Kenneth D. Gartrell

By: Kenneth D. Gartrell

This book by Jerome R. Corsi is a must read. It alleges that Barack Obama is a systematic liar, a moral relativist, a dissembler, a betrayer and an extreme leftist (code for Communist).

Summary

Over the first third of the book, Corsi carefully and systematically indentifies many perceived lies and half-truths in Obama’s autobiography. The analysis seeks to expose and rationalize the life-long pattern of Obama’s associations and his devotion to the radical Malcolm X, as well as the notorious Communists Franz Falon, Frank Parker Davis and Saul Alinsky.

The general thesis pursued by Corsi in the first third of the book is that Obama’s overall worldview – which dictates his social and economic policy agenda – is anti-colonialism, arising from life-long sympathies to African political problems, especially in Kenya, the home of his own father Barack Obama Sr.

Shifting to the second third of the book, Corsi seeks to explain how Obama sought and found a comfortable home for his anti-colonial philosophy on the south side of Chicago because it is a natural ally of and a systematic basis for, the form of Black Liberation Theology promoted at the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ. In this vein, Corsi links Obama to Louis Farakan and the Black Muslim movement by the argument that the teachings of the Black Muslims and Black Liberation Theology are joined in a material way, by common roots in the 1960’s radical ideas of Stokley Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton.

The second third of the book also develops a theme that Obama, when working as a community organizer, became a practitioner of the highly instrumental political strategies of Saul Alinsky. Corsi posits that Obama made numerous decisions – such as his decision at age 30 to become a “Christian” – for purely political reasons. In this same context, Corsi provides a relatively persuasive argument that Barack Obama always follows the same systematic pattern when he is confronted with uncomfortable facts about his Chicago associations. This pattern, as Corsi believes, can best be described as the incremental repudiation and abandonment of his strongest supporters and political comrades. The desired conclusion that Corsi pushes is that Barack Obama will do and say anything to be elected. He profiles how Obama allegedly took advantage of and later betrayed, in succession, Alice Palmer, Bill Ayers, Bernadette Dohrn, Tony Rezko, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farakan, Father Pfelger and Trinity United Church of Christ.

The final third of Obama Nation focuses on the philosophy and methods of David Axelrod. Corsi claims that Axelrod is an expert in engineering the election of black candidates and making them acceptable to white voters. Corsi makes the argument that Axelrod is following the same packaging strategy for Obama as he used to help elect Duval Patrick to the position of Governor of Massachusetts. The idea of this final part of the book is to support the claim that Obama is no different than any other politician. He is described as a man who lusts for power and wealth. He is portrayed as an invention of Axelrod and he is packaged in terms of his personality rather than any substantive agenda or policy vision. The idea of the Obama/Axelrod strategy is to field all issues in the name of change no matter what the topic.

Corsi believes this smoke screen allows the candidate time to back away from direct challenges on policy issues and to reformulate his position in terms of the broad and meaningless catchall – change. The approach allows the candidate to hide behind his personality and side-step hard policy questions.

The Economics

On the merits, and all things considered, it is hard to ignore Corsi’s conclusions. Unless we assume that Barack Obama has spent all his years in Chicago ambitiously exploiting his friends and associates for political reasons, there is only one conclusion that can be reached from a life of immersion in the teachings of Franz Fallon, Frank Parker Davis, Malcolm X, Saul Alinsky and Jeremiah Wright. Namely, the conclusion has to be that, in terms of his economic outlook and policy, Barack Obama is a Communist in substance, if not in fact.

Corsi provides no evidence that Tony Rezko is anything but a money-driven crook, looking for a fast buck by exploiting poor black Americans. However, philosophically speaking, a shared philosophy of revolutionary Communism is the only way to explain the long-term relationships with Bill Ayers, Bernadette Dohrn, The Reverend Wright and Louis Farakan.

As a professional economist, I have been openly critical of Obama’s economic agenda and his apparent general ignorance of markets and economics. I freely admit that I have previously arrived at this conclusion based on the economic policy agenda advanced by Obama in his current campaign. I never concerned myself with how Obama came to be a Communist. I have been only concerned with accurately evaluating the current cross-section of his policy positions. But, upon reflection, Obama Nation is just too well documented and argued not to be believed as an explanation of how Obama arrived at his current substantive positions. I believe, in this regard, the Corsi analysis is first-rate journalism and first-rate scholarship. Virtually every fact in the book is corroborated and carefully exposed, so that each fact could be reaffirmed by anyone who wishes to test the work. The result is that Corsi adds a dynamic historical explanation of how and why Obama became a Communist. In my opinion, that conclusion is inescapable when the development process of Obama is trued-up to the substance of his campaign’s economic policy agenda.

My analysis is made independently of Corsi, and I am certain he had no access or interest in my views when he was doing his work. The complementarities and additivities between his work and mine add validity to each of the separate results.

Criticism

Fundamentally, this is about economics; the rest is just noise!

I do not endorse blindly all the points Corsi makes. I only list out the more general claims to frame the issues. My biggest criticism of Obama Nation is that Corsi does not go far enough in his assessment of Obama’s economics policy. Corsi, as a political scientist, surely knows what Marxism and Communism are. Therefore, far from being too sharp in his criticism of Obama’s domestic and economic agenda, Corsi pulls his punches when he labels the Obama agenda as merely far-left politics.

The point of my criticism is simple. In my best professional opinion, the economic policies of Barack Obama are consistently and completely Communist. What the Obama campaign advocates is a labor theory of value, class warfare, dialectical materialism, and disdain of capital markets, collective action for political power and central planning – all with ever increasing central government control. Not one Obama campaign proposal departs from Marxist/Communist dogma. I have searched out every source of information concerning the economics of the Obama campaign and I can find no proposed policy that is inconsistent with a typical Communist agenda.

I see no way to refute the overwhelming influence of Malcolm X (in the radical stage), Franz Fanon, Frank Parker Davis and Saul Alinsky on the philosophy of Barack Obama – these influences are explained by Corsi, but not until they have been fully confessed by Obama in Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. I am not sure what other explanation could be given, other than one consistent with what Corsi offers. And yet, it does not matter so much – simply because the facts are what they are about the influence of these ideas on Obama’s political strategy and economic ideas. In other words, the influences cannot be denied, simply because they are clearly manifested in the policy agenda of the Obama campaign as it is currently positioned.

An important footnote is that while Obama claims a conversion to Christianity, it is hard to interpret this decision as a life changing experience simply because the central focus of the teachings of Jeremiah Wright are much more a matter of Marxism and Communism in the embedded code/format of Black Liberation Theology, than based on any revelation as to the simple message of the Gospels.

The Cold War is over and Red Baiting has no value in modern discourse. That is helpful because we can consider the elements of Communism in relation to the Obama agenda, without any particular concern for patriotism and nationalism. We can just evaluate if it is a good idea or a bad idea for American economic policy. All I have to ask (if my analysis is valid) is that people correctly understand that the Obama economic agenda is based on the old, stale, failed and oppressive ideas behind the social systems of the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, North Vietnam and Cuba. Then we are all certainly free to decide for ourselves what direction we want to go – on to the future by a rejection of the Obama agenda, as modern economics overwhelmingly recommends… or back to the Stone Age with Marx and Engels.

Corsi makes a convincing case as to how Obama became a Communist and why. He also makes it clear he believes that Obama will stiff any supporter who is no longer useful to him. That being said, none of this has any bearing on my conclusions about the economics issue. My conclusions are based on an independent assessment of the stated economic plans and programs of Obama and his campaign, all of which I take at face value, and have repeated to the public in articles, speeches and campaign materials.

Many Obama advocates want to separate the social politics (such as race, abortion, energy, etc.) from the economics – but they should remember the classic words of Vladimir Lenin, “Politics is just an intense form of economics.” We can wonder, for example, if they understand the economic incentives and proposals behind the lobby for Roe V. Wade in the 1970’s.

Will they acknowledge as well, that the cost of social entitlements has been controlled through central planning in part because the Federal Government has paid Planned Parenthood $750 million per year to perpetrate the widely alleged genocide of 14 million black fetuses (who would otherwise require welfare) since the ruling in Roe v. Wade?

Similarly, we can ask whether the need to rationalize health care programs in the future may lead to widespread death by euthanasia (as seen in a recent case in Oregon), simply because the state cannot afford to keep citizens alive in a system of “universal” health care (directed centrally by the same people who administer Social Security).

I recommend that anyone who is inclined to take the prospect lightly that Obamanomics is really Communism by another name, should first read Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, and then study the new book Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives. Perhaps in this context, they will see how the innocent backers of Stalinism were treated when the system could no longer produce prosperity, or even feed the population.

Before we blindly support Communism, enamored (as Corsi alleges) with a cult of personality and a meaningless slogan of ‘change,’ we should take the pains once again to know what it is and what it does!