communist Party resurgence.

In an article chronicling that revival, Agence France-Presse makes sure that it mentions that "the Communist Party does not endorse Democrat Barack Obama." The fact is, the party does not officially endorse candidates.

Members of its staff, however, are upfront with their support. The AFP story notes that "many" of the workers at the party headquarters in Manhattan wear Obama's image on lapel buttons.

Not enough of a link? How about the party's Aug. 15 Web site editorial that talks of Obama's "transformative candidacy" as one "that would advance progressive politics for the long term."

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The Communist Party's dedication to Obama is not new. During the primary season in March, the party noted in a news release that the Obama "campaign has the clearest message of unity and progressive change."

While America's communists are beaming over the prospect of an Obama presidency, the Illinois senator's biggest fans in Europe — judging by the rock star treatment he got when he spoke in Berlin in July — are moving back to Karl Marx. The media report that sales of "Das Kapital" are on the upswing in Germany.

Again, economic concerns are driving people to desperation. But considering Berlin's warm welcome for Obama, it's easy to make a clear argument that the momentum of his campaign, with all its leftist language and Marxist principles — most recently, Obama's admission that he wants to "spread the wealth" — has inspired Germans to return to Marx.

Voters need to remember on Nov. 4 that when Marx's books are selling well and communists are happy, we are headed for trouble.

We're already in trouble. The question now is whether an Obama presidency with democrat majorities in both houses of Congress will light the afterburner on our express elevator ride to Hell.

UPDATE: I finally found it. From my post The Mystery of Government from October of last year, came this comment from Markadelphia:

There is a pervasive, Randian view on Communism on this blog, though, that seems to me to be very single minded…based on her unquestionable personal bias.

No, based on my and my reader's understanding of history. You said that, Mark, as though Rand was wrong about Communism.

I have to admit, though, Markadelphia has contributed to the creation of some really good posts here!