An interview with Stanley Kurtz, on Barack Obama’s socialism:
Obama was a socialist even before he reached Columbia. But it was in April of 1983, in his senior year, that Obama walked into an off-campus Socialist Scholars Conference. That conference changed the future president’s life and gave him a program he’s been following for his entire political career, right up to this day.
It was in the early eighties that American socialists turned in force to community organizing as a long-term strategy for transforming American society. With Reagan as president, conventional socialist nationalization of America’s businesses was impossible. So instead the focus turned to grassroots strategies for creating socialism “from below.” Community organizations like ACORN would take hold of the capitalist system from the ground up, forcing banks to make risky subprime loans, for example. The idea was to create de facto public control of businesses through community organizations, rather than through formal government ownership.
The symbol of all this was Chicago’s Mayor Harold Washington, who worked closely with Chicago’s small but influential collection of socialists, many of whom brought the community organizations they controlled onto the Washington bandwagon. The buzz at that 1983 Socialist Scholars Conference was that minority-led political coalitions would work in tandem with community organizations to swing the Democratic Party left. This would incrementally move America toward socialism. Harold Washington became Obama’s political idol, and Obama was swept up in plans to create a partnership between quietly-socialist community organizers and left-leaning minority politicians to reshape the American system.
Amazingly, the Socialist Scholars Conferences Obama attended in New York in the mid-eighties even put him on the path that led to Reverend Wright. The Democratic Socialists of America, which sponsored those conferences, had just formed an alliance with the black liberation theologians who were Reverend Wright’s mentors. Obama would have learned all about the ties between black liberation theology and socialism at those conferences.
It’s a shame that the media was too busy sending reporters to go through the dumpsters in Wasilla, Alaska, to do this kind of research. But there are only so many resources, and priorities have to be made.
This is not the narrative of Obama’s past you are looking for. /waves fingers
Don’t know why the Left keeps denying the Red Diaper Baby in the White House’s socialist roots and the overall ideological cast of his career. If a libertarian got elected president, I’d be crowing about it. Instead they’re always trying to portray “Ogabe” as a centrist. If he’s a centrist, then there should be some evidence of libertarian ideas pulling against the rest of his upbringing and philosophy, but if there is, I’ve never seen it.
1. The largest socialist program in the US is the military industrial complex which comprises nearly a trillion dollars a year of Federal spending and is strongly supported by the Republican Party. The Republican’s unnecessary adventure in Iraq has cost the tax payers more than $750 billion. And we’re still paying tens of billions (possibly hundreds of billions) annually for Reagan’s deficit spending during the later part of the cold war.
2. Where is the Obama socialism? His health care plan was originally proposed by the Republicans and actually forces people into the arms of the greedy private health insurance corporations. Private industry’s inherently inflationary premium based health insurance system is gradually bankrupting businesses in this country and helping to push more jobs overseas.
3. Obama’s space policy is certainly not socialist since he wanted to make NASA totally dependent on private companies in order to access orbit.
What America actually needed was some good ole fashion Abe Lincoln, FDR, Dwight Eisenhower, and JFK socialism dedicate to investing in our transportation (transcontinental rail road, Golden Gate Bridge, the interstate highway, etc.) and energy (TVA, Hoover Dam, nuclear power etc.) infrastructure and in the New Frontier (satellites and the Apollo program).
Unfortunately, Obama has largely failed to do any of that! And that’s what most liberals and independents wanted him to do!
You want a pure libertarian society, then go to Somalia and become a privateer. Of course most folks just call them pirates!
Marcel, did you use Rand’s post on logical fallacies as a guide?
Congratulations, Marcel! You win this blog’ss Mindless Party Line Regurgitator of the Week Award. You’re up against some heavy hitters here, but that reference to Somalia put you over the top! You get a poster of Michelle Obama dressed as Ilse She Wolf of the IRS–laminated for your shower! Good stroking to you!
I’ve been saying for a long time now that Obama is a Progressive, not a Socialist. If what Kurtz says is true, I shall have to retract that.
Before anyone starts sniping, I only say “If” because that very short interview only states Kurtz’s conclusions, not his work. I’m a “show me the data” kinda guy.
Jonathan @9:16: I think the answer to that question is “yes,” with a tip o’ the hat to Bilwick’s award. 🙂
…Here’s a better award for Marcel: an EMObama poster.
Bilwick Says:
November 9th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
“Congratulations, Marcel! You win this blog’ss Mindless Party Line Regurgitator of the Week Award.”
So I guess you win the award for historical ignorance since I guess you never heard of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Kennedy.
The right wing nut cases have been preaching anti-US government extremism in the media for decades now. So you shouldn’t be mad when I point out a libertarian paradise for them:-)
“So I guess you win the award for historical ignorance since I guess you never heard of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. ”
From whence, pray tell, did you deduce that, Marcel?
(This guy may also challenge previous champion Chris Gerrib for the title Most Syllogistically-Challenged Commenter.)
Also, a libertarian paradise would be one that is coercion-free. Is that true of Somalia? Most news about Somalia seems to involve nautical income-redistributors.