What/Who IS Barack Hussein Obama?

Your analysis of Obama's tactics of misdirection, or verbal "sleight of hand," is on the mark.

Here is a post on the same technique, that I have offered in several venues:

More Smoke & Mirrors From Obama

Last night, Senator Obama had a half hour of prime time, on multiple networks and Cable Outlets. It could have been an excellent opportunity for him to explain his view of Government and its relationship to the individual; or his understaniding of the economic dyanamics of America; or his view of our history. But he used it for a succession of human interest vignettes and two liners, crafted to appeal to various perceived interest groups--a collection of promises with no supporting argument, no discussion of even how it would be possible to fulfill those promises.

Half hour is not a long time, if you actually have something to say. But it is enough time to at least get started. Obama preferred to prattle slogans and promises that can never be fulfilled, while suggesting powers the Constitution does not give to an American President.

We think this lack of information makes our point of three days ago, all the more important:

Fellow Americans:

The Obama response to any discussion of his involvement with a former Weatherman leader, engaged in radical revolutionary tactics in the 1960s, has been that he (Obama) was only eight years old at the time of the Ayers involvement in acts of overt sedition, and that he has since denounced those actions. This, of course, is irrelevant to the issue of whether or not Obama and Ayers share a common Marxist ideology--a common vision of a new monolithic totalitarian Socialist America. Ayers may have changed his tactics, that does not mean that he has changed his goals.

When Lenin and Trotsky left Russia, at a time when they were unable to manage a successful uprising, that did not mean an abandonment of their loathsome Marxist ideology. They were simply biding their time for the right moment. When Hitler abandoned the tactics of trying to launch violent revolution in a beer hall, after serving a jail term over the incident, it did not mean that he had abandoned his ultimate goal of a Monolithic Socialist Germany. He simply changed his tactics and bided his time.

Conservatives need to stop worrying about Ayers earlier tactics and focus on Ayers' & now Obama's continuing objective. For half a Century, too many have been dazzled by the ideological sleight of hand, that some of the few actually clever Leftists employed at the height of the Legislative investigations of conspiratorial Communism in the 1950s, to gradually desensitize Americans to what had actually been going on. The tactic has been simple but effective. Always focus on the "conspiracy" aspect at the expense of the actual ideology that the conspirators employed. Always imply that those discussing Leftist activity are paranoid--"Conspiracy Theorists"--that they see Communists "under people's beds." The tactic took a while to really gain traction, but in time it did, and lately to an extent where even Conservative radio talk show hosts are often very careful to distance themselves from any one who might be labelled a "Conspiracy Theorist."

Whether one wants to call the Obama association with known Marxist activists a "conspiracy," or not, is wholly irrelevant to the question of the direction that an Obama Administration would take! Would Lenin and Trotsky have been more acceptable to Americans, had they like Hitler in Germany, changed tactics and sought power through political manipulation? Was Hitler more acceptable to Americans, because he had forged the biggest voting block in Germany in 1933? Because he, like Obama, could draw vast cowds, filling great stadiums, cheering hypnotic, sloganized rhetoric, rather than firing into a beer hall ceiling and shouting "freedom?" Are we more concerned with the tactics of the moment or the future of the free societies that the Founding Fathers vindicated in the Revolution and sought to protect in the Constitution?

There is little doubt but that the "Changes" Obama wants for America are the same ones that his mentor William Ayers has been pursuing all his adult life. Obama made it very clear, when he was distancing himself from Rev. Wright, where he stood. He told us that while Wright had embraced the Conservative value of self-help--personal responsibility--that would never work until we "changed America." Self-help, personal responsibility, has always worked in America. It is the fundament for our history, for all our success, all our prosperity, all our hopes. Moreover, even from the standpoint of Black America--which is no part of Obama's roots--Booker T. Washington demonstrated to all who were paying attention, that the same ethic worked very well indeed. The decline in the well being of the Black inner cities of America, since the New Deal and Civil Rights movements, can be directly traced to the later rejection of Booker T. Washington's American values. (See our October Feature on Obama: Community Organizer: Community Organizer.)

William Flax

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