Is Barack Obama a Communist?

[RadioPatrol]

Danke, Comrade Obama

I asked the rhetorical question last week: Is Barack Obama a Communist?

I posited the question because of the purposeful emptiness of Obama's stated views, his lack of a long-term record, disturbing tendencies in the little legislative record he has established, and a list of troubling personal and professional associations with radicals, cranks, criminals, and conspiracy theorists.

Little did I know at the time that Obama had already answered my question during in an exclusive fundraiser in San Francisco's Billionaire's Row. As William Kristol points out in the Times, Barack Obama cited Marxist philosophies in describing why Americans go to church and pray to God.

It isn't faith, says Obama. It is "bitterness" that drives us into the pews. We are frustrated, bigoted, and paranoid, and we arm ourselves with guns and God as a result. It is this nation of violent rubes Obama has protected himself from by cloistering himself among the urban and urbane.

It is because he holds these views of the rest of us that Obama's two-decade association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his radical church could not be disavowed.

For Obama to disavow Wright is to disavow his own warped views of religion, the Constitution, and America. His convictions may be poisoned, but he is principled in holding to their acidity.

It is AmeriKKKa they fear and loath, a dumbed-down, never-evolving nation they've had reinforced in their minds on Sundays for 20 years. It is a country that Barack and Michelle Obama know in their hearts that they are not part of, a people that they cannot be proud of. For all the advantages this country has given them, they are blind to our better nature as a nation.

I pity the Obamas, but I thank them for finally letting us see who they really are, and what they think of the rest of us.

I am thinking Marxist ....

Update: Juliette Ochieng makes incisive observations about Obama's view through the prism of Black Liberation Theology at her blog baldilocks.

A taste:

In Obama's mind, the religion clung to by the "average poor white Pennsylvanian" is BLT's demonic "white" Church. The "white" Church is the tool of oppression for all—including poor whites—and should be shaken off just like other social maladies. Just like anti-immigration (sic) and racism. One will note that, in the defense of the earlier remarks, Obama still does not say anything objectively positive about the religion adhered to by the average rural white Pennsylvanian. What he actually says is that government should answer their prayers.

Final Update (4/15): A very interesting catch from Professor Bainbridge (h/t Insty). If this is correct, Senator Joe Lieberman, who has worked with Obama for three years, isn't sure if he is a Marxist:

I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he's obviously very smart and he’s a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I've learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn't… I'd hesitate to say he's a Marxist, but he's got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.

Bainbridge himself seems to believe that Obama is a modern socialist instead of a Marxist. I'd argue that for all practical purposes as far as American voters are concerned, that is a distinction without much of a difference.

Final, Final Update (4/15): It may well be noted that Barack H. Obama Sr (candidate Obama's father) stated that there was very little difference between African Socialism and Soviet-style communism, so perhaps he would agree with me about identifying his son's politics, even though he was in favor of communism, and I am not.

 

[bcp]

socialist.
and will destroy this country.

 

[Vince]

socialist.
and will destroy this country.

Don't know about socialist, but the second part I agree with.

 

[ImnoMensa]

I believe he is a socialist at least ,and perhaps clings to the teachings of his communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis.

His background is far too loaded with Communists, Muslims, race baiting preachers, and a racist wife ,for me to be comfortable enough to even imagine myself voting for him.

 

[RadioPatrol]

Well BLT ... is all re branded Marxism .... wrapped in a shell of Christianity ...