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SyndicateSaul, Barack, and Me, Part I
By Robert Ringer - Saturday, December 12, 2009
By Robert Ringer
Most readers have probably not noticed it, but in all the articles I’ve written about BHO, I have never referred to him as “President Obama” except when quoting someone else. As you might have assumed, this has not been by accident.
I’ll never forget the time I was standing in line at a bookstore, chatting with someone about BHO. A stranger standing a couple of people away from me overheard my comments and abruptly admonished me, “Whether you like it or not, he’s our president.”
To which I responded, “He may be your president, but he’s not mine. That was the end of any thought I may have had about conceding and accepting the fact that BHO had been elected to the highest office in the land. The reason I have never seen BHO as the president of the United States is because he swore to uphold the Constitution, but from the day he took an oath to that effect, he immediately began violating it.
I concede that all of our presidents have violated the Constitution, but even the worst of them have at least made a gratuitous attempt to honor it to some degree. BHO’s actions make it clear that he does not even acknowledge its existence.
But enough of my intransigence. My humble objective is to get a handle on what makes this self-defensive, arrogant young socialist so angry and so anxious to take away the rights of American citizens. Call it my personal contribution to the noble cause of preventing him from making good on his promise to fundamentally transform America.
BHO’s actions have been deceitful to such an extreme that some have gone so far as to suggest that he is the Antichrist. Others stop short of that label, but see him as the epitome of evil.
Well, this may surprise you, but I don’t see Chairman Obama as evil. I really don’t. After a good deal of study and observation, my take on him is that he is a man without a soul. And, as a soulless individual, his actions are not hampered by trivial moral considerations.
If you read his autobiographies (two in print before he even made it to the White House!), along with some of the other books written about him, you see a very troubled young man. I, for one, have a great deal of compassion for anyone who has experienced a difficult childhood.
And, clearly, Obama had a dysfunctional life growing up — a white Marxist mother, a black African Muslim father who was a drunk and a philanderer, then, of all things, an Indonesian Muslim stepfather. And, of course, there were the years he spent in a Wahabbi Muslim school in Indonesia (Wahabbi schools being most famous for teaching students hatred for Western countries).
Given all this, it’s not hard to understand why a youngster would become vulnerable to a “down–with-the-rich” proselytizer. And in BHO’s life, it seems clear that that proselytizer came in the form of American communist Frank Marshall Davis, whom he refers to in his memoirs simply as “Frank.”
Ironically, BHO attended Punahou High School in Honolulu, which is the most upper-crust school in Hawaii. Like so many other things about BHO’s life, where he got the money to attend such an expensive school, not to mention Columbia and Harvard, has never been revealed.
In this series of articles, I’m going to try to get inside BHO’s head by dissecting the man and the book that perhaps had more influence on his anti-capitalist, anti-American attitude than anyone or anything else in his life. I’m talking, of course, about the infamous Saul Alinsky, founder of modern community organizing, and his equally infamous book, Rules for Radicals.
Alinksy, who died in 1972, was the son of Russian immigrants. He grew up in Chicago and was a street-smart kid whose early community organizing efforts were focused on the downtrodden Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago (made famous years earlier by Upton Sinclair in his classic novel The Jungle).
Because I always keep in mind that it is critically important to know your enemies, I recently reread Rules for Radicals, and was surprised by how certain parts of it struck me. For example, would you believe that there was much about Saul Alinsky that I actually liked? He was a fascinating character with a great sense of humor.
In fact, Alinksy was a witty, congenial, intellectual man with whom I probably would have enjoyed having lunch once a month. As I reread Rules for Radicals, I pictured what it would have been like to have engaged in friendly philosophical debates with my fantasy friend at the other end of the political spectrum.
I think my attitude toward him would have been, “Saul, I love ya, pal, but I feel obliged to tell you that you’re full of crap.” And with that, we’d have another friendly debate over human nature, philosophy, politics, and life. Alinksy was no Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers. He was a serious thinker.
In Part II of this article, I’ll tell you some of the things in the early part of Rules for Radicals that make me believe that I would have liked Saul Alinsky. Before concluding that I’ve lost my mind, be sure to read what I have to say.
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ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
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5 Responses to “Saul, Barack, and Me, Part I”
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Robert,
B.H.O.’s beliefs and actions have everything to do with basic human aberrant psychology and the subjective emotional filtering processes that are programmed into the human brain during early childhood. The fact that American’s had really no truly viable candidate choices in the last election, and during such a serious crisis period in our history, illustrates the level of true decline that this nation has experienced in the last few presidential elections. McCain or Obama? It was comparable to a heads I win, tails you lose scenario for the American people. We all lost before the last Presidential election was ever decided. The fact that G.W.B. strayed so far from the standard party values and platform and in doing so alienated so many voters, contributed greatly to the election of B.H.O. . There have been many destructive past historical figures, to their own nations and the world, who could easily illustrate the dysfunctional thinking processes exhibited in adulthood that were, in hindsight, traceable to abusive, unstable, and unloving childhoods.
Does this mean that those of us who clearly recognize the extreme danger we are all in under the thumb of these powerful liberty hating political figures, should have sympathy and compassion for their actions solely because they were psychologically damaged in early childhood through no fault of their own, yet are under the influence of a malfunctioning brain that seeks to carry out a self gratifying neurotic agenda (supported by other seriously neurotic and even psychotic politicians)? Absolutely not as we have an obligation to ourselves, those who have sacrificed for our liberty in the past, and to our children to fight the good fight.
When in danger, ostriches are not spared due to the fact that they hide their heads in the sand. They get eaten by predators all the same.
A person stepping back from the conservative/liberal blind hypnotic sidelines cheering has to ask the question of how so many Americans can continue to be played and fooled by what seems to be a never ending stream of political demagogues, liars, manipulators, and basically psychologically unbalanced characters?
My analysis is that these smarmy and deceptive politicians DO in fact represent us and who we have moralistically and psychologically become.
We can no longer see the faults in those we elect to represent us, due to the fact that those same faults and flaws have become the norm in a growing majority of American voters.
The mantra of “Don’t be judgmental!” has been so implanted into the American psyche, that Americans will embrace and actually forgive transgressions and flaws exhibited by those we have elected as our representatives, because to point the finger at these corrupt and self serving politicians, and state that their actions and thinking processes are wrong, would cause the need for individual self reflection and then remedial correction towards a more clearly disciplined and defined system of values for each individual in our society.
We, as a society and nation, are not ready nor willing to do that. We are a nation in total denial of the depravity of what we have allowed ourselves to become.
This hard reality is easily denied as there is societal and cultural group support for the subjective perceptions and mass denial in the recognition and admittance of the downward slide we find ourselves in.
Can any of our leaders be considered the Antichrist or perhaps just plain evil? It’s more likely that we’re just the repeating pattern of history where one nation becomes affluent, powerful, and arrogant, and then loses it’s way, tossing aside the values that helped that nation achieve hegemony, due to the seductive and insidious influences of too much useless leisure, too much false entitlement beliefs, and too little honest and objective self reflection which would restore a stronger sense of self discipline and commitment to more long term personal and national goals.
“We have met the enemy, and he is us” (Walt Kelly)
Robert, it’s not surprising that you could like and even enjoy someone who’s radically different and even antithetical to your own belief system.
Ted Bundy was a charming, good looking, and likable serial killer. When tried, he represented himself, and by all accounts did a good job.
But here’s the kicker. The judge who sentenced him to death said, “. . .You’re a bright young man. You’d have made a good lawyer, and I would have loved to have you practice in front of me, . . .”
The driving force of men like Alinsky is the same force that brought Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and other despots to murder millions of their own people, because they didn’t agree with them or threatened them in any way.
Some of them, before they had real power, might have been wonderful luncheon partners too.
Respectfully,
Tom Justin
Robert: You reference to BHO as a “Socialist” could be a bit stronger – such as “Communist.” My take (not all original observations) on some presidential “firsts,” is as follows…
First Socialist Demagogic President: Franklin D. Roosevelt
First Anti-American Victory Wartime President: Harry S. Truman
First “With A Little Help From My Friends In Illinois and Texas” fraudulently elected President: John F. Kennedy
First “The Great Frontier can include a Viet Nam quagmire” President: Lyndon Baines Johnson
First “In Over His Head Politically Correct Peanut Farmer” President: Jimmy Carter
First HarMONICA-playing Black President: Bill Clinton
First “Let’s Just Have Tea and Cookies In The Rose Garden With Our Sworn Mortal Enemies” President: Barack Insein Obama
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Hi Robert,
I need clarification about something you wrote in your latest article:
“And, clearly, Obama had a dysfunctional life growing up — a white Marxist mother, a black African Muslim father who was a drunk and a philanderer, then, of all things, an Indonesian Muslim stepfather”
Why do you say “of all things, an Indonesian Muslim stepfather”? Why “of all things”?
Thanks.
Andy Iskandar
I suppose that BHO took the oath of office with the erroneous assumption that he was keeping the constitution-just as his followers claim to believe. Imagine my own confusion upon my military enlistment oath to protect the constitution while obeying him as commander in chief.
One wonders about the morality of being in the military now days period. Yet most of us know what would happen if we did not have a military. The constitution would soon be moot.
I believe everyone has a soul. Liberalism is all about humanism and about denial and avoidance of one’s soul. In fact it is all about denial of *any* premise at all-the soul being the premise and epitome of individualism, the constitution and especially the Declaration of Independence being the premise of our country, choice to be responsible and productive as the premise to survival success and penalty to criminal perpetrators *only* being the premise to financing/administering justice.
The Bible describes a fool’s soul-less practice to be “Building a house on sand”. The common sense expressed in the Bible continues to amaze me.