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BARACK OBAMA HID HIS FATHER'S SOCIALIST AND ANTI-WESTERN CONVICTIONS FROM HIS READERS
presto pundit ^ | April 7, 2008 | Greg Ransom

Posted on 04/07/2008 2:14:40 PM PDT by Mount Athos

There's a big mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams For My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. What was Barack Obama doing seeking out Marxist professors in college? Why did Obama choose a Communist Party USA member as his socio- political counselor in high school? Why was he spending his time studying neocolonialism and the writings of Frantz Fanon, the pro-violence author of "the Communist Manifesto of neocolonialsm", in college? Why did he take time out from his studies at Columbia to attend socialist conferences at Cooper Union?

And there is more mystery in the book. Why does Obama consider working in a consulting house for international business like being "a spy behind enemy lines?" Why does he repeatedly find it so hard to explain his political views to others? Why was he driven to become a left-aligned political organizer? It's a question Obama again and again can't seem to answer to the satisfaction of the interlocutors in his own memoir.

If there is a mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams For My Father, one thing is not left a mystery, the fact that Barack Obama organized his life on the ideals given to him by his Kenyan father. Obama tells us, "All of my life, I carried a single image of my father, one that I .. tried to take as my own." (p. 220) And what was that image? It was "the father of my dreams, the man in my mother's stories, full of high-blown ideals .." (p. 278) What is more, Obama tells us that, "It was into my father's image .. that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." And also that, "I did feel that there was something to prove .. to my father" in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230)

So we know that his father's ideals were a driving force in his life, but the one thing that Obama does not give us are the contents of those ideals. The closest he comes is when he tells us that his father lost his position in the government when he came into conflict with Jomo Kenyatte, the President of Kenya sometime in the mid 1960s; when he tells us that his father was imprisoned for his political views by the government just prior to the end of colonial rule; and when he tells us that the attributes of W. E. B. DuBois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela were the ones he associated with his father and also the ones that he sought to instill in himself. (p. 220) This last group is a hodge podge, perhaps concealing as much as it reveals, in that it contains a socialist black nationalist, a Muslim black nationalist, a civil rights leader, and (at the time indicated in the memoir) an imprisoned armed revolutionary.

A bit of research at the library reveals the answers about Barack Obama's father and his father's convictions which Obama withholds from his readers. A first hint comes from authors E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and David William Cohen in their book The Risks of Knowledge (Ohio U. Press, 2004). On page 182 of their book they describe how Barack Obama's father, a Harvard trained economist, attacked the economic proposals of pro-Western 'third way" leader Tom Mboya from the socialist left, siding with communist-allied leader Oginga Odinga, in a paper Barack Obama's father worte for the East Africa Journal. As Odhiambo and Cohen write, "The debates [over economic policy] pitted .. Mboya against .. Oginga Odinga and radical economists Dharam Ghai and Barrack Obama, who critiqued the document for being neither African nor socialist enough."

I have a copy of Barack Obama's paper here in my hand, obtained from the stacks at UCLA (see the picture above). The paper is as describe by Odhiambo and Cohen, a cutting attack from the left on Tom Mboya's historically important policy paper "African Socialism and Its Applicability to Planning in Kenya." The author is given as "Barak H. Obama" and his paper is titled "Problems Facing Our Socialism", published July, 1965 in the East African Journal, pp. 26-33.

Obama stakes out the following positions in his attacks on the white paper produced by Mboya's Ministry of Economic Planning and Development:

1. Obama advocated the communal ownership of land and the forced confiscation of privately controlled land, as part of a forced "development plan", an important element of his attack on the government's advocacy of private ownership, land titles, and property registration. (p. 29)

2. Obama advocated the nationalization of "European" and "Asian" owned enterprises, including hotels, with the control of these operations handed over to the "indigenous" black population. (pp. 32 -33)

3. Obama advocated dramatically increasing taxation on "the rich" even up to the 100% level, arguing that, "there is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay" (p. 30) and that, "Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed." (p. 31)

4. Obama contrasts the ill-defined and weak-tea notion of "African Socialism" negatively with the well-defined ideology of "scientific socialism", i.e. communism. Obama views "African Socialism" pioneers like Nkrumah, Nyerere, and Toure as having diverted only "a little" from the capitalist system. (p. 26)

5. Obama advocates an "active" rather than a "passive" program to achieve a classless society through the removal of economic disparities between black Africans and Asian and Europeans. (p. 28) "While we welcome the idea of a prevention [of class problems], we should try to cure what has slipped in .. we .. need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now .. so long as we maintain free enterprise one cannot deny that some will accumulate more than others .. " (pp. 29-30)

6. Obama advocates price controls on hotels and the tourist industry, so that the middle class and not only the rich can afford to come to Kenya as tourists. (p. 33)

7. Obama advocates government owned and operated "model farms" as a means of teaching modern farming techniques to farmers. (p. 33)

8. Obama strongly supports the governments assertion of a "non-aligned" status in the contest between Western nations and communist nations aligned with the Soviet Union and China. (p. 26)

So what does all this tell us about Barack Obama, the father, and how does it help us fill in the gaps and decipher Barack Obama's Dreams For My Father? We know from Obama's memoir that his father is an "uncompromising" man whose ideals and principles gets him in trouble with the "big man" who ran Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, leading to a dramatic scene in which Kenyatta personally confronts Obama the father and in one fell swoop destroys not only his government career but ultimately his life. Working with Obama's book alone it is hard to know what is going on. We get only an inkling when Obama quotes his "Granny" (one of Obama the elder's wives) as saying the following, "I would tell him he was too stubborn in his dealings with the government. He would talk to me of his principle .. " (p. 424)

Now if we fill in the missing information we have now learned about Barack Obama the elder -- that he held uncompromising socialist and anti-Western views in line with Kenyatta's principle political rival Oginga Odinga -- we can understand why he had conflicts of "principle" with Kenyatta and government. And the timeline begins to make sense. TIME magazine reports the open conflict between the anti-communist, pro-Western Kenyatta and the communist-allied, anti-Western Odinga in a story from June, 1965, a story in which Odinga declares "communism is like food to me." By 1966 Odinga was out of the government. In Obama's Dream For My Father these political events and their consequences for Barack Obama the elder are described in the voice of his sister Auma: [...]

(see link for remainder of article)


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bookreview; dreamsformyfather; obama; obamafamily; obamatruthfile
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To: Continental Soldier

‘....they will deserve to lose.’

The problem is AMERICA will lose and many of us who love America with every fiber of our being will lose. not to sound dramatic, but, imho, perhaps as it was during the formation of our great country, it’s up to “we the people” to educate, with facts, those who easily swallow the drivel Obama tries to feed them.


21 posted on 04/07/2008 9:24:44 PM PDT by 4integrity
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To: A Recovering Republican

You’re missing the point. Its not what Obama’s father was. Its that Obama junior, according to his own words in his own book (as quoted above), wished to model himself after him. Not only that, but he was well enough aware of how extreme and unacceptable his father’s views were that he glossed over them completely. This is not someone who “honors” his father, as every child should. Its someone who wants to pick up where he left off.


22 posted on 04/07/2008 10:58:57 PM PDT by Nipfan
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To: A Recovering Republican
Mitt Rommney’s Father was a Liberal Democrat in the FDR mold, and Mitt Rommney, an arch conservative, regularly and rightly honors his Father, even though he does not agree with his politics.

Actually, George Romney was a moderate Republican. Mitt's politics were not all that different that George's either while governor of Massachusetts.

That aside, Obama's politics are so extreme going back to his days with the Joyce Foundation, that there is no need to bring his dad into this. He makes Michael Dukakis look almost moderate.

23 posted on 04/07/2008 11:40:57 PM PDT by Darren McCarty (Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in - Michael Corleone)
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To: A Recovering Republican

Since Apr 7, 2008


24 posted on 04/07/2008 11:53:20 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: A Recovering Republican
Jesus Christ’s Father was a Jew

God is Jewish?

25 posted on 04/08/2008 12:00:33 AM PDT by giotto
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To: A Recovering Republican

You win the full-of-himself and self-righteous awards today.

TROLL ALERT!


26 posted on 04/08/2008 2:32:39 AM PDT by Beckwith ('Typical White Person')
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To: Beckwith

“recovering Republican” = “lifelong Democrat”


27 posted on 04/08/2008 2:54:00 AM PDT by Fresh Wind (Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.)
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To: Mount Athos; Fred Nerks; Beckwith

— 100% taxation

— communal farms / the elimination of private farming

— the nationalization of businesses owned by “Europeans” and “Asians”.

— “active” measures to bring about a classless society


28 posted on 04/08/2008 6:45:43 AM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: george76
Neither African or Socialist enough!

Sounds like Obama found a church that adhered to his father's ideals.

Nobody could say it wasn't African or Socialist in its outlook.

29 posted on 04/08/2008 7:03:01 AM PDT by allmendream
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To: A Recovering Republican
But if that persons father was a KKK member, or a thief or murderer, or a communist, a coward, a rogue or a notorious sinner; and that person wrote a book EXTOLLING the VIRTUES of their father, saying how much they wished to emulate their father....what would that tell you? Would pointing this out somehow be beyond the bounds of civil political discourse?

I don't see it.

I wouldn't expect a condemnation of their father from the politician, if they never really brought up their father as being a pillar of their own belief systems, but when someone says they advocate a position, it is perfectly reasonable in a Republic to LOOK at the position they are advocating.

30 posted on 04/08/2008 7:06:50 AM PDT by allmendream
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To: Mount Athos

Obumpa bam


31 posted on 04/08/2008 12:49:10 PM PDT by Dajjal
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To: AliVeritas; Candor7

FYI


32 posted on 04/08/2008 2:35:28 PM PDT by Fred Nerks (a fair dinkum aussie)
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To: george76

Marxist. Like father, like son.


33 posted on 04/08/2008 2:36:57 PM PDT by Fred Nerks (a fair dinkum aussie)
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To: A Recovering Republican
Hi Ho, Hi Ho, its off the TROLL we go.

I have a very strong scent of KITTY around here just now!

Hark, what zot through yon window breaks?

Is it the east, and JulieZot the sun?

Moth, come to the flame!

34 posted on 04/09/2008 10:10:39 PM PDT by Candor7 (Fascism? All it takes is for good men to say nothing.)
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To: Mount Athos
This is an important article, first brought to my attention by Billy Beck's blog this AM.

ML/NJ

35 posted on 04/10/2008 5:22:49 AM PDT by ml/nj
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To: ml/nj

Another 0bama background check BTTT.


36 posted on 12/08/2008 10:11:01 AM PST by little jeremiah (Leave illusion, come to the truth. Leave the darkness, come to the light.)
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