Barack Obama - A Misunderstood President?

I have been reading David Horowitz's most recent book Radicals: Portraits of A Destructive Passion.  I had seen Horowitz's name on web sites and in several blogs but hadn't pursued any of his writings. Only after peering into Radicals on my Kindle did I understand.

Horowitz, you see, was a radical - a socialist and Marxist in the turbulent sixties and early seventies. While he was far more engaged in radical activities than I ever was, his story resonated with me - recalling my own progression from the progressive left to the conservative right.  For me, that gives the guy lots of cred - he's been there, knows the people, the philosophy, the strategies and the tactics of the progressive left.  When he speaks about what the left is and is up to, one would do well to pay attention.

Horowitz chapter on Saul Alinsky, a Communist & Marxist fellow-traveler who helped establish the tactics of infiltration - coupled with a measure of confrontation - that have been central to revolutionary political movements in the United States in recent decades, is the substance of the book.  Alinsky never joined the Communist Party but instead, as Horowitz puts it, became an avatar of the post-modern left.

Although Barack Obama never met Alinsky, he was very familiar with Alinsky's most prominent work Rule for Radicals.  Becoming familiar with the book's ideas, you may want to reconsider what Obama may have had in mind when he said on election eve 2008: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”  And how.

For Alinsky, there is no sympathy with idealism (Alinsky used to shout at students to put away their idealistic dreams and replace them with pragmatism and seek power. "We are really cowards for not wanting power," wrote Alinsky because "power is good" and "powerlessness is evil.”)

Three of President Obama’s mentors in Chicago were trained at the Alinsky Industrial Areas Foundation, and for several years Obama himself taught workshops on the Alinsky method.  He distanced himself somewhat after being elected a Senator in 1996 but,

[o]n Barack Obama’s presidential campaign website, one could see a photo of Obama in a classroom “teaching students Alinskyan methods. He stands in front of a blackboard on which he has written, ‘Power Analysis’ and ‘Relationships Built on Self Interest,…’” 

All this may be so much history.  Surely, we want to think, the President of the United States is not a power-hungry radical in the mold of Saul Alinsky.  

Maybe - but given the "Fiscal Cliff" non-negotiations and Obama's demand for a "blank check" when it comes to the Federal debt ceiling, I am skeptical. Quoting Horowitz:

Deception is the radical’s most important weapon, and it has been a prominent one since the end of the sixties. Racial arsonists such as  Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright pose as civil rights activists; anti-American radicals such as Bill Ayers pose as patriotic progressives; socialists pose as liberals. The mark of their success is reflected in the fact that conservatives collude in the deception and call them liberals as well.

Is President Barack Obama misunderstood?  Is he a radical posing as a patriotic progressive; a socialist posing as a liberal?  It pains me to say that. increasingly, I believe he is.

(You can read a short pamphlet about Alinsky and Barack Obama written by David Horowitz by click here.)