Does Obama Want the Best for America or Does He Want to Destroy It?

Among pundits on the right, there has been disagreement for quite some time over the fundamental motives informing President Obama's agenda. Essentially two schools of thought on the matter have emerged.

One school insists that while the president's policy prescriptions are indeed ultimately destructive, he nevertheless genuinely believes that their implementation is what's best for the country. This is the position taken by the likes of, say, Bill O'Reilly and nationally syndicated radio talk show host Michael Medved.

Members of the other school are convinced that Obama is resolved to weaken America. Only a determination on his part to diminish the country's military and economic preeminence in the world and traditional liberties at home can account for an agenda that is so obviously destructive of the nation that we have always known. Among the most illustrious exponents of this view is Rush Limbaugh.

Adherents of the first position think that the adherents of the second line are idiotic, if not "crazy" (although, interestingly, they haven't dared to call out by name "the King of talk radio" who has been in the vanguard of advancing it); champions of the latter believe that the former are naïve and confused.

This may come as a shock to both sets of apologists, but a synthesis of their perspectives is attainable.

Though there have been more than a few thinkers who have quarreled with it, the thesis that no one ever chooses evil for its own sake has an impressive pedigree stretching back into antiquity. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Christian theorists up to the present day have affirmed that evil is always done for the sake of some perceived good -- pleasure, riches, power, fame, love, and so forth. It is in light of this principle that we can hope to go some distance in reconciling these two competing positions on Obama's intentions.

The idea that the President of the United States wakes up each morning scheming over how he may ruin the country over which he presides is, of course, the stuff of fantasy. Contrary to what the Michael Medveds insinuate, however, I don't think for a second that either Rush or the legions of people who share his view of Obama entertain this view. Still, given the baldness with which Rush and others have stated their position, I suppose it lends itself to this caricature.

But it is similarly foolish to think that it is from nothing other than the union of an ignorance of the most basic economic principles and a comparable ignorance of history that the President's obviously destructive policies are begotten. Regrettably, to hear O'Reilly and Medved speak, one could be forgiven for concluding that this is what they really think.

While discussing this issue with a friend of mine recently, he reminded me of C.S Lewis' argument regarding the Jesus who is presented to us in the pages of the New Testament: either Jesus was the Son of God, as He claimed, or else He was an egomaniac or a madman. Given the self-referential remarks that the Biblical authors attribute to Jesus, there is simply no other alternative. Likewise, my friend continued, Obama's utterances and deeds are born of either an invincible ignorance of their consequences -- in which case he is without question the most incompetent president of all time -- or a plan to ruin America -- in which case he is indeed guilty of the designs that Rush and others ascribe to him. There is no third possibility.

Obama knows that his economic policies are productive of neither liberty as traditionally conceived by Americans nor prosperity. He would have to be, not just the most incompetent president ever, but among the most dense of human beings, for given the extensive exposure that he has had to both Keynesian and neo-Marxian philosophy -- anyone who takes the time to read his memoirs, particularly his first, and who considers the worldview of the people with whom he has surrounded himself for most of his life would know this -- he could only know by now full well the fruits that these policies promise to reap.

But from this it doesn't follow that Obama anticipates the ruination of America as such. There can be no doubt, I think, that he wants to preside over an America that is morally superior and, hence, better, than the country that elected him two years ago. The problem, though, is that the America of Obama's imaginings is radically unlike the America to which most of its citizens have an acquired affection and even more unlike the America within which their ancestors made their home. That is, the "fundamental transformation" that Obama wants to visit upon America demands nothing more or less than the death of America as it is currently constituted; only once America as a living reality is eliminated can America as Obama's ideal be substituted for it.

The philosopher Ronald Dworkin once said that "a more equal society" -- a society the resources of which are equally "distributed" -- is better than the contrary, even if its citizens prefer inequality. Anyone who has paid any attention at all to Obama must know that he couldn't agree more with this thought.

So, our president does indeed think that as a people, Americans will be "better" in the wake of the "fundamental transformation" that he wants to impose upon us. So the O'Reillys and Medveds are correct in this respect. However, neither Rush, myself, nor the large numbers of Americans who love the liberties which our forefathers labored indefatigably to bequeath to us are likely to receive much consolation from this. After all, the fact remains that his intentions aside, our president is determined to see the historic nation that is the real America go the way of the dinosaur.

"One school insists that while the president's policy prescriptions are indeed ultimately destructive, he nevertheless genuinely believes that their implementation is what's best for the country. This is the position taken by the likes of, say, Bill O'Reilly and nationally syndicated radio talk show host Michael Medved. "

Dope Bill O'Reilly also describes Black Liberation communist, cop killer admirer, Marc Lamont Hill as a "liberal".

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The Extreme Makeover of Fox News: Analyst Marc Lamont Hill ["Black Liberation" revolutionary communist]
Accuracy In Media - AIM Column ^ | October 2, 2009 | Cliff Kincaid

Who would plaster his Twitter page with police mug shot photos of convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur (aka Joanne Chesimard)? Fox News contributor Marc Lamont Hill did. At least until David Horowitz and Accuracy in Media took notice and wrote about it. Now the page features photos of boxing great Muhammad Ali. Hill's MySpace page is also gone.

There are other changes as well. The tributes to Shakur and black racist Khallid Muhammad, known as "America's Black Hitler," have disappeared from his web pages. The articles were saved, however, and can be found here.

(Excerpt) Read more at aim.org ...
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"I, however, will remember Dr. Khallid [Muhammad] for what he truly was: mentor, teacher and revolutionary hero" -Marc Lamont Hill

Source: Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media (AIM) - pdf file:
http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/MarcLamontHillarticles.pdf
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From David Horowitz's
FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org
PROFILE: KHALID ABDUL MUHAMMAD

Former spokesman for Nation of Islam
Became chairman of New Black Panther Party in 1998
Deceased in 2001
Muhammad referred to Jews as people whose ancestors were cannibals who “crawled around on all fours in the caves and hills of Europe” and “slept in [their] urination and [their] defecation... for 2,000 years.” He characterized contemporary Jews as “slumlords in the black community” who were busy “sucking our [blacks’] blood on a daily and consistent basis.” He said that Jews had provoked Adolf Hitler when they “went in there, in Germany, the way they do everywhere they go, and they supplanted, they usurped.” And he declared that blacks, in retribution against South African whites of the apartheid era, should “kill the women,…kill the children,…kill the babies,…kill the blind,…kill the crippled,…kill the faggot,…kill the lesbian,...kill them all.”

On subsequent occasions, Muhammad praised Colin Ferguson, a black man who had shot some twenty white and Asian commuters (killing six of them) in a racially motivated 1993 shooting spree aboard a New York commuter train, as a hero who possessed the courage to “just kill every goddamn cracker that he saw.” He advised blacks that “there are no good crackers, and if you find one, kill him before he changes.” He told a Donahue television audience in May 1994 that “[t]here is a little bit of Hitler in all white people.” He characterized black conservatives as “boot-licking, butt-licking, bamboozled, half-baked, half-fried, sissified, punkified, pasteurized, homogenized Nigger[s].” On May 21, 1997 he told a San Francisco State University audience that the "white man" is "a no-good bastard. He's not a devil, the white man is the Devil." In September 1997 he said, "If you say you're white, goddammit I'm against you. If you're a Jew, I'm against you. Whatever the hell you want to call yourself, I'm against you."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2045
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"I, however, will remember Dr. Khallid [Muhammad] for what he truly was: mentor, teacher and revolutionary hero" -Marc Lamont Hill
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"Who would plaster his Twitter page with police mug shot photos of convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur? Fox News contributor Marc Lamont Hill did."--Accuracy In Media
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"ASSATA (aka Joanne Chesimard)" is a pro-communist revolution propaganda film on the story of Joanne Chesimard. She (Assata Shakur/Joanne Chesimard) is the godmother of late rapper Tupac Shakur (see Section 5 of my FR home page: "the Brinks robbery and triple murder"). Tupac's stepfather (Joanne's brother) was deeply involved in that murder-robbery in which two police officers and one Brinks security guard were gunned down in cold blood.
The following is a description of the film from its pro-communist/"Black Liberation" producers
ASSATA (aka Joanne Chesimard)
Perhaps the most wanted woman in the history of the United States.
Assata Shakur/Joanne Chesimard, was questionably arrested and sentenced for killing a cop in the infamous 1973 New Jersey Turnpike shootup of a car carrying Shakur, and two other Black Panthers, one of whom was also killed. Assata received three bullets in the attack. Sentenced to Life, she escaped in 1979 from maximum security prison in NJ to eventually emerge in Cuba under Fidel Castro’s protection as a political exile. Assata’s [Joanne Chesimard] writings and presence in Cuba have brought her a huge following as an icon, a heroine – the Che Guevera of Black Liberation – a freedom fighter to thousands of young peoples throughout the world. The State of New Jersey still holds a million dollar bounty on her head–wanted dead or alive!
Directed by Fred Baker

http://www.newfilmmakersonline.com/movie-download/4625%2C1976/Fred-Baker-ASSATA-aka-Joanne-Chesimard
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From the David Horowitz Freedom Center, October 6, 2009:
Marc Lamont Hill isn’t Just An Admirer of Cop-Killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, He’s His Publisher

Marc Lamont Hill, Sept 7, 2009:
"I am thrilled to announce that Mumia Abu-Jamal has joined the Barbershop as a weekly contributor!! His column, “Live From Death Row,” will appear every Wednesday starting next week.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is one of the world’s most celebrated journalists, freedom fighters, and political prisoners. Since his early days in Philadelphia, Mumia was an active member of the Black freedom struggle. From his award-winning journalism to his involvement with the Black Panther Party, Mumia has devoted his life to Black liberation. Wrongfully incarcerated since 1981 for the murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner, Mumia has continued to place a spotlight on various forms of injustice around the globe through his numerous columns, commentaries, and books. Mumia has generated international support for his own case, which has been one of the most glaring and repugnant reflections of the criminal (in)justice system."--Marc Lamont Hill
Marc Lamont Hill isn’t Just An Admirer of Cop-Killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, He’s His Publisher:
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/10/06/marc-lamont-hill-isnt-just-an-admirer-of-cop-killer-mumia-abu-jamal-hes-his-publisher/ ____________________________________________

“From his award-winning journalism to his involvement with the Black Panther Party, Mumia [Abu-Jamal] has devoted his life to Black liberation.”—Marc Lamont Hill
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/10/06/marc-lamont-hill-isnt-just-an-admirer-of-cop-killer-mumia-abu-jamal-hes-his-publisher/
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"I, however, will remember Dr. Khallid [Muhammad] for what he truly was: mentor, teacher and revolutionary hero" -Marc Lamont Hill

"Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at"
--Bill Ayers (1970), quoted in New York Times, September 11, 2001:

Article: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
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"Dig It. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!"
-Weather Underground leader and wife of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, referring to the Manson murders

Article: Allies in War -by David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, September 17, 2001
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=63512670-BF7C-42A0-B41D-5D0FB9E09C09
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"It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming 'community organizer,' had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World — where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working 'only to educate' — both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers."
Article: The Company He Keeps:
Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==
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From American Thinker, September 16, 2008
Article: Obama's Foul Weather Friends
By Scott Swett and Roger Canfield

"As a gesture of solidarity, the Vietnamese who [Bernardine] Dohrn met in Budapest presented her with a ring made from an American aircraft shot down over North Vietnam. Bill Ayers would receive a similar ring while meeting with Vietnamese communists in Toronto. He later recalled being so moved by the gesture that he 'left the room to cry.' "

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/obamas_foul_weather_friends.html
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From the Chicago Sun Times, November 13, 2008:

Ayers: Obama was 'family friend'
New afterword to 2001 book, Ayers describes Barack Obama as 'family friend'

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1278532,bill-ayers-barack-obama-book-111308.article#
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Obama Gave Bill Ayers' Book a Rave Review

Source: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31617_Obama_Gave_Bill_Ayers_Book_a_Rave_Review/comments/#ctop

"Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal".--James (Jim) Cone,
African American Religious Thought: An Anthology (Paperback)
by Cornel West (Editor), Eddie S. Glaude Jr. (Editor)
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SEAN HANNITY: But Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not backing down and has not for years and in his strong stance on the teaching of black liberation theology is nothing new. He had the same things to say last spring when he appeared on "Hannity & Colmes:"

WRIGHT: If you're not going to talk about theology in context, if you're not going to talk about liberation theology that came out of the '60s, systematized black liberation theology that started with Jim Cone in 1968 and the writings of Cone and the writings of Dwight Hopkins and the writings of womynist theologians and Asian theologians and Hispanic theologians, then you can't talk about the black value system.

HANNITY: But I'm a — reverend

WRIGHT: Do you know liberation theology, sir?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
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Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.com
Monday, April 07, 2008

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...

Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02
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Catholics for Marx [Liberation Theology]
By Fr. Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 03, 2004

In the days when the Superpowers were locked in a Cold War, Latin America seethed with revolution, and millions lived behind an iron curtain, a group of theologians concocted a novel idea within the history of Christianity. They proposed to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying violent revolution to overthrow the economics of capitalism.

The Gospels were re-rendered not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=460782B7-35CC-4C9E-A2C5-93832067C7CD
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"Their founding document [the Weather Underground's] called for the establishment of a "white fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other "anti-colonial" movements[1] to achieve "the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism."..."-Berger, Dan (2006). Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. AK Press, 95.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_Underground#cite_ref-Berger_0-0

Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (Paperback) by Dan Berger
http://www.amazon.com/Outlaws-America-Underground-Politics-Solidarity/dp/1904859410
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From the New York Times, August 24, 2003

"they [the Weather Underground] employed revolutionary jargon, advocated armed struggle and black liberation and began bombing buildings, taking responsibility for at least 20 attacks. Estimates of their number ranged at times from several dozen to several hundred."

Article: Quieter Lives for 60's Militants, but Intensity of Beliefs Hasn't Faded
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E4DE1539F937A1575BC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
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Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and Dr. William Ayers
are greeted by Rebekah Levin with the Committee
for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine.
(Chuck Berman/Chicago Tribune / May 17, 2009)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-ayers_wrightmay18,0,6689521.story

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