A Window Into The Inner Marx

Obama's paradigm is fundamentally marxian. He views economics along with the greater and more even distribution of social programs as being the solutions to the world's problems, even with radical Islamist organizations and nations. It is a fundamentally flawed and dangerous paradigm.






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When Obama made his off the record "guns and religion" are opiates of the masses remarks at a private meeting in San Francisco several weeks ago, he reasoned that if only there were more economic opportunities, people would not cling to their religious values or their constitutional rights. He repeated that thought a few days later in a debate. As it turns out, that is the basic paradigm through which he views the world - including apparently Iran and radical Islamists. It is truly a marxian world view - and because it is fundamentally flawed, it is a dangerous one indeed.

There are many aspects to Marx's philosophy, all of which in essence derive from or answer to the basic premises Marx states in the Communist Manifesto, that all religion is false, that Western civilization is oppressive, and that all events can be viewed through the paradigm of struggles between classes, the oppressed and the oppressor. Marx of course saw the resolution to societal ills within the strata of economics - i.e., the redistribution of wealth. It is a broken clock paradigm of history, society and economics. Its accurate enough to be right two times a day, yet too simplistic and narrow to be right during all of the rest of the time.

Obama's marxian view of how "rural" Americans view religion and their constitutional rights - that they will fade given enough economic opportunity - puts him out of touch with the typical American and suggests that he will not lead America in a direction that most would want to follow. But where Obama's views become dangerous are when applied to the outside world and particularly when applied to the enemies of America. For example, this from David Brooks writing in the NYT:

Hezbollah is one of the world’s most radical terrorist organizations. Over the last week or so, it has staged an armed assault on the democratic government of Lebanon.

Barack Obama issued a statement in response. He called on “all those who have influence with Hezbollah” to “press them to stand down.” Then he declared, “It’s time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus that focuses on electoral reform, an end to the current corrupt patronage system, and the development of the economy that provides for a fair distribution of services, opportunities and employment.”

That sentence has the whiff of what President Bush described yesterday as appeasement. Is Obama naïve enough to think that an extremist ideological organization like Hezbollah can be mollified with a less corrupt patronage system and some electoral reform? Does he really believe that Hezbollah is a normal social welfare agency seeking more government services for its followers? Does Obama believe that even the most intractable enemies can be pacified with diplomacy? What “Lebanese consensus” can Hezbollah possibly be a part of?

If Obama believes all this, he’s not just a Jimmy Carter-style liberal. He’s off in Noam Chomskyland.

That didn’t strike me as right, so I spoke with Obama Tuesday to ask him what he meant by all this.

Right off the bat he reaffirmed that Hezbollah is “not a legitimate political party.” Instead, “It’s a destabilizing organization by any common-sense standard. This wouldn’t happen without the support of Iran and Syria.”

I asked him what he meant with all this emphasis on electoral and patronage reform. He said the U.S. should help the Lebanese government deliver better services to the Shiites “to peel support away from Hezbollah” and encourage the local populace to “view them as an oppressive force.” The U.S. should “find a mechanism whereby the disaffected have an effective outlet for their grievances, which assures them they are getting social services.”

The U.S. needs a foreign policy that “looks at the root causes of problems and dangers.” Obama compared Hezbollah to Hamas. Both need to be compelled to understand that “they’re going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims.” He knows these movements aren’t going away anytime soon (“Those missiles aren’t going to dissolve”), but “if they decide to shift, we’re going to recognize that. That’s an evolution that should be recognized.”

This is very much a Marxian viewpoint, seeing economics at the heart of intractactable problems involving religion and political power that deal only tangentially, if at all, with economic problems. Indeed, your average terrorist is more likely to be educated and economically well off than poor and in need of social services. Look at what Hamas did when Israel turned over a series of green houses that could have been employed by Palestinians to produce a significant amount of agriculture. Rather then use them, the Palestinians destroyed them. Because Obama mispercieves the problem, the choices he will make cannot effect a solution and, indeed, may well worsen the problems. Further, one wonders just what Obama views as the "legitimate claims" of Hezbollah or Hamas? I cannot think of one, but then again, I do not view the world through a marxist paradigm.

To continue from the article:

“The debate we’re going to be having with John McCain is how do we understand the blend of military action to diplomatic action that we are going to undertake,” he said. “I constantly reject this notion that any hint of strategies involving diplomacy are somehow soft or indicate surrender or means that you are not going to crack down on terrorism. Those are the terms of debate that have led to blunder after blunder.” . . .

I asked him if negotiating with a theocratic/ideological power like Iran is different from negotiating with a nation that’s primarily pursuing material interests. He acknowledged that “If your opponents are looking for your destruction it’s hard to sit across the table from them,” but, he continued: “There are rarely purely ideological movements out there. We can encourage actors to think in practical and not ideological terms. We can strengthen those elements that are making practical calculations.” . . .

Obama is projecting his beliefs and his marxian paradigm onto Iran. Iran is a theocracy and at the heart of their medieval world view is complete rejection of American culture. There is a reason Khomeini named America the Great Satan. There is a reason, despite numerous overtures from America over the past three decades, Iran has repeatedly rejected any attempt to normalize relations with the U.S. And the EU3 has spent the last three years offering carrot after carrot to Iran in order to get them to stop their march towards a nuclear weapon, even as Obama voted against every bill that he thought might allow the President to threaten use of forces against Iran. There is nothing in the theocracy's history to suggest that they will respond to anything other than the threat or use of force. Yet those will not enter into Obama's utopian marxist paradigm.

Obama was a tabula rosa at the start of the campaign. Today, that slate has been filled in. Just about everything about Obama's history conflicts in utter discordance with the public persona he has painted in order to run for President. And it is fairly clear that Obama is a socialist who views the world through a marxist paradigm. That makes him a dangerous and delusional man indeed.