Andrew McCarthy: on Obama the radical
Andrew McCarthy speculates on Obama’s actions as president, what they might say about his belief system, and what a second Obama term might look like.
Summary version: he’s an Alinsky radical. Here’s McCarthy’s definition:
In Alinsky’s view, the only radicalism that had a chance to succeed was the one that could bore inside bourgeois institutions, co-opt the language, and move the mainstream in the radical direction ”” but only as fast as political conditions would allow. Remaining radical but being coldly pragmatic kept the Alinskyite both effective and viable, allowing him to keep coming back for more.
No one can argue that Obama’s not familiar with the Alinsky program, since he not only studied it but taught it as well. This was one of the many facts that were ignored and/or suppressed during the 2008 campaign.
Let’s be clear. There is a fear of a witch hunt, of inquisition.
The fear is artificial and not needed.
For one, the fear is leftist generated. There’s too much canon on the Leftist side of McCarthyism, the Salem Witch Trials, Nixon, [supply your own here.]
On the other hand, there is a fear of usurpation, of a loss of freedom for the common man.
This fear is real and needed.
For one, the fear is common and shared and burgeoning. And there is not enough canon regarding what happened in Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Venezuela.
Now, can these two fears be reconciled? Can any one political candidate express the fears of both sides?
I hope so.
There’s a great synopsis of Obama’s sins on American Thinker; How Iran Could Save America
I disagree with his conclusion that Obama’s actions will surely lead to his losing in Nov., though I pray he’s right.
Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright and now Prof. Derrick Bell…Obama’s actions since taking office… we’re way beyond reasonable doubt at this point.
At least for me, the question is long settled; the man’s a Marxist, racist knave.
Obama recently spoke at a fundraiser comparing himself to Ghandi and Mandela.
He was ridicules in some parts for his egotism.
It was not misplaced.
He considers that he will transform this country as greatly as they transformed theirs.
The problem is they transformed theirs for the better.
I read the news today, oh boy–Obama
had just declared a war. And though the news
was rather sad, I saved a ptotograph:
Now I know how many jokes it takes to fill
the Slaver’s Hall.
I’d love to turn you on.
Gott im Himmel, Ed incredible, love your blobable.
Thinkable, Ghandi–Mendela, were goodable?
In factable, thayable, were not able.
@Curtiss: Maybe I’m misinformed as to the legacies of Ghandi and Mandela, but the rest stands. He hopes to take this country in a totally different direction than the last 200 years.
Okay, good. I understand from that point of view that your analogy is perfect. Meanwhile, neo has some good history on Ghandi.
Obama is definitely more like Mandela than Gandhi. And even more like Mugabe.
Definitely a knave. Of course, that doesn’t rule out his being a fool as well.
This is old news that never made the front page. “Ignored and/or suppressed” indeed. Alinsky radicals, the Fabian Society, Maoists, fascists, or whatever the mask, its still totalitarian utopia BS. Tens of millions got the t-shirt and died in the pogroms, gulags, killing fields, and concentration camps.
The GOP campaign must make a supreme effort to reveal the man behind the curtain despite the fog the MSM will try to create. Make West the VP candidate, he seems to be a fellow who does not back down, and turn him loose with no bit between his teeth.
West is best.
West is about the only VP candidate who could make me vote for Romney.
Parker Says:
March 9th, 2012 at 7:12 pm
I missed that part. The Institutional Republicans would probably hamstring and hogtie him the same way they did with Palin.
It’s a nice thought, anyway.
Rickl,
I think West would be more difficult to suppress than Palin. Its a matter of gender, like it or not. However, its probably moot as Romney, the likely nominee, is unlikely to step outside the establishment box when picking a running mate.
http://tinyurl.com/ckeyzj
“Five year plans and new deals,
Wrapped in golden chains.
And I wonder, still I wonder
Who’ll stop the rain.”
Jason Riley has an op/ed at WSJ today in which he talks about the number of black kids disciplined in or suspended from schools. He points out that no one worries about the kids in those schools who want to learn but are unable to because of the troublemakers.
I think this is how we should frame the whole radical issue with Obama: that radical theories hurt the groups they are allegedly meant to help. That Obama can not see this, that he appoints radical dolts to his cabinet indicates how dumb and shallow he really is. Even in his thinking about racial issues, he votes present. He is scared to death to be on the uncool side of an argument so he muddles around and distracts us with his dancing talent. He doesn’t have the guts to completely commit himself to the radical side; witness his sellout of Wright. Instead he pretends to be a bridge builder so he can stand above everyone. He will feed his ego with any food available.
Alinsky’s rules for radicals are apolitical, working just as well for the Conservative’s causes of liberty and freedom; the rules are not evil in and of themselves, only the uses to which they are put.
“West is best.” Is that Allen West or the geopolitical West. Either, way works for me.
“”Alinsky’s rules for radicals are apolitical, working just as well for the Conservative’s causes of liberty and freedom””
Indigo Red
From a book dedicated to Lucifer, the first radical, i can’t say i agree. You’d have to abandon the whole Judeo/Christian system of ethics to embrace the politics of personal destruction outlined by Alinsky.
For Expat:
Public schools labor under two unbearable burdens. To begin, they were not designed to teach in the way we think of teaching/educating. Reading Dewey’s own words, (and others’, too) they were intended to prepare a class of workers. Dewey, in particular, was not interested in conveying facts, but in producing “social adjustment”. (His phrase, AFAIK) Private and parochial schools operated with a different purpose in mind, and therefore produced a different result.
The other burden is older, a result of America’s first adventures in economic planning: the protective tariff. The cash shortage it created, especially in the South, had a number of unintended consequences, like a much-extended life for slavery, which was in decline at the time of the Revolution. Another mischief the tariff and its chronic cash deficiency produced was that farming families began to choose to send their daughters to college, because a teacher in the family, or her eventual husband’s family, was a serious financial asset, who produced cash, enabling the family to keep their farm through a bad year. The boys farmed, and, in good years, made a living at it. Over a couple of generations, scholarship became a “feminine” attribute, eschewed by boys. There are no longer many Redneck families who hold that view, but there are millions of Black kids who are steeped in it, even two or three generations after the family has made the move to town. Now, of course, it’s even worse, because ignorance and criminality have become traits of the “authentically Black.” Ride a city bus or subway. Listen to the kids talk. Even the girls ridicule the kid who did his homework.
Of course, to the O’Guy and his buds, if this produces a permanent proletariat, such as we’ve never had in America, so much the better. Ignorant, impoverished mobs, now constantly being told that their problems are not of their own making, but grievances against someone else, can be very, very useful. This utility, BTW, makes the “Alinsky Rules” much more effective for the Left than for the Right.
Vetting Obama is a process and no one vet is going to be a smoking gun.
I understand some people believe it is lost ground. I cannot agree, both in what is obtainable and what it means not to try.
However, Roger Simon clued me into what I think, hopefully, David French was getting at by contrasting “Harvard” Obama and “White House” Obama.
Here is what Mr. Simon observed:
Before Sunday morning, I had never seen Barack Obama in person. Of course, I had seen him on television roughly as often as Howdy Doody and Mickey Mouse combined, but the man himself had eluded my eyes.
Not that seeing him with approximately 13,000 other AIPAC attendees and press (not sure exactly how many were there, but most) in the Washington Convention Center constitutes anybody’s version of “up close and personal.” But I am forced to admit – and you can put this down to the power of preconceptions, if you wish – that catching our president in the flesh only confirmed what I had long thought of him from afar.
This is one strange dude – part narcissist, part Chicago ward heeler, part neo-Alinskyite marxist, part talk show host smoothie, part nowhere man. The ideas might be there, traceable back to Ayers, Dohrn, and Reverend Wright, but he has pushed them far away, almost as if he were trying to forget them. They were no longer functional and had to go, but he is left with… what?
It’s hard to tell what he really thinks now because I suspect even he doesn’t know what that is.
Well, I can’t say I completely agree with Mr. Simon that Obama has pushed Derrick Bell far away. But he is onto something here which can partially be viewed as the failure of postmodernism to impart happiness or peace to its adherents. Left with a big gaping hole as to the purpose or meaning of life, Obama just doesn’t love life and will not protect it.
Obama could not have been elected President without the active, full —bore, 24/7 assistance, and the connivance of the MSM.
The fact of the matter is that the MSM betrayed the America people, and has doubled down on that betrayal in the service of Obama & Co. since the election, as it has–among many other things –created an alternative reality based on denial, and the most benign interpretation possible of what they must know are cooked economic statistics.
Does anyone really think that Obama would have cruised to an easy election, if the electorate had been told in great detail and depth about Obamas many, deep, and year’s long ties with unrepentant urban terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn? If the bloody history of Ayers, Dohrn, and the Weathermen had not been ignored, dismissed, or minimized, but had been laid out for the electorate to be reminded of? If Ayers later and current role in the radical rewrite of the textbooks used at teacher’s colleges, and the curriculums of our K-12 schools was explored, and what he was teaching was exposed? If Obama’s statement that Ayers–who Obama worked with on a daily basis for several years as Director of the Annenberg Challenge in Chicago that Ayers was instrumental in bringing to Chicago and ran–was “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood” was demolished, and shown to be the lie that it was?
If voters had been told just exactly what it was that a “community organizer” did, and about Obama’s teaching and practice of the radical, amoral, bare-knuckled agitation tactics and the relentless pursuit of power taught by radical agitator Saul Alinsky, and who Alinsky was, and what Alinsky preached and stood for?
Does anyone think that Obama would be President today if the Marxist, Black Liberation Theology of his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, and the profoundly racist, anti-white statements and ideas of its creator, Dr. James Cone, had been quoted and fully explored by the MSM, and Obama had not been allowed to get away with saying that, in his twenty years of admittedly faithful attendance at Wright’s church, he never heard any of Wright’s conspiracy-filled, racist, anti-American, anti-white, anti-Semitic, and pro-Palestinian sermons–sermons so representative of Wright’s preaching that his church created a DVD of them–his “Greatest Hits”–and sold them at the church?
Does anyone think that Obama would be President today if the MSM had truthfully investigated and laid out his childhood training as a Muslim in Indonesia, his deep ties to Islam, and to many radical Muslim figures?
How about Obama’s unsavory “mentor” from age 10 to 17, hard-drinking, pot smoking, Communist Party member, hard core pornographer and self-described “pervert” Frank Marshal Davis–never mentioned by our MSM but profiled in the British Press–would Obama have been so easily elected if the electorate had been told about him, and pondered what his influence might have been on Obama?
How about if Obama’s role as an Illinois State Senator had been fully explored, and especially his speeches supporting the practice of denying babies who survived abortions lifesaving medical care, babies who State Senator Obama heard nurses testify were often left uncovered in closets so hospital staff didn’t have to hear them cry as they slowly died from exposure, and lack of water, oxygen, and nourishment, and his several votes against a bill that would have outlawed this practice? Do you think that Obama would have been elected if this part of his record had been reported —day after day–to the voters with the same thoroughness and passion that any one of Sarah Palin’s or Rick Santorum’s statements, and actions, and votes, have been reported and analyzed and commented on, ad infinitum?
Then, there was the Elephant in the Room of Obama’s citizenship status, the phony long form birth certificate (see Arizona Sherriff Arpaio’s criminal investigator’s analysis and opinion, out last week, that this document is a forgery, as is Obama’s Selective Service card) that the MSM has just accepted as real–ridiculing any who objected and questioned these documents as “birthers,” and all those other sealed records, and on, and on, and on.
And, at every turn, the MSM has looked the other way, has deliberately refused to investigate a whole host of all sorts of potentially damaging aspects of Obama’s life, history, associations, and “accomplishments,” has covered for Obama, accepted his answers as the unquestioned truth and quickly moved on, and adamantly and deliberately refused to “connect the dots,” all the while raining ridicule down upon anyone who did try to find out the truth and to publicize it.
Over the last several years the MSM has suffered tremendous losses in its readership, its viewers, and its revenues–in the case of print journalism a reported 60% drop in revenue since 2008, and deservedly so.
The MSM has committed suicide in fealty to and in the service of Obama & Co., and they richly deserve the mistrust, disgust, and distain they are getting as a result of their disinformation and propaganda campaign for the Left and for Obama & Co.
Michael Adams wrote:
“. . . scholarship became a “feminine” attribute, eschewed by boys. There are no longer many Redneck families who hold that view, but there are millions of Black kids who are steeped in it . . . .”
And tangentially related is the fact that urban environments have become bankrupted nanny-state virtual prisons housing generation after generation of those who perpetuate this attitude. It’s almost impossible to remember that cities were once a place where people migrated TO to MAKE their fortune (“How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”)
P.S.–Of course, I may be giving the majority of today’s electorate way too much credit, and content to sit in front of the tube, watch American Idol, WWF, PBS, the VIEW, and MSNBC, drink beer and munch some high cal snack, they really don’t care to actually spend a little time investigating, but and will just swallow whatever swill the MSM is dishing up.
Or perhaps, after several generations of leftist propaganda and dumbing down in our K-12 schools and universities they really don’t see anything wrong with Obama’s actual record, it’s just fine with them.
In which case, no matter what is going to be exposed between now and the election about Obama, it won’t matter, as long as those unemployment and tax credit checks just keep rolling in.
P.S.S.–Thus, since it has worked so well so far, in the time up until the election I expect to see a number to meaningless and artificially manufactured and inflated diversionary stories–“outrages,” and “incidents” a la “Slutgate”–rolling out, one by one, to fill up MSM airspace, crowding out any possibility of discussions about major issues of real substance and effect, about the Economy, the Federal Budget, Energy, Joblessness. and Obama’s record of “accomplishment” and, instead, preoccupying the MSM and most people’s attention, rather than them paying attention to and being fixated on, exposes of Obama and his history.
Wolla Dalbo,
Regarding the American electorate, don’t forget that 47% of the voting public didn’t buy the MSM Obama-scam the first time they tried it even when faced with the tepid challenger that was McCain. IMO this is NOT insignificant.
Remember, the 10 to 1 rule. It does not directly affect the vote since each vote is equal, but, indirectly, it matters. Increasingly, Obama is becoming the titular head of a zombie crowd, afraid of light, afraid of non-zombies, afraid of us.
Also, I propose a critical limit theory (CLT) in opposition to critical race theory (CRT). My theory supposes that too much bullshit acidifies the field and ruins the crop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL3TldUmFSA&feature=related
Chapter 125: Jewel’s Fern (The Imagining)
The folllowing was recorded from prisoner #1154 date 11.6621:
Q: Are you feeling better?
A. Yes.
Q: Please explain.
A. Well, it was the picnic.
Q: The “Welcome back picnic?”
A: Yes.
Q. Please explain.
A. Well, after being released from the confirmation center, I re-entered society via the Blake House. And, of course, all houses support the Sunday Picnic.
Q: Is that all?
A. Well, not quite.
Q: Please explain.
A. She stood there. The light made visible her figure through her clothes. Her hair was radiant. I felt good. She was bending over, obtaining a can of soda from the cooler. When she stood up, I gasped because her I could see her under her clothers and it had been ten months since I had seen a real women.
Q: Go on.
A. Well, she knew. I was helpless. But she was nice about it. In fact, I think she was trying to help me.
Q: Oh.
A: Yes, She smiled and turned away, but in that smile was one thousand years of knowing. God, it was fulfilling.
Q: And did you say this happenned at your first picnic once released from the confirmation center?
A: Well, yes.
Q: Did you speak to the woman who excited you?
A: I didn’t.
Q: Okay, we are going to send you back to the confirmation center for more evaluation. Please cooperate with the analysts you meet there. Thank you very much for your revealing interview.
“”don’t forget that 47% of the voting public didn’t buy the MSM Obama-scam the first time””
T
And does anyone know a single soul who didn’t vote for Obama in 08 but has taken a shining to him since? I’ll suggest more Americans will be hit by lightning this year.
Obama is toast. Look for some craziness by democrats between now and Nov to insist that not be the case.
Wolla Dalbo,
You are entirely correct in your assessment of the treasonous behavior of the MSM. Makes it clearer why during revolutions some people are [justly] put up against a wall and summarily shot, doesn’t it?
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn reportedly spoke openly about their estimate that, ‘come the revolution’, up to 25 million Americans would need to be eliminated. How is this different from Hitler or Stalin’s methods?
Many in the MSM are no different in substance, than collaborators, eager to see America turned into a totalitarian state that enforces and compels obedience to their agenda. They just don’t publicly admit it.
I think that a pair of incidents involving ABC News George Stephanopoulos–former Clinton Administration functionary and far left, Democrat ideologue and agent–tells you all you need to know about the MSM’s vaunted objectivity, professionalism, journalistic ethics, and demonstrates their perfidy.
First, there was his 2008 interview with then candidate Obama on ABC’s This Week, in which Obama, in talking about how Republican candidate McCain had not made his religion an issue, referred to “my Muslim faith,” which Stephanopoulos immediately prompted Obama to correct by saying, “you mean your Christian faith” (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKGdkqfBICw) .
Then, just recently, Stephanopoulos was the supposedly objective, non-partisan “moderator” for a Republican Presidential debate in early January 2012, when he asked candidate Mitt Romney a seemingly irrelevant, out of left field question–and kept pressing for an answer, asking the question over and over again in different ways, for something like five minutes of precious air time–about Romney’s views on whether or not States have the right to ban “contraception”–something that had not been a topic at issue or of interest in the campaign up to that point; and everyone–the candidates, the audience–was puzzled by this line of seemingly irrelevant and bizarre questioning (see http://www.theblaze.com/stories/paid-democratic-hitman-stephanopoulos-bizarre-debate-question-suddenly-makes-much-more-sense/) .
Then, all became clear when, several weeks after this, the Obama Administration promulgated its order that under Obamacare the Catholic Church and church-run organizations had to pay for providing its employees with abortion and contraception services. Obama & Co. was getting hammered on the abortion issue and tried to, instead, make the issue one about the State’s role in possibly banning “contraception.”
So, very obviously, Stephanopoulos had been tipped off, weeks in advance, that this certain to be controversial dictate was going to be promulgated and that, further, Obama & Co. was going to try to make this maneuver to switch the issue from one primarily about abortions to one, instead, about contraception, and Stephanopoulos was trying his best, during the earlier Republican Presidential debate, to get Romney to hurt his election chances by getting Romney to take a position on the issue of State’s powers regarding contraception, which he knew for certain would be a hot topic in a few weeks.
The coordination between Obama & Co. and supposedly objective, professional, honorable, ethical “journalist” Stephanopoulos, and the total congruence of their ideologies and objectives could not be clearer.
Wolla Dalbo: I’ve watched that clip many times, the one of Obama saying “my Muslim faith.” It has been misrepresented or misinterpreted by those who say he was describing his faith as Muslim. He was quoting others talking about him as being a Muslim. Stephanopoulos compounded the misunderstanding when he “helpfully” (as you point out) corrected him.
Perhaps your goal is just to say that Stephanopoulos is helping Obama out in a way that he wouldn’t help out a Republican. If that’s your point, I absolutely agree. But I wanted to clarify the fact that it was not actually some slip of the tongue where Obama was saying he’s a Muslim.
Here’s the clip.
Obama’s Christian faith is phony. How and where did he become a Christian? His Marxist parents? His pornographic mentor?
If anything, it was a Derrick Bell/Jeremiah Wright type of Christianity that Obama accepted. Isn’t there a claim by someone that it was one of those two who led Obama to Christianity?
Neo–There are several points to be made here.
The first one is that in the 2008 incident Stephanopoulos not only didn’t act as a reporter–searching for the truth–and probe just what Obama’s “misstatement”–if misstatement it was–meant, and ask him to clarify, and perhaps even explore the extent and depth of Obama’s connections with Islam–but he very obviously, and instinctively, prevented Obama from falling into what could have been a very deep hole. I very much doubt that Stephanopoulos has ever or would ever extend the same courtesy to a Republican.
The second point is that, in posing the “contraception” question to Romney, Stephanopoulos was obviously acting as the very partisan agent of the Obama administration and the DNC, despite the frequent and loud protestations by the MSM, and journalists/reporters–TV and otherwise–of their professionalism, ethical standards, and objectivity, which claims this question totally destroyed (and there have been similar regurgitations of Obama & Co./DNC talking points in the form of questions to Republican candidates from practically all of the “moderators” in these debates).
The third point is this, in my view there have been many, many pieces of evidence that point to Obama being a crypto-Muslim, all of which have been deep sixed and/or ignored by the MSM–and this incident is one of them.
The evidence is mounting but, I refer to these pieces of evidence in particular:
That Barack Hussein Obama is the son, step-son, grandson, and great-grandson of Muslims, which according to Islamic law and tradition makes him in the eyes of Muslims a Muslim, which Muslim leaders, editorial writers, and news sources in the Muslim world–which the MSM does not call attention to or pass on to us–sometimes discuss.
That Obama was raised from ages 7 to 10 as a Muslim in the Indonesian household of his step-father Lolo Soetoro.
That the young Obama–then known as Barry Soetoro–was registered with the authorities as a Muslim, and educated as a Muslim in Indonesian schools, where he received the mandatory Muslim religious education–Qur’an classes that Obama himself talked about taking in his book “Dreams From My Father” and in the Kristoff interview below –and that his contemporaries, neighbors, and classmates at the Indonesian schools Obama attended and the neighborhoods where he lived, have said–to people who have taken the time to go to Indonesia, locate, and question them –that Obama also took the extra, after school classes in reciting the Qur’an in Arabic that only the pious took, and that they had sometimes seen Lolo and his step-son Barry going to the Mosque to worship.
That in his 2007 interview with New York Times reporter Nicholas D. Kristoff Obama told Kristoff that the Muslim “Call to Prayer.” the “Adhan” was “the prettiest sound on Earth in the evening” and then proceeded to chant the opening lines of the Call in what Kristoff–a New York Times Middle East Reporter well familiar with the subject– described as a first class accent.
This incident is especially significant because the first lines of the Call contain the Muslim’s confession of faith, the Shahada, and, again, according to Islamic law and tradition, reciting these first few lines of the Call even once makes one irrevocably a Muslim–something that Obama had to have known–thus the incident in Iraq a few years ago in which Muslims captured several western reporters and made them kneel at gunpoint and recite the first lines of the Call/the Shahada, in their captor’s eyes not only dominating and humiliating them, but also making them Muslims for, according to Islamic law, it does not matter under what circumstances or what compulsion you chant the Shahada, once you chant it–willing or not–you are considered to be a Muslim.
Then, there was the little noted fact that when Obama went to Cairo University to deliver his speech to the Muslim world, he opened his speech by giving his Muslim listeners the salutation that one Muslim gives to another (there is another salutation that Muslims give to non-Muslims, which says “peace to the rightly guided,” but since Islamic ideology says that all unbelievers are “accursed” because they do not accept Islam and Muhammad, and are “ignorant,” they are obviously not “rightly guided” i.e. this Muslim “salutation” to unbelievers–reportedly used by Muslim Imams to “salute” Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and other religious leaders at various supposedly ecumenical conferences–is a deliberate insult.
Thus, I would argue that Obama is using “code” that tells other Muslims that he is one of them, code that just goes over the heads and means nothing to probably 99% of us “unbelievers.”
These incidents, coupled with Obama’s many statements, actions, and decisions in office that have obviously been favorable to Muslims and Islam but bad for the U.S. and Israel are, it seems to me, mounting evidence for my contention that Obama is not a Christian, but a crypto-Muslim.