Democrat Barack Obama arrives in Washington on Monday. On the campaign trail, Obama has styled himself a centrist. But a look at those who’ve served as his advisers and mentors over the years shows a far more left-leaning tilt to his background — and to his politics.
Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called “economic justice.” He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.
Investors Business Daily
During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. “I’ve been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served,” he said at the group’s 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.
And as president, “we’ll ensure that economic justice is served,” he asserted. “That’s what this election is about.” Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn’t have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.
“Economic justice” simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It’s a euphemism for socialism.
In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama’s positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.
Obama also talks about “restoring fairness to the economy,” code for soaking the “rich” — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.
It’s clear from a close reading of his two books that he’s a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor.
Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.
Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He’s disguising the wealth transfers as “investments” — “to make America more competitive,” he says, or “that give us a fighting chance,” whatever that means.
Among his proposed “investments”:
• “Universal,” “guaranteed” health care.
• “Free” college tuition.
• “Universal national service” (a la Havana).
• “Universal 401(k)s” (in which the government would match contributions made by “low- and moderate-income families”).
• “Free” job training (even for criminals).
• “Wage insurance” (to supplement dislocated union workers’ old income levels).
• “Free” child care and “universal” preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for “working poor.”
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a “living wage,” with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and “fair trade” and “fair labor practices,” with breaks for “patriot employers” who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for “nonpatriot” companies that don’t.
That’s just for starters — first-term stuff.
Obama doesn’t stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.
You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal.
The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed.
A careful reading of Obama’s first memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as “Frank” — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his “subversive,” “un-American activities.”
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis’ feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.
“They’ll train you so good,” he said, “you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**.”
After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences “for inspiration,” Obama followed in Davis’ footsteps, becoming a “community organizer” in Chicago.
His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman’s a disciple of the late Saul “The Red” Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the “Rules for Radicals” and agitated for social revolution in America.
Obama reunited with his late father’s communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa.
As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough.
He argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses “owned by Asians and Europeans.”
His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn’t stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to “redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all.”
“Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed,” Obama Sr. wrote. “I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development.”
Taxes and “investment” . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.
(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father’s communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)
Too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words.
Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.
Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that’s made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.
Wild Thing’s comment………
This is such an excellent article!!!! This “ocialism” is out and out Marxism. We are in for a rough time if he’s elected and has a democrat congress.
This whole thing is getting scarier and scarier by the minute.
This list keeps growing:
* Speeches in stadiums filled with mesmerized, adoring audiences – Check
* An uninspiring background before meteoric rise – Check
* Creates his own new symbols of power – Check
* Associates with racists, hatemongers and violent radicals – Check
* A propaganda machine willing to show him only in the best possible light – Check
* Uses, “glorious leader” style Agitprop posters common in totalitarian nations
* Wants Secret Police force – Check
* Somebody powerful people think they can control – Check
* Often dismissed as a light-weight by his opponents – Check
* Seeks to replace God with the State – Check
* People adopting his name as their own – Check
* Inspires adoration art – Check
* Appropriates symbols of past German glory – Check
* Never plans on giving up power – Check (Obama to be president for the next “eight to 10 years”)
* A narcissistic megalomaniac – Check
* Brazenly Takes credit for other people’s accomplishments – Check
* Wants to build “youth” movement through State service – Check
* Acts as if in power before he is – Check
* Some followers believe him to be divine – Check
* Worshiped and aided greatly by the media – Check
….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
This is very bad. Very bad indeed. But this is how the socialists work–from the inside out.
I say we get rid of minimum wage entirely. I lost 70 cents per hour buying power because I didn’t get a raise the other day when the minimum went up. That’s less food for my kids and more stress on us. Free college? Sounds great until you start churning out millions of people with the same degrees and not enough jobs for them! Look at what’s happening in England where state run colleges are free. Too many college degreed idiots with not enough jobs which puts more on the welfare rolls.
Public housing? Yeah, sure…look at the areas of all major cities with “public housing.” That’s the slums and gangland.
Universal health care will never work. Looks great and sounds great, but who wants assembly line health care?
This all reeks of socialism. The pure fact he thinks we can’t take care of ourselves is obvious.
Oh, and now they’re going after food. LA wants to ban fast food restaurants. Like we can’t control ourselves and our love for Big Macs and Quarter Pounders and Chicken Mcnuggets.
I can take care of myself plenty well, thank you.
I ain’t gonna sue Burger King for me being fat. I ate those burgers and fries because I like them and it’s a free country.
Obamanation can go sit and spin. What a loser with a capital L.
If you’ve gotten education, training, and work for a living, the best thing you can do if Obama gets elected is quit your job. That way the government will provide you everything you’ve been working hard for: housing, child care, health insurance, tuition, and even a 401K. Shoot, why would any poor person want to better themselves when Obama is promising to take care of their every need?
Obama won’t win- he screwed up big time not visiting the troops- he will never live it down and it is going to get bigger and bigger!!! I turn the news off everytime they talk about him- The MSM has destroyed my faith in the media- I beleive nothing they say!! I have no use for anything he does or says- I know others that have been turning him off for months! LOL!! Obama the Liar -Loser!!!
Obama believes in pure Marxism. If he is elected, he and the Democrat controlled Congress will work together to change America into a socialist country. The government will control every aspect of our lives, including our futures.
Once a nation starts down this road it is almost impossible to turn back. America will become a nation of followers all dancing to the same tune. Individualism, which advances mankind, will dissappear and we will become a nation of herds and tribes. Diversity, which Liberals claim to love, will become uniform sameness. Only the elite leadership will be allowed special privileges.
This just “rings” of Anti-Christ.
The government giveth and the government taketh away, once you step away from the private sector or private care you are at the mercy of the state. How about a glimpse into socialized medicine in the great state of Oregon, not that Oregon is Socialist, they prefer to be thought of as progressive.
http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.support.viewStory.cls?cid=106873&sid=1&fid=1
http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&contentId=14024
The final solution to Oregon’s health problems . http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,392962,00.html
This is the future ‘change’ promised by Obama and his ilk. From Hippocrates to hypocrites.
Barack Obama is scary on his own. However, does anyone really believe that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and their majority Congress will rubber stamp all of Obama’s proposal’s “as is”? I don’t think so.
What will happen is that these other ego driven tax and spend politicians will want their pieces of the legislative pet project and pork pie that the country won’t know what hit it. Instead of fixing any problems they will make them all worse. Hopefully, a conservative Republican in the spirit of Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America will lead the country to reject the runaway Democratic and socialist congress in the 2010 elections and replace them with conservative patriots dedicated to restoring the country to it’s Constitutional and capitalistic past greatness.
Again the government is bailing out mortage companies. Somehow the American dream has suddenly become a Right. It used to be that to buy a home you had to save some money pay your bills and work for the home…However those days are in the past, any deadbeat can now get a loan and buy a house and it doesn’t matter what his credit rating is the government will support and pay his bad debt when he defaults on the loan. The rest of us who have worked all our lives paying bills trying to stay afloat and sacrificing so the kids can have that something extra, has been for naught. Because now the State will supply everything…Even put us in jail when we discipline our childred.
If obama get elected it will only get worse. Free giveaways, Free Healthcare and on and on.
Take special notice to really enjoy the next 6 months, it may be the last of freedom as we know it now. We will be too busy paying for free healthcare, for Illegals, and deadbeats, buying homes for the ghetto dwellers and refurbishing the ghettos so we can move in after they take our homes.
Lynn, gosh I wish I had put it all that way. I agree with you.
They, ( Obama and the rest of his ilk) really believe we cannot think for ourselves, oh unless it is time to vote for them then it is kiss up to us like crazy and yes we then are the ones THEY need.
Total abuse of power this would be if it happens. Very scary stuff and I sure hate finding stuff like this but I also want to know the truth and what is going on.
BobF, exactly, this takes the American dream and makes it into the Government dream of socialists/communists. Then they can say…”We own you” instead of we the people.
Cheryl,yes me too, I keep watching and cheering on those that are keeping up the …how bad Obama is.
Tom, your so right. If only we could somehow get the Republicans in the majority again and this time fewer rino’s. That is the only thing I can think of that could stop the Obama machine.
Gasman, if he isn’t the anti-christ he is awfuly close to it.
Jack, thank you for the links and information. Yes Oregon is a good example.
Les, well yes gthey might stop him because of their own egos. But their beliefs are so close it really is scary how much they might give the ok to.
Mark, yessss, your right, and that whole thing with the mortage companies has me so ticked off!!
So much for the American dream, now it is we will own you, take care of you and you go and sit on a corner and beg for our help.
I can’t live like that, I can’t live where I don’t have a dream and hope of doing better everyday.
All this stuff is just too horrible.