Monday, April 07, 2008
Interesting info on Obama's radical father
Prestopundit has some interesting info on Barack's socialist father.
Prestopundit has some interesting info on Barack's socialist father.
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)
# posted by Duane : 9:59 PM
Comments:
<< Home
Who cares what Obama’s Father was? He left him when he was 2 years old!!! Jesus Christ’s Father was a Jew, but Christ formed a different Church, and a different religion. Karl Marx did not come from a communistic family, he came up with those ideas on his own. Hillary Clinton’s Father was a Republican. Ronald Reagan was formerly a Democrat, and he turned into a Republican President.
This idea of trying to attack someone through their birth, their race, their family, or their Pastor (or, in the case of Ronald Reagan, judging by his past political affiliation) is idiotic at best, and disingenuous at worst. Listen to what the candidates are saying. Listen to the speeches they made before the Iraq War. Look at their voting records. If you have something good or bad to say about any of the candidates concerning THEIR OWN voting records or something they advocate in their speeches or the political positions on their websites, then say it. Otherwise, quit slicing the baloney!
Mitt Rommney’s Father was a Liberal Democrat of the FDR mold and Rommney, an arch consevative, has consistently and properly praised his father. Even if my father had been a Ku Klux Klansman (he wasn’t) I would still owe much to my father–our parents bring us into existence and provide us with the raw materials and DNA to build a unique person–a person who develops their own ideas, their own life, and their own politics.
Your arguments are specious and completely disingeuous. No rational intelligent person would accept them.
The point is that it doesn’t matter whether your Father (or Mother) was a thief or a murderer, a communist or a coward, a rogue or a notorious sinner. The tradition of both Christianity and of America is that children do not inherit the sins of their parents. The meaning of God’s gift of free will and our constitution’s guarantee of individual liberty and freedom of thought and political expression is that we aren’t judged by the sins or errors of our parents. Everyone gets a chance to rise and fall on their own merits. The twisted argument you are making is the same one they tried to make about the blind man in the New Testament. “Was it because of his parents sin that he was born blind” they asked? Christ set them straight–we are NOT punished for the sins of our parents, and we are not to judge others by what their parents may have done in the past. Every human person is a free and unique individual that should be judged on their own individual merits. If what I am saying was not true, then we would all be hopelessly dragged down by the weight of the many sins and mistakes of our ancestors–nobody could progress forward. And just because Obama honors his Father does NOT mean that he agrees with him on his political views or anything else for that matter. There’s a really great set of rules that I would recommend to you called The Ten Commandments. It’s found in both the Christian Bible and the Jewish Torah, and it is the primary basis for our judeo-christian ethics and laws. One of those commandments is “Honor Thy Father and Mother”. Note carefully that the Commandment does NOT say to honor your Father and Mother because they are good, or honor them when you agree with their politics–it simply says to honor them. As Children, we honor our parents for being our parents (just as we honor God for being our God). And if Obama chooses to honor his Father, whether in a book or otherwise, then he is simply following that particular Commandment as he understands it. Your “parents’ views=childrens’ views” argument flys in the face of that reality.
Post a Comment
This idea of trying to attack someone through their birth, their race, their family, or their Pastor (or, in the case of Ronald Reagan, judging by his past political affiliation) is idiotic at best, and disingenuous at worst. Listen to what the candidates are saying. Listen to the speeches they made before the Iraq War. Look at their voting records. If you have something good or bad to say about any of the candidates concerning THEIR OWN voting records or something they advocate in their speeches or the political positions on their websites, then say it. Otherwise, quit slicing the baloney!
Mitt Rommney’s Father was a Liberal Democrat of the FDR mold and Rommney, an arch consevative, has consistently and properly praised his father. Even if my father had been a Ku Klux Klansman (he wasn’t) I would still owe much to my father–our parents bring us into existence and provide us with the raw materials and DNA to build a unique person–a person who develops their own ideas, their own life, and their own politics.
Your arguments are specious and completely disingeuous. No rational intelligent person would accept them.
The point is that it doesn’t matter whether your Father (or Mother) was a thief or a murderer, a communist or a coward, a rogue or a notorious sinner. The tradition of both Christianity and of America is that children do not inherit the sins of their parents. The meaning of God’s gift of free will and our constitution’s guarantee of individual liberty and freedom of thought and political expression is that we aren’t judged by the sins or errors of our parents. Everyone gets a chance to rise and fall on their own merits. The twisted argument you are making is the same one they tried to make about the blind man in the New Testament. “Was it because of his parents sin that he was born blind” they asked? Christ set them straight–we are NOT punished for the sins of our parents, and we are not to judge others by what their parents may have done in the past. Every human person is a free and unique individual that should be judged on their own individual merits. If what I am saying was not true, then we would all be hopelessly dragged down by the weight of the many sins and mistakes of our ancestors–nobody could progress forward. And just because Obama honors his Father does NOT mean that he agrees with him on his political views or anything else for that matter. There’s a really great set of rules that I would recommend to you called The Ten Commandments. It’s found in both the Christian Bible and the Jewish Torah, and it is the primary basis for our judeo-christian ethics and laws. One of those commandments is “Honor Thy Father and Mother”. Note carefully that the Commandment does NOT say to honor your Father and Mother because they are good, or honor them when you agree with their politics–it simply says to honor them. As Children, we honor our parents for being our parents (just as we honor God for being our God). And if Obama chooses to honor his Father, whether in a book or otherwise, then he is simply following that particular Commandment as he understands it. Your “parents’ views=childrens’ views” argument flys in the face of that reality.
# posted by 
: 1:20 AM
: 1:20 AM<< Home
