With liberals now rushing out of the woodwork to denounce American stupidity over the persistent perception that Obama is not a Christian and may indeed be a stealth Muslim, it seems a perfect time to revisit the exact nature of Obama’s Christian experience. As I wrote extensively after my own visit to Jeremiah Wright’s church in Chicago, the theology preached there was a cunningly cloaked racist political creed that bore very little resemblance to mainstream Christianity.

Since we now know, because of the recent Journolist revelations, that there was a conspiratorial movement among “mainstream” journalists to squash the Jeremiah Wright controversy during the campaign and to label those of us hammering the issue’s details as “racists,” the media has only itself to blame for not pushing Obama then to fully explain how his Christian beliefs differed (if they indeed did differ) from the Farrakhan-honoring pastor he later chose to denounce. As Wright’s black liberation theology was the only experience with Christianity that Barack Obama had ever had, it should have been incumbent upon him to explain his renunciation of not only Wright, but also of black liberation theology as a whole.

Black liberation theology is the brainchild of James H. Cone. Cone states in his own explanation that black liberation theology is his attempt to forge a third way between Martin Luther King’s orthodox Christianity and the Islamic creed of Malcolm X. As I noted in my original work on black liberation theology as practiced by Jeremiah Wright, anyone wishing to become a member at Trinity needed only a black perspective on faith and Black Muslims were welcome members with no renouncing of Islam necessary to join.

If Obama had not himself made such a big deal of his faith during the campaign, I doubt seriously that this would still be an issue. However, since Barack Obama made closing the God-gap one of his primary missions in campaign ‘08, it hardly seems fair to now put his faith out of bounds for earnest public discussion.

Here, then, is the first of a 3-part series I wrote in 2008 on Obama’s faith.
Obama, Black Liberation Theology, and Karl Marx
By Kyle-Anne Shiver

What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.

Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.”
- Karl Marx; essay, The Jewish Question; 1844
Not having a theology degree, nor even a Ph.D., and being, too, a bit naïve regarding matters of high-brow philosophical currents throughout the ages, I have to admit that when I first read Karl Marx’ essay, The Jewish Question, I was actually stunned by its contents.

First off, my rather cursory education in various philosophies and in Marxism, particularly, did not prepare me for the bitter thrust of old Karl’s potent anti-Semitism. In fact, until reading this particular essay, I would have never, in a million years, connected much of anything whatsoever Marxian with Jew hate.

Who would?

After all, Karl Marx, himself, was a Jew. Hitler and many others blamed the Jews for Communism, thanks to the number of Jews who played prominent roles in the Russian Revolution. I naturally associated twentieth century Anti-Semitism with Adolph Hitler and the Nazis.

Ironically, if Karl Marx had still been alive and residing in Germany or any of the Nazi-occupied countries during WWII, he would have perished along with his brethren, despite his own “self-loathing-Jew” status.

Marx envisioned a society “which would abolish the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering,” because this classless society “would make the Jew impossible.”

Personally, I find the opinion of some that Marx was a genius, to be downright laughable. Regarding his opinions on the Jews, one is left to ponderously consider which ones were dumb, and which were dumber.

Evidently Karl Marx was as utterly ignorant of the true tenets of Judaism (Self-sufficiency does not equate to “huckstering.”) as he was of the diabolical possibilities inherent in his own words, once they were in the hands of one Adolph Hitler.

This atrocious irony might be merely a historical oddity if old Karl’s words were not still bouncing around in the heads of those who wish to lead new revolutions based upon them. But Marx’ words still dominate much of what happens on the world stage today, even in our own republic.

The word emphasis has changed a bit. The industrial proletariat is no longer the focus. But as a newly prominent American politician is wont to remind us: words do matter.

Yes, of course, words matter, as many leaders of ambitious movements have mightily declared.

…the power which has always started the greatest religious and political avalanches in history rolling has from time to immemorial been the magic of power of the spoken word, and that alone.

Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech.
- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf.
The Oppressed Vs. the Oppressors

Just words.

But where do they come from, and what do they mean in America today?

I might never have delved into the subject of the oppressed vs. the oppressors if I had not gone to Chicago in January seeking answers about a man who would be president.

When I visited Obama’s church, still under the directorship of Jeremiah Wright, I came away with far more questions than answers, and one thing leading to another, have spent the last several months trying to fathom how Marxist political philosophy wound up emblazoned with a cross and a pulpit, and pretending to rely on the Bible for its authority.

It is somewhat difficult to imagine a more contorted blasphemy, with the single possible exception of Hitler himself claiming to be acting by divine decree in the interests of Christianity. Which is precisely what Hitler did do, while hoodwinking the German people into electing him Chancellor.

Hitler sprinkled Mein Kampf with Christian language, most likely to fit with the predominantly Christian German population, and appealed to voters on the strength of his Christian “calling”:

“I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord..”
As most junior-high Sunday schoolers know, however, a Christian is judged on actions, not words, and Hitler was no Christian. He was a bamboozler of the lowest imaginable order.

Jeremiah Wright is the tiny tip of Obama’s spiritual iceberg

The phenomenon that raised so many questions for me in January, when I visited Trinity United Church of Christ, was not Jeremiah Wright’s sermon, which turned out to be just a call for all good congregants to support Barack Obama for President. It wasn’t the sermon that caught me off guard; I was prepared for that. I had watched video of Wright, giving five of his fiery sermons.

The thing that really got me to thinking, reading and searching for answers was the church bookstore.

Having been a practicing Christian for more than 40 years now, and a practicing Catholic for 26 of those years, I have visited perhaps 100 various Christian bookstores, both Protestant and Catholic. In all of those places, one thing tied together the books for sale: Christianity.

Not so in Obama’s church bookstore.

I spent more than an hour perusing available books, and found as many claiming to represent Muslim thought as those representing Christian thought. Black Muslim thought, to be specific.

And the books claiming to support Christianity were surprisingly of a more political than religious nature. The books by James H. Cone, Wright’s own mentor, were prominent and numerous.

Now that I have read a number of the books that presumably Wright’s congregants (including Barack Obama) have also read, I can only conclude that the thing tying these volumes together is not Christianity, nor any real religion, but the political philosophy of Karl Marx.

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” (emphasis mine)
- Marx and Engels; The Communist Manifesto; 1848
If Marxism can be summed up in only a couple of phrases, now familiar to nearly every modern person, they would be “class struggle” and “oppressed vs. oppressors.”

James H. Cone, the unquestioned modern-day mentor of all the black power preachers, claims to have created a new theology, uniting the Muslim black power tenets of Malcolm X and the Christian foundations of Martin Luther King, Jr.

All he has really done, in my opinion, is take original liberation theology from Latin America, developed in the early 1960s by Catholic priests, and painted it black.

Liberation Theology vs. Traditional Christianity

The teaching authorities of the Catholic Church, have for more than 20 years now, been attempting to stamp out these heretical liberation theologies, denouncing them as vehemently antithetical to the Catholic Christian faith, and have been strenuously combating this Marxist counterfeit Christianity on many fronts within the Church herself.

Of course, the Medieval, iron-fisted clamp of the Catholic Church’s authority, even within the Church herself, is routinely overstated, and there are renegade priests all over the place (more on another of Obama’s spiritual mentors, a liberation theology Catholic priest in Chicago, in Part Two next week).

Not to mention the fact that the Catholic Church has no authority whatsoever over those claiming to represent protestant interpretations of the Christian faith, such as Cone and Wright.

But it is important to note here that liberation theology, including black liberation theology, has not gone unnoticed by the learned biblical scholars within the Vatican, and liberation theology has been roundly denounced as both heretical and dangerous, not only to the authentic Christian faith, but even more so to the societies which come to embrace it.

Just one nugget from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’:

“…it would be illusory and dangerous to ignore the intimate bond which radically unites them (liberation theologies), and to accept elements of the marxist analysis without recognizing its connections with the (Marxist) ideology, or to enter into the practice of the class-struggle and of its marxist interpretation while failing to see the kind of totalitarian society to which this process slowly leads.”
- (Author: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect, now Pope Benedict XVI; written in 1984)
Understanding that black liberation theology is Marxism dressed up to look like Christianity helps explain why there is no conflict between Cone’s “Christianity” and Farrakhan’s “Nation of Islam.” They are two prophets in the same philosophical (Marxist) pod, merely using different religions as backdrops for their black-power aims.

As Cone himself writes in his 1997 preface to a new edition of his 1969 book, Black Theology and Black Power:

“As in 1969, I still regard Jesus Christ today as the chief focus of my perspective on God but not to the exclusion of other religious perspectives. God’s reality is not bound by one manifestation of the divine in Jesus but can be found wherever people are being empowered to fight for freedom. Life-giving power for the poor and the oppressed is the primary criterion that we must use to judge the adequacy of our theology, not abstract concepts. As Malcolm X put it: ‘I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won’t let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion’.” (p. xii; emphases mine)
And, to drive his Marxist emphasis even further, Cone again quotes Malcolm X:

“The point that I would like to impress upon every Afro-American leader is that there is no kind of action in this country ever going to bear fruit unless that action is tied in with the overall international (class) struggle.” (p. xiii)
(Ironically, considering the formal Church teaching regarding liberation theologies, this book of Cone’s was published by Orbis, owned and managed by The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, a Maryknoll religious entity. So much for the totalitarianism of the Catholic Church.)

It is this subjugation of genuine Christianity to the supremacy of the Marxist class struggle, which marks the true delineation between traditional Christianity and black liberation theology, as Pope Benedict XVI (writing in 1984 as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) sums up thusly:

“For the marxist, the truth is a truth of class: there is no truth but the truth in the struggle of the revolutionary class.”
Which is precisely why Cone and his disciples are able to boldly proclaim that if the Jesus of traditional Christianity is not united with them in the Marxist class struggle, then he is a “white Jesus,” and they must “kill him.” (Cone; A Black Theology of Liberation; p. 111)

And Cone brings it all the way home with this proclamation of liberation from traditional Christianity itself:

“The appearance of black theology means that the black community is now ready to do something about he white Jesus, so that he cannot get in the way of our revolution.”
Move over Jesus and make way for Cone, Wright and Obama.

The revolution is at hand.

And presto-chango, once we’ve followed Marx, Cone, Wright and Obama down the yellow brick road to revolution, Christianity as we’ve known it for millennia ceases to exist.

Obama was raised by his mother, the agnostic anthropologist, to regard religion as “an expression of human culture…not its wellspring, just one of the many ways — and not necessarily the best way — that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives.” (Audacity of Hope; p. 204)

However, when Barack Obama met Jeremiah Wright in the mid-eighties, between his years at Columbia and Harvard Law, he found a “faith” perfectly accommodating to his already well-formed worldview.

From The Audacity of Hope:

“In the history of these (African people’s) struggles, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather, it was an active, palpable agent in the world.” (p. 207)
As Obama explains further, it was Wright’s (and presumably Cone’s, as required of new members at Trinity) peculiar form of Christianity that Obama found palatable:

“It was because of these newfound understandings (at Trinity under Wright) — that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice…that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity…and be baptized.”
Wright’s vision of Christianity was perfectly appetizing to Barack Obama; he didn’t need to change a thing.

Liberation Theology and the New Order of Things

James Cone devotes many words in all of his books to instructing his disciples to beware of those resistant to the necessary change in the power structure, warning that,

“those who would cast their lot with the victims must not forget that the existing structures are powerful and complex…Oppressors want people to think that change is impossible.” (James H. Cone; Speaking the Truth; p. 49)
Pope Benedict XVI (writing as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) give an equally stringent message to Catholics about liberation theology regarding the perversion of the Christian understanding of the “poor”:

“In its positive meaning the Church of the poor signifies the preference given to the poor, without exclusion, whatever the form of their poverty, because they are preferred by God…But the theologies of liberation…go on to a disastrous confusion between the poor of the Scripture and the proletariat of Marx. In this way they pervert the Christian meaning of the poor, and they transform the fight for the rights of the poor into a class fight within the ideological perspective of the class struggle.”
According to Pope Benedict’s instruction on liberation theology, our understanding of the virtues, faith, hope and charity are subjugated to the new Marxist order:

Faith becomes “fidelity to history.”

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, to bring about the final fruition of the class struggle.

Hope becomes “confidence in the future.”

Yes, we can change the world; we don’t need God. Our collective redemption comes when we engage in the Marxist class struggle.

Charity becomes “option for the poor.”

All are not created equal. Special political privilege for the oppressed, socialism, will set us free.

It’s the dawn of a new age.

Honestly, I haven’t heard such caterwauling and bellyaching in this country since Jimmy Carter was president. All I’ve heard this whole summer has been a rising cacophony of complaint. In every posh place I’ve been, whether church or Wal-Mart or Home Depot or the bagel shop, whether my primary polling place or regular citizens confab, whether neighborhood barbeques or my favorite stateside beach, the self-indulgent topic du jour has been the plight of the people.

The plight of the people and that sorry lot of nincompoops running the national machinery up there in Washington, D.C., are the only things folks are talking about this summer.

Unbridled scorn. Ungracious contempt for the president’s policies and even for his wife’s Marie Antoinette inclinations. Snarling sarcasm not even bothering to veil itself in polite platitudes. Unfettered resentment coming from the mouths of ordinarily apolitical gentlemen, forming the same trite question over and over again in sardonic mockery: “Can’t the president feel our pain?”

A collective national belch hurled in the faces of the ivory-towered elitists emits from the people in the most rude disdain they can summon.

It’s as though the normally silent, working-too-hard-to-notice-anything-political majority has suddenly awakened from a 35-year slumber and bellowed with a single voice at the top of their lungs:

Enough.

Enough with the liberal dream schemes that have bankrupted the socialist democracies of Europe and every state in the union that’s tried them. Enough with the profligate spending of other people’s money. Enough with the corruption and greed and high-handedness. Enough with purely racist policies masquerading as “affirmative action” and “color quotas.” Enough with the junk science. Enough with the “Can we get away with it? Yes, we can” shredding of the Constitution.

While the nation moans and wallows in its discontent, the president says we ought to be “thanking him.”

Well, I for one, have decided to give the president and his lovely better half a break. As Lindsey Graham might intone, the Golden Rule demands it. Yes, demands that we summon our inner self-sacrificial doormat sides, lay down our weary burdens, and give a heaping spoonful of empathy to our first couple.

Oh, where to start? The back-breaking, mind-wrenching toil of our first couple is so ubiquitously evident every single day that it’s just nearly impossible to choose the entry site for efficient, surgical empathy.

Well, I’ll just pick something arbitrarily.

Did you selfish ingrates out there in the heartland know that the president had to spend his own birthday without the companionship of his wife and daughters? I’ll bet you didn’t.

Now, the whole dead-as-a-doornail “mainstream” press covered this wretched tale from sunup to sundown on Barack’s birthday, but since no real American bothers with the stateside Pravda any more, it’s unlikely that readers here even know about the president’s latest emotional torment. Oh, Barack did have Oprah and a couple of other Chicago no-accounts with him, but still, having to spend his birthday without his oh-so-close-knit-family with him must have been for Barack an insufferable cruelty. Perhaps the president could form a support group with soldiers in his war over there in Afghanistan and they could help each other come to grips with holiday-separation anxiety.

Well folks, how’s that for surgical empathy? I think I might be getting the hang of this Golden Rule thing.

So, upon what mission of mercy was our first lady shackled while Barack poured out his troubles to Oprah’s ample ear? Poor Michelle. She was in Marbella; that’s in Spain. Michelle and her entourage feasted on the delights only affordable to ultra-rich European oligarchs, while simultaneously keeping a promise to spend time with a dear friend who had lost her father this past year. Sigh. All during her days of luxurious beaching and sightseeing, Michelle wore sackcloth and ashes to publicly demonstrate her self-sacrificial act.

Though we selfish-ingrate taxpayers might have preferred her to beef up one of our own flailing local economies with an American “royal” visit, Michelle thought honoring her friend’s request to visit Spain would demonstrate far more meaningful empathy. And really now, could Michelle possibly have considered it more good-motherly to show her daughter a bit of our tacky little country when the crime-besotted, drug-drenched, gangster-ridden Marbella beckoned so enticingly educational a mere ocean and thousands of miles away? It only cost a few hundred thousand dollars of peasants’ wages, after all.

Oh dear, I know what you’re thinking, you dastardly, greedy small-business owners out there in America’s heartland. The lodging for all those people. Not just the first lady and her entourage, but all those security people who must accompany her everywhere she goes. Ca-ching. Ca-ching. All that food that could have been served by job-hungry American workers, bought from struggling American farmers, cooked by begging American chefs, charged by floundering American restaurants. Yes, yes, I understand your bewilderment at Michelle’s seemingly insensitive refusal to give you the same empathy she demands. I do. I really do understand. But this is Michelle’s moment to receive our empathy and you should be content knowing how much more blessed you are in the giver’s spot, just this once.

Anyway, Michelle’s entire Marie Antoinette episode in Spain ought to send us icky working-hard-at-it Americans the loud-and-clear message that the first lady is still not thoroughly proud of her country. We gave her husband the presidency. We’ve surely bought enough of Barack’s books now to have paid off those burdensome college loans. We’ve ogled and ooh-ed and ah-ed over everything from her biceps to his hoops-shooting prowess. We’ve plastered their pictures on everything solid in the entire country. But we’re still not there yet. And every single selfish-ingrate, taxpaying American citizen had better start revving up that first-couple empathy and pour it on so that maybe - if we’re really, really lucky - we can finally earn Michelle Obama’s pride in America.

Let’s see now. What other surgical empathy might we commoners summon for our downtrodden first couple?

Well, there’s the president’s golf game. Knowing golfers as I do, I doubt seriously whether Barack is ever truly satisfied with his score, but he’s certainly getting plenty of oh-so-grueling practice time. And, of course, back in April of ‘09, Barack met with Tiger in the Oval, sharing golf tidbits no doubt. Then, Barack and Tiger took time out from their back-breaking party schedules to do a photoshoot for Golf Digest. The glossy-mag cover heralded the twosome’s friendship with the title: “Ten Tips Obama Can Take from Tiger.”

That paragraph came off a bit snarky, I suppose. You’re wondering, dear reader, where’s my empathy? Be patient, please, I’m getting there. It was just downright horrible how the timing of that Golf Digest hit the newsstands. There, our poor, pitiful president was hunched down over a challenging putting green with Tiger’s formidable manhood dwarfing Barack in the shot, while at the very same time, our president’s mouthpieces were selling the line that Barack was hard at thoughtful dithering over his Afghanistan troop surge, and as if that weren’t enough for White House discomfort, this cover also hit while Tiger’s adulterous affairs - too numerous to count - were breaking wide open.

Even the most beleaguered citizen just had to feel the president’s pain that awful week.

Well, dear readers, my heart is so plum full of chest-bursting empathy for our first couple now that I could go on forever with this exercise.

However, I must bid empathy adieu. I’m headed to my voting booth to cast my run-off primary choice now. And the very last place on earth a self-respecting American ought to be indulging gratuitous empathy is the voting booth.

Just wondering, though, does Big Pharma make a pill that squelches one’s gag reflex and wakes one only on election days? If so, I would gladly invest the whole farm, plough and all, in such a wonder drug right about now.

I wrote this piece about Obama’s politics of collective redemption in February of 2008 (published in American Thinker).  I’m seeing it as more prescient by the day.

When I wrote this piece, I had just visited Barack Obama’s church home of 20 years in Chicago, Trinity United Church of Christ, then under the leadership of  Jeremiah Wright Jr.  When I went to Chicago seeking answers about the then little-known candidate for president, I understood that to know a man’s heart one needed to see where he sought redemption for his own soul.

Even though I had worshiped in a number of predominantly black churches in my life, nothing prepared me for the shock of Trinity.  There, I found Marxism cunningly wrapped in a cross and a pulpit with Biblical language as its decoration.  There, I bought several of the books written by James H. Cone, one of the predominant black liberation theology proponents in America and the mentor of Jeremiah Wright (by Wright’s own pronouncements).  Collective redemption through the state — the idea behind liberation theologies — ends, of course, in repressive regimes where free thought is considered a direct threat to the common good.

In other words, peace comes when all resistance to “liberation” through the all-powerful state stops.

Here, again, is the piece Obama’s Politics of Collective Redemption.  I wonder if any but a scant few beneficiaries of taxpayer largess are feeling the least bit “redeemed” yet.  Something to consider in this our summer of grave discontent.

————————–

“Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.” Pope Benedict XVI; Truth and Tolerance; p. 116.

A messianic fever grips a segment of the American populace and media. A great leader seems to them poised to redeem our collective sins and change nearly everything, bringing about a new era in which permanent solutions are found to age-old conditions.

Whenever I watch Barack Obama, listen to his eloquent but nonspecific oratory, and see the near-swooning young people who invariably follow him wherever he goes, I cannot help but think of the pied piper and wonder toward what destination he is marching our youth. pied piper of ChicagoObama is having this pied-piper effect not only on kids, but also on a large swath of Democrat and not a few independents and Republican voters, too.

Call me skeptical, but this whole Obama phenomenon seems downright eerie.

Over and over again, Obama invokes his double mantra: “It’s time for change!” and “Yes, we can!”

Singer Wil.i.am’s (Yes, that’s right; it’s Wil I Am.) YouTube “Yes, we can!” video has already had over 2 million hits, and it has a hypnotic quality reminiscent of eastern religious meditations. I urge every American still capable of thinking for himself to take a serious look at this video.

Then, consider these numbers on recent Google searches using only Obama’s name plus one other word:

* Obama + messianic 75,200
* Obama + savior 226,000
* Obama + prophet 312,000
* Obama + Christ 504,000
* Obama + change 4,540,000
A number of internet postings indicate that a great many see Obama in not only political terms, but also wrapped in the untarnished cloak of some vague spiritual-awakening.

It is quite tempting to assume that Barack Obama simply is harvesting the inevitable fruits of 35 years of dumbed-down, political indoctrination in the guise of education in this country. This is dangerous. The problem goes deeper, right into the human soul.

A lust for transformation is a common feature of revolutionaries, and when they succeed in grabbing power, the results usually are brutal. Less than a century ago, massive numbers of people fell for a different political messiah on the European continent, and they were products of an education system and cultural establishment widely regarded as a world leader.

That place was, of course, Germany. And the political messiah promoting “change” was Adolph Hitler.

Hitler’s slogan: “Alles muss anders sein!” (”Everything must be different!”)

Hitler used each of these phrases to describe his own political program:

“A declaration of war against the order of things which exist, against the state of things which exist, in a word, against the structure of the world which presently exists.”

“revolutionary creative will” which had “no fixed aim, no permanency, only eternal change.”

“an ethic of self-sacrifice”

“people’s community”

“public need before private greed”

“communally-minded social consciousness”
All of these expressions came from Adolph Hitler.

Saul Alinsky, one of Obama’s primary political mentors, espoused eerily similar societal admonitions in his book Reveille for Radicals; p. 133 and 105:

“A People’s Organization (later changed to “community organization”) is dedicated to an eternal war. It is a war against poverty, misery, delinquency, disease, injustice, hopelessness, despair, and unhappiness.”
and

“A People’s Organization is not a philanthropic plaything or a social service’s ameliorative gesture. It is a deep, hard-driving force, striking and cutting at the very roots of all the evils which beset the people…it thinks and acts in terms of social surgery and not cosmetic cover-ups.”
and

“There is hope, and life is worth living. There may not be a light at the end of the trail but they (the masses) have a light in their hands, a light they made themselves, and they know that not only will they themselves have to work out their own destiny but that they themselves can.”*
Obama says, “Yes we can!” change…

Exactly what should change and how is unclear. Everything?

Time for Tough Questions and Straight Answers

More than four months ago, when a reporter noticed that Obama was no longer wearing an American flag lapel pin, and asked if he were making a fashion statement, this was part of Obama’s reply:

“Instead,” (of wearing the pin) he said, “I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism.”

Well, here we are a week after Super Tuesday and it seems we are still waiting for Obama to expound upon the “what” and the “how” of this ethereal “change” mantra, to spell out his commitment to “patriotism.”

Little has been made in the mainstream press of the brand of black liberation theology preached by Obama’s pastor and spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., who holds a master’s degree on world religions with a focus on Islam, and who has traveled to Middle Eastern countries in the company of Louis Farrakhan. Rev. Wright created and presides over the Center for African Biblical studies, whose mission is African-centered Bible studies:

“We are an African people, and we remain true to our native land, the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”
Several forms of liberation theology sprouted during the 20th century, all espousing a third way between godless communism and the socialist utopian dream. All are predicated upon an acceptance that sin is not individual, but collective, and that sin cannot be overcome through religious conversion, but only by a people’s struggle against all injustice. Congregations of various faiths and denominations have been used as platforms for collective statist approaches to human redemption. The social gospel espoused by religious-left churches in the U.S. is another form of liberation theology, which takes a political route to redemption for man’s collective soul.

According to liberation theologies, God does not save men. Man saves himself through a political process of absolute social justice.

Writing in 2004, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict had this to say about liberation theology in his book, Truth and Tolerance (p. 116):

“…this struggle (against all injustice), it was said, would have to be a political struggle, because the structures (of oppression) were strengthened and maintained by politics. Thus redemption became a political process, for which Marxist philosophy offered the essential directions. It became a task that men themselves could — indeed had to — take in hand and became, at the same time, the object of quite practical hopes; faith was changed from ‘theory’ into practice, into concrete redeeming action in the liberation process.” (emphases mine)
Consider these statements from Obama’s campaign website, contained in his video invitation for all to “join us in changing the Country.”

“We believe in what this Country can be.”

“In the face of war, we believe there can be peace.”

“In the face of despair, we believe there can be hope.”

“…America can be one people reaching for what’s possible.”
Obama indeed seems to be offering a people’s government solution to all human problems. He is, after all, running for President of the United States, not for a pulpit. Substituting the state for God as provider has been the inherent common thread in all Marxist regimes.

And in this seemingly redemptive offering, Obama may be promising what only God can actually deliver, in the form of yet another, more eloquent, version of the same old utopian dream that started with Rousseau and Marx.

Can man successfully redeem himself through collective transformation and liberation?

Pope Benedict says “No” rather emphatically, in Truth and Tolerance. Writing of the fall of the Soviet Union:

“…where the Marxist ideology of liberation had been consistently applied, a total lack of freedom had developed, whose horrors were now laid bare before the eyes of the entire world. Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.”
Coincidentally, Saul Alinsky began his book Rules for Radicals:

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”
Attempting to discern true meaning from Obama’s speeches gives one the feeling of having been trapped in a sort of verbal quicksand. Hair-pulling levels of frustration await any effort to find any specific meaning. A sensation of lethargic sinking into an abyss of abstract gibberish awaits the mind looking for specifics..

Obama’s public statements, his speeches, even his “present” votes in the Illinois legislature leave one dangerously unsure of his true intentions.

Whatever Obama’s concrete plans are, they ought to aligned with his political mentor, Saul Alinsky, and his spiritual mentor and liberation theology specialist, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

In the absence of any genuine explanations from candidate Obama himself, the change of which he speaks reasonably may be inferred to be quite antithetical to anything even remotely resembling American patriotism.

And that is a legitimate concern for every American voter.

Perhaps never before in American history have two individuals so captured the hearts, minds and imaginations of such a wide proportion of the citizenry as have Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. Both are charismatic, charming in their own ways, in glaring stand-above-the-crowd fashion. Both have written best-selling autobiographies, which have mesmerized large swaths of the American public.

There, however, the similarities end.

One has been adored by the leftist-activist media brigade. The other has been veritably loathed.

One represents academic elitism. The other comes from standard state university fare.

One uses a teleprompter for every spoken word, often flailing, repeating sentences due to electronic glitches and mispronouncing even those words that seem simple to the average American. The other uses a few broad-topic scribbles on her hand for prompts.

One is the darling of Hollywood; the other is the butt of crass celebrity jokes.

Pundits see this pair in purely political dimension of left vs. right.

What we have here, however, is far, far more fundamental than a left vs. right spectacle, performed by two adroit representatives.

It’s far more meaty than the little tit for tats among the leftist literati and their adversaries, the conservative commoners.

No, what we have here are two philosophies fighting to the death knell for the soul of America, each represented by one phenomenal public figure.

Barack Obama, in keeping with international socialists throughout the last century, has proclaimed himself loudly-and-clearly a “citizen of the world.” He conducted his entire campaign as a lecture to greedy, over-consuming Americans on the necessity of propping up the lagging third world and the inherent goodness of his redistributive plans for government.

That this message was apparently lost by mainstream American voters in the haze of media sycophancy, is a sad commentary on both our presumed independent press and the attention span of voters. Nevertheless, Barack Obama’s message was clear to sentient observers from the start of his campaign.

Whether he was explaining the necessity for putting the coal business out of business for the good of global climate goals or telling people they couldn’t just drive their SUVs anywhere they wanted to go and expect the people in the rest of the world to just go along, he made his message clear. America is the problem to the world, not the solution. He hammered away consistently at his intention to divvy up the American “pie” in international-socialist fashion, even while disingenuously peppering his talk with Reaganite calls for lowering taxes on the middle-class.

Even if folks missed some of his intentions, it should have been clear to all but the proverbial ostriches among us that Obama was declaring himself a citizen of the world when he actually made his “citizen-of-the-world” speech in Berlin. Thronged by ogling, drooling, chanting Europeans on a celebrity campaign tour, Barack Obama took great pains to paint himself as post-American.

And his two years in the presidency has demonstrated beyond doubt that Barack Obama is indeed anything but an all-American president. From his obsequious bowing, his kumbayah-to-the-world speech at the UN and his magnanimous granting of American civil rights to foreign terrorists, he has demonstrated again and again that America is nothing to him but a member state of the morally superior global community.

Which brings us to Sarah Palin, his arch-foe in the public psyche.

No, Mrs. Palin holds no public office. She wields no genuine power in terms of armies or bureaucracies. She is merely a private citizen.

But Sarah Palin has arisen from the ashes of electoral defeat as the embodiment of archetypal American values, beliefs, hopes and dreams.

At present, with a “post-American” president at the helm, Sarah Palin carries the torch of liberty and American exceptionalism in the palm of her lovely hand. She is the surviving embodiment of the spirit of 1776 and the Reagan reformation.

She is at once the American phoenix and the shining city on the hill, captured in the imaginations of a people still yearning to be free and determined to strive for greatness, even if the rest of the world prefers to drown in mediocrity, corruption and defeatist socialist uniformity.

While it is easy to see Barack Obama and Sarah Palin as nothing but political adversaries in a Nation grown weary with partisanship, that explanation defies the reality we see exhibited in the passions of their respective followers.

Whichever side one is on, the stakes are clear. Nothing less than the soul of America is on the line.

Will we give up forever on the American dream and become nothing more than footnotes in the annals of international socialism?

Or will we see an American reformation that reestablishes individual liberty and ingenuity as moral imperatives worth fighting for and preserving for our progeny?

The stakes could not be higher. And the archetypes, Palin and Obama, could not be clearer.

These two torch-bearers define an era in which fence-sitting is beyond the bounds of reason.

When two opposing worldviews collide, polarity is inevitable.

And only one side can prevail.

Occasionally — not often, mind you — but occasionally, I see a video that is far and above more effective than a book, or a dozen articles.  Yes, I admit it, I am a lover of the written word.  Always liked the book better than the Hollywood version.  Always preferred the solitude aspects of both reading and writing to more visual media.

But when I see a video like this one, I am reminded of the one-picture-worth-a-thousand-words saying.  And sometimes it really fits.  This video should go viral and be played by Americans every day from now until November.  We need to see a landslide throw-the-bums-out, wave election like we’ve never seen in a congressional election.  This is a pivotal moment and this November may well be our last chance to save our Republic from the inevitable destruction that will occur if the Democrats are not STOPPED now.

Watch it and REMEMBER!