Townhall | Thomas Sowell | Mar. 26, 2008
Barack Obama’s own account of his life shows that he consciously sought out people on the far left fringe. In college, “I chose my friends carefully,” he said in his first book, “Dreams From My Father.”
These friends included “Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets” — in Obama’s own words — as well as the “more politically active black students.” He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman underground, who endorsed him when he ran for state senator.
Obama didn’t just happen to encounter Jeremiah Wright, who just happened to say some way out things. Jeremiah Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Barack Obama began seeking out in college — members of the left, anti-American counter-culture.
In Shelby Steele’s brilliantly insightful book about Barack Obama — “A Bound Man” — it is painfully clear that Obama was one of those people seeking a racial identity that he had never really experienced in growing up in a white world. He was trying to become a convert to blackness, as it were — and, like many converts, he went overboard.
Nor has Obama changed in recent years. His voting record in the U.S. Senate is the furthest left of any Senator. There is a remarkable consistency in what Barack Obama has done over the years, despite inconsistencies in what he says.
The irony is that Obama’s sudden rise politically to the level of being the leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination has required him to project an entirely different persona, that of a post-racial leader who can heal divisiveness and bring us all together.
The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change, and entranced both white and black Democrats, is a tribute to the man’s talent and a warning about his reliability.
There is no evidence that Obama ever sought to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. He reached out from the left to the far left. That’s bringing us all together?
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No one thinks and writes with as much clarity as Sowell.
AMEN! Imagine a man like Sowell running for President and leading this country, instead of the political hacks and statists we have to endure. America would witness a renaissance the likes of which we haven’t seen since Reagan was president.
Chris, such utopianism on your part. I don’t think you yet realize that it is impossible for a non-statist to be nominated President, let alone get elected. EVERYBODY knows that our problems are SO big (however one defines ‘problems’) that only the government can address them.
Not one nationally viable politician seriiously questions that wisdom. But seriously, if one does not believe government is the solution, why even run? Shoot, even your statement indicates a bit of the same delusion.
The power of the U.S. government is immense, power will always be exercised by those who have it.
He surely choosed his friends – as long as they are there for him to become president, it doesn’t matter who they are or from where they are coming. Interesting that everyone says he is smart, he is brilliant – exactly what people should be afraid of: he makes all the judgements very carefully and he knows what he is doing.