Posted on 03/07/2008 6:31:16 AM PST by Kaslin
Barack Obama's words are often attractive but oddly concealing. His speeches are all balm and mood. It's all very well to seek, as Obama claims, to transcend old categories, to reject the "old politics." But then what? This graceful rhetorician leaves you wondering: Who is he really? What does he want for himself and for his country?
In search of answers that go deeper than the Congressional Record, I read his first book, "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." Once you get past the happy surprise of finding a politician who can actually write, the book contains some disquieting elements.
Obama is the product of a union between a white Kansan and a black Kenyan who met in Hawaii. I had assumed, before reading his memoir, that Obama viewed himself as a natural bridge between the races and that his message of unity sprang in part from his biology. That was wrong. From his earliest years, Obama engaged in a preoccupying internal struggle to make himself a fully authentic black man.
Young Barack hardly knew his father because the elder Obama left when he was 2. One meeting when Barack was 10 and a few letters were all he had. Only much later would Obama discover that his father had many wives and many children -- all of whom wound up disappointed in him. Barack's mother, Ann, went on to marry another non-American, an Indonesian named Lolo, and took the young Barack to live in Jakarta. Perhaps she was hoping to live some sort of Third World idyll. Obama never reveals her political views nor her feelings about America. But we get one glimpse in this passage:
"Looking back, I'm not sure Lolo ever fully understood what my mother was going through ... why the things he was working so hard to provide for her seemed only to increase the distance between them ... He landed a job in the government relations department of an American oil company. ... Sometimes I would overhear him and my mother arguing in their bedroom, usually about her refusal to attend his company dinner parties, where American businessmen from Texas and Louisiana would slap Lolo's back and boast about the palms they had greased to obtain the new offshore drilling rights, while their wives complained to my mother about the quality of Indonesian help. He would ask her how it would look for him to go alone, and remind her that these were her own people, and my mother's voice would rise to almost a shout.
'They are not my people.'"
Grasping, insensitive Americans? Businesspeople? Or just Americans? Whom did she reject?
Whom does he reject -- or what? Left-wing ideas are not so much articulated in this memoir as presumed. Obama has claimed that his experience living abroad gives him a valuable perspective for a chief executive. Yet his reflections on the effect Western capitalism has had on Jakarta and Chicago's south side sound like warmed over Herbert Marcuse. "How could we go about stitching a culture back together after it was torn? How long might it take in this land of dollars? The very existence of the factories, the timber interests, the plastics manufacturer, will have rendered their [Indonesian] culture obsolete; the values of hard work and individual initiative turn out to have depended on a system of belief that's been scrambled by migration and urbanization and imported TV reruns."
Obama's self-portrait in this book is that of a searching, nonjudgmental young man attempting to find his rightful place after a confusing start in life. But he is attracted by the harshly ideological Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose church he joins. Wright peddles racial grievance religion. Following 9/11, he said, "[W]hite America got a wake-up call ... White America and the Western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns."
Obama says he doesn't agree with Wright about everything. Fine. And maybe he doesn't agree with his wife when she (twice) said that she'd never been proud of her country until its people began to support her husband. But then, what did he mean when he said on March 4 that making a little girl proud to say she is an American is the "change we are calling for"?
One suspects that beneath the soothing talk, there is bitterness in the man that we'd best learn more about before voting.
Better yet! How do Freepers feel about Hussein Obama?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs
Why Obama cannot win the general election in 52 seconds!
Interesting. B.H. Obama’s father was a polygamist. Haven’t heard that one in the lamestream media...
After all ,what more can you say about that man?
good article and something I have been saying a lot of
I am from England origianlly and over there they really think he is a ther best thing since sliced bread also his wife is looked at as a great woman
Of course people over there are not told off the likes of the far left guardian and the biased BBC about their racist views, their hatred of their country and what they have said and done
I just hope more and more people like you get this message out as this is imoportant to know that we have in my eyes a racist of someone who has a deep hostile view of whites maybe but to some others they are just anti American
We need to know who we are electing and what they are like for when they get into office are they going to try and defeat this country within
Maybe
Anyway good article and hopefully more and more people forget the nice speeches and actually see the reall person saying it and the real person who he is married to
This is where the media can redeem themselves and stop the cheerleading for obama
The title of this topic: How Does Obama Feel About America?
I think Obama does not ‘feel’ whatsoever about America as we require in a leader.
He has little sense of connectedness to the history of the nation having taken little part of it from birth, and to be honest I think he feels much more about winning the presidency for what America Can Do For Obama.
Ah
According to islam their book of a few hundred years and the book they deem as law not the constitution mind but a old old book written when people lived in caves
They can have 4 wives
as for the MSM
are you really surprised to find out that they have been covering for obama and other islam issues ?
However the drive-bys mentioned on the front page numerous times that Mitt's distant ancestors practiced polygamy. Of course they're not biased or anything. /s
or what america can do for Africans, Africa and blacks maybe even help them to take Israel away by giving weapons to Hamas
Infact as anyone asked him does he support Hamas etc
does he think they are terrorists? especially after he what he said after 9/11.
Does he want ot give slave reperations to blacks i this country?
does he want to open the immigration gates to Africans and muslims based on what has happened in those continents and if so how much and where does hte money come from
Will he now get rid of affirmative action as he has proved a man of colour can run for the highest seat in the land?
slightly off topic for this rant
Maybe he could tell that to my nieghbours who sit at hime rent the biggest house on the street, have different cars and motor cycles, never work , has plasma TV’s , thenthey ditch their food on the side of the road when finished with the cooking also throw their beer bottles across the side of the road when they have finished drinking out of them .
Instead of hearing mother F##### or white this or white that maybe they could strive to be a contriobuting ciotizen to this country etc etc
Going out on a limb here,I would think that his view is not very different from that of his adorable wife who sounds very much like she would rather be in another country. I would gladly contribute a few bucks to send Michelle Obama to live elsewhere.
You haven't? How odd. After all, the MSM couldn't stop talking about Mitt Romney's great great great grandfather's polygamy. I'm sure they would also have mentioned something about Obama's father. (sarc)
God, there’s a revealing photo if I’ve ever seen one!!!!!
Yes, I agree a very good article.
I’m listening to Clarence Thomas autobiography. You can see the evolution of this man over time, beginning as a boy who grew up with his grandparents after his father abandoned the family.
Somewhat similar beginnings to Obama, as Thomas accepted much of the tenets of the Black Panthers and other radical groups of the 60s.
Then something happened. He read the works of economist Thomas Sowell who was saying and writing about things that Thomas believed but too afraid to admit. That being that liberals are the black oppressors and that things like busing and racial quotas hurt the black man and woman etc.
We see nothing in Obama that relieves and assures us. To the contrary, this guy is expecting to waltz into the white house with no more credentials than Harriet Miers had to be a supreme court judge.
Heaven help us if he’s elected.
My wife is from England, and I'd have to say my Brit in-laws although all very nice people, have political views decidedly to the left. One of my brother-in-laws took it upon himself to educate me about the 2000 prez elections about which he read from Michael Moore. My responses to his questions and statements were mostly on the lines of "that's false, that's false, that's a lie, that's false, etc". For instance he believed the lie that police had intimidated Black voters in Florida.
My conclusion after hearing their words and reading the Brit papers was that British citizens receive a far worse dose of leftist propaganda from their media than Americans.
Bump for later read.
They are very much brainwashed and yes we have the left destroying England right now
I’m from a place called Salford next to Manchester and it’s a very union place but when it comes to immigration I know of not one person who like how muslims are taking over the country or how the country in a 100 years will be mostly muslim.
The media always gives a negative view of the right in America.
I had a mate come over to visit and he couldn’t believe just how diffeent Americans were, how they were not the type he thought they would be and now he loves this country.
The left have managed to silence the right and if anything you say negative about their views you are labelled a name.
Look at the state of emigrationout of England, people are leaving in record levels now.
Tis a shame that Amercia does not give a green card lottery to England one of only two countries in the world, many cannot understand why this country lets in non educated workers yet so many people back in England would liove to come here and contribute to this society instead of free education, health etc.
If America lets the Boders open to Europeans then you would have millions of people with trades and education coming here, only the wacky left would stay over there as they are happy on what they done to the country.
yes it’s a shame that so many of the media over there have not been telling the truth
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.