Fundamental Flaws

Marxist or pragmatist -- the question Tony Blankley deals with regarding Obama, whose words now are so tender and mild. He's a regular Christ Child. But his peers and his actions -- they're not what we would call mainstream. "Will it be the prudent, moderate, pragmatic, sensible president," Blankley wonders, "who will apply non-ideological, centrist policies? Or will it be the Obama who sought out the company of radicals, black racists, faculty-lounge Marxists and studied the methods of Saul Alinsky?"

It is true that character is destiny. It's also true that past behavior is character. What're we gonna believe, his words or our lying eyes? "Many hope that it is the sensible centrist who will emerge -- even though it has been his style and cautiously evasive comments, rather than his substance, that have sounded so reasonable and calm." Adults, we must know, deal with reality. Wishes and hopes and faith are all well and good -- we must have aspirations. But we have sensory organs for a reason -- to inform us about the real world. When those organs return faulty data, we call it an illness or a dysfunction or a hallucination or insanity. It's not about what we hope is real. It's about what is real. An obscure saying has it that we know the tree by its fruit -- a challenging idea perhaps, but that's why you come here -- fresh insights such as this ... yep, trees are known by their fruits. Uh huh. Thank me.

According "to Ryan Lizza of the liberal New Republic, Obama's early mentor in the Alinsky method of social agitation was Mike Kruglik, whom Lizza paraphrased as saying: "(Obama) was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better."

Goldwater is reputed to have said that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. It's a matter of degree, though. There are small liberties, and there is hyperbolic extremism. We look for balance, for what is reasonable -- for maturity. Is Obama a leader who knows how to motivate? His observers testify that it is so. Is his cause normative?

Blankley quotes Kyle-Anne Shiver from the American Thinker: "The agitator's job, according to Alinsky, is first to bring folks to the 'realization' that they are indeed miserable, that their misery is the fault of unresponsive governments or greedy corporations, then help them to bond together to demand what they deserve, and to make such an almighty stink that the dastardly governments and corporations will see imminent 'self-interest' in granting whatever it is that will cause the harassment to cease.

"In these methods, euphemistically labeled 'community organizing,' Obama had a four-year education, which he often says was the best education he ever got anywhere." [emphasis in original]

Blankley goes on to note Obama's recently-surfaced NPR interview of 2001, where he very clearly implies that the Supreme Court should concern itself with the active 'redistribution of wealth' -- which is not so much a code word as an actual, explicit tenet of Marxism. Huh. Senator Obama, it is not within the Court's purview to "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution..." Revolutions ought not to be fulminated by the Court. Was this topic not covered in Agitator School?

Obama uses the very disturbing term, "redistributive change," and states in this context that the "Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day. ...The Framers had that same blind spot ... the fundamental flaw of this country." [ellipses in source] Is he speaking of slavery? The explicit context is of wealth redistribution. Since true eloquence cannot allow for gross miscommunication, we must suppose that the marvelously articulate Obama is saying that lack of government- and court-imposed redistribution of wealth is a fundamental flaw in the Constitution, the Framers and in this nation.

Will President Obama include these sentiments in his sure-to-be soaringly inspirational Inaugural Address? Regardless, I hope his innate capabilities, beyond his skill at preparing and delivering set speeches, have prepared him for the job. His capabilities would have to be innate. As Blankley says, if Obama were indeed to hold "the presidency for four years, it would be the longest stretch that he ever held a full-time job."

But that Sarah Palin -- she's so unqualified to be Vice President.


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