Despite the fear of many libertarians and right wing pundits, Obama in fact has no Marxist stance, and draws many of his ideas from former American presidents like Lincoln, Jefferson and FDR.
To berate Obama for having read Marx, and for having been interested in socialistic ideas is foolish : Many young people go through such a phase in college, especially if one tends toward liberalism. That we are in economic crisis now demands some form of govermnet intervention, and charges of Marxism are so much whining and howling from those who simply cannot stand to see the GOP in decline.
Classical enlightenment values are akin to all of which Obama speaks. There is no facist tone , either in his ideology or in his sensibilities. His sentiments are often expressed in the innocuous mode of the poet and the dreamer. He is also reality-based in his actions: Reverting the tax-structure to pre-Bush Administration days can scarcely be called a clarion call to the red tides of communism. We are, after all, in a democracy, with free elections every four years, and checks and balances within our government. Where does this paranoia issue from? A secret wish on the part of the bored? That they will have something big to fight, some impeccable enemy against which all may unite with zeal?
The facts are simple: The GOP ran us off the road and into a ditch. A free and fair election brought us a progressive pragmatist, which is about as American an ideal one can find. Obama is not ending Capitalism. He is not in the mode of a dictator. This is not 1930s Germany, with their problems and covert lunacies. Why does stupidity and its irrational side effect, bigotry, continue to receive a fair hearing when it is so blatantly ill-informed?
I wager that now that Obama has not been revealed to be a radical Muslim and in love embrace with the terrorists, the Marxist angle is all that remains with which to keep stirring the witches brew, lest we die
en masse of boredom. During the primaries, writer Mark C, Eades made a beautiful case for comparing Barack Obama to Jefferson, who was known as the scholarly president, and on par with "Renaissance Men" of the Enlightenment, such as Voltaire and Locke. Is this what the dimwits are really mistrusting? In their howls of "Marxist! Dictator!" do hidden strands of the vulgar and the stupid being overtaken by intellectual fortitude and refinement lie in subterfuge, like so much dank and cancerous material which chokes off their ability to reason, or simply to shut up? Obama's oratory skills are amazing: His rhetorical surges simply stunning. Lincolnesque? I should say so. Who pictures Marx when our president thunders in the index? He is a return to classical liberalism as set forth by the scholars of the Enlightenment and of Kantian universalism . He is an equity freedom fighter, with principles stemming from deontological understanding.
