Posted on 09/15/2010 7:37:26 PM PDT by Red Steel
An article Democrat Chris Coons wrote for his college newspaper may not go over so well in corporation-friendly Delaware, where he already faces an uphill battle for Vice President Joe Biden’s old Senate seat.
The title? “Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist.”
In the article, Coons, then 21 years old and about to graduate from Amherst College, chronicled his transformation from a sheltered, conservative-minded college student who had worked for former GOP Delaware Sen. William Roth and had campaigned for Ronald Reagan in 1980 into a cynical young adult who was distrustful of American power and willing to question the American notion of free enterprise.
Coons, the New Castle County executive who is running against GOP Rep. Michael Castle for the state’s open Senate seat, wrote of his political evolution in the May 23, 1985, edition of the Amherst Student.
The source of his conversion, Coons wrote, was a trip to Kenya he took during the spring semester of his junior year—a time away from America, he wrote, that served as a “catalyst” in altering a conservative political outlook that he was growing increasingly uncomfortable with.
“My friends now joke that something about Kenya, maybe the strange diet, or the tropical sun, changed my personality; Africa to them seems a catalytic converter that takes in clean-shaven, clear-thinking Americans and sends back bearded Marxists,” Coons wrote, noting that at one time he had been a “proud founding member of the Amherst College Republicans.”
“[I]t is only too easy to return from Africa glad to be American and smugly thankful for our wealth and freedom,” added Coons. “Instead, Amherst had taught me to question, so in turn I questioned Amherst, and America.”
Dave Hoffman, a Coons campaign spokesman, said the title of the article was designed as a humorous take-off on a joke Coons’s college friends had made about how his time outside the country had affected his outlook.
Hoffman said the trip to Kenya helped lead to Coons’s decision to become a Democrat.
“Chris wrote an article about a transformative experience during his semester in Kenya more than twenty-five years ago,” said Hoffman in a statement to POLITICO. “After witnessing crushing poverty and the consequences of the Reagan Administration’s ‘constructive engagement’ with the South African apartheid regime, he rethought his political views, returned to the America he loved and proudly registered as a Democrat.”
In one passage of the article, Coons explains how in the months leading up to the trip abroad “leftists” on campus and college professors had begun to “challenge the basic assumptions” he had formed about America.
A course on cultural anthropology, noted Coons, had “undermined the accepted value of progress and the cultural superiority of the West,” while a class on the Vietnam War led him to “suspect…that the ideal of America as a ‘beacon of freedom and justice, providing hope for the world’ was not exactly based in reality.”
For Coons, Kenya was an especially jarring experience that significantly influenced his already-changing political beliefs. He wrote that he was particularly troubled by his experience with Kenyan elites, who he said were utterly dismissive of the poor.
“I became friends with a very wealthy businessman and his family and heard them reiterate the same beliefs held by many Americans: the poor are poor because they are lazy, slovenly, uneducated,” wrote Coons. “I realize that Kenya and America are very different, but experiences like this warned me that my own favorite beliefs in the miracles of free enterprise and the boundless opportunities to be had in America were largely untrue.”
Coons wrote that upon his return to Amherst for his senior year he realized that, while he had discovered the faults of his country, he had also “returned to loving America.”
HUH?
Karl Marx Rove told us it's O'DONNELL who doesn't have a chance?
What is it about Kenya that turns people into Marxists/Communists? The goats?
So he was one of many who were brainwashed on campus?
Too bad he didn’t look more closely at just why Kenya was and remains poor and compare economic and political systems.
Sounds like a Reagan fan who didn’t actually listen to what Reagan was saying.
Must be the coffee.
Who better to take the place of the idiot with the steel plate in his head than Coons the bearded Marxist - The Architect Karl (with a K) Rove’s handpicked demokrat?
The title is a bit disturbing, at first. Thought maybe Clayton Bigby had something posted to FR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFR9xkZm4ck
America already has a bearded Marxist in 0bama and his beard, Michelle.
It was going to be uphill when the article was written. Now not so much.
Oh, I forgot to mention that this article was written in May. I posted it for educational and opposition research purposes.
This stupid commie idiot has no clue at all about... really anything. Typical Socialist Democrat where the reality is not based on reality. It must be truely an illness
The Architect Karl (with a K) Tokyo Rove
He’s a Communist.
Wow, now it looks like the ‘Rat Party didn’t do such a hot job of vetting.
"Been there...done that...got the Tee shirt".....OBAMA
Did anyone watch him on Hardball tonight? I “heard” he was impressive.
Coons was set up by the DE Dems as desultory opposition for Castle as a backroom deal, he was never a “serious” candidate (it was as I said, Castle would switch to the Dems at an appropriate time, the only reason that occurred in the first place). The Dems only fielded a “serious” candidate for the House seat.
that only applies in a free society.
Had a little trouble once with his campaign reporting too...
http://www.delawaregrapevine.com/7-04coonsfinancing.asp
“The campaign did not catch the problem until it came time to file the 2001 report, Coons said. His treasurer recalculated the 2000 ending balance to be in the black at $22,695 and used it for the beginning balance on the 2001 report. It had the effect of making it appear that Coons’ campaign finances magically went from being almost $94,000 in the hole to being in the clear. “
Then there was that time he was sued for falsely accusing a man of
“violating federal court orders, unethical behavior and other wrongdoing...disclosing to the Delaware media that plaintiff was dying of a brain tumor and that it
was causing him to act erratically. Plaintiff also asserts that the Individual Defendants discussed
his private medical information with numerous other individuals and during county government
meetings”
http://www.ded.uscourts.gov/TNO/Opinions/Jul2008/05-916.pdf
A real peach...
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