BARACK OBAMA IS NO PATRIOT[1]
“Patriot—A person who loves, and loyally
or zealously supports, his own country.”[2]
Throughout his presidential election campaign Barack Obama has, one way or another, repeatedly professed that he is a patriot.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Obama’s claim is a blatant, provable lie. It is a fraud on the American people—and an insult to the countless true patriots who, for over two hundred years, have loved and loyally and zealously supported the United States of America.
Indeed, the facts proving Obama’s lack of patriotism are overwhelming.
1. Relationship with, and support for, domestic terrorists
By now, most Americans have heard of Bill Ayers, the rabidly anti-American domestic terrorist bomber of the Capitol and Pentagon and conspirator in murder. Despite the attempted softening whitewashes by the mainstream media, there is no longer any doubt whom Ayers is, what he believes, and what he has done in an effort to destroy America.
Nor is there any doubt that Ayers introduced Obama to Chicago politics, mentored the budding politician, supported him financially and otherwise, and put him nominally in charge of doling out millions to Left and far-Left organizations.
Andrew C. McCarthy has reported that Ayers and Obama funded a “Maoist associate of Ayers who . . . used to host a ‘social justice’ blog on Obama’s campaign website. With Obama heading the board of directors that approved expenditures and Ayers, the mastermind running its operational arm, hundreds of thousands of . . . [Annenberg] dollars poured into the ‘Small Schools Workshop’ — a project begun by Ayers and run by [the Maoist] to spur the revolution from the ground up.”
McCarthy added that “[p]recisely because they shared the same views, Obama and Ayers also worked comfortably together on the board of the Woods Fund. There, they doled out thousands of dollars to Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church to promote its Marxist ‘black liberation theology.’ Moreover, they underwrote the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by Rashid Khalidi, a top apologist for Yasser Arafat. As National Review’s David Pryce-Jones notes, Khalidi once directed WAFA, the terrorist PLO’s news agency. Then, like Ayers, he repackaged himself as an academic who rails at American policy. The AAAN, which supports driver’s licenses and public welfare benefits for illegal aliens, holds that the establishment of Israel was an illegitimate ‘catastrophe’.”
The Ayers-Obama largesse that found its way to Khalidi was not limited to money. According to McCarthy, “[t]hey also gave glowing testimonials at a farewell dinner when Khalidi left the University of Chicago for Columbia’s greener pastures.”
One of the ways Obama repaid Ayers’s patronage concerned the terrorist’s published diatribe against the United States. McCarthy has written of “Obama’s breathless endorsement of Ayers’s 1997 Leftist polemic on the criminal-justice system, A Kind and Just Parent? As Stanley Kurtz has recounted, Ayers’s book is a radical indictment of American society: We, not the criminals, are responsible for the violent crime that plagues our cities; even the most vicious juvenile offenders should not be tried as adults; prisons should eventually be replaced by home detention; American justice is comparable to South Africa under Apartheid. Obama’s reaction? He described the book as “a searing and timely account” — a take even the Times concedes was a ‘rave review’.”
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should have declined any association with, and support from, rabidly anti-American unrepentant domestic terrorist bomber Bill Ayers, should have written not a “rave review” of his Marxist tract but rather a denunciation of it, and instead should have expressly and unequivocally denounced Ayers for the dangerous terrorist he is. Barack Obama has done none of these things!
See, for example:
2. Relationship with racists and anti-Semites
Jeremiah A. Wright
Chicago black church Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright is a rabid, racist, anti-white, anti-Semitic, black-separatist—and was Obama’s pastor for some two decades. Wright’s sermons and writing demonized Jews and defamed the United States of America. Yet, for perhaps one-thousand Sundays-after-Sundays over the course of some two decades Obama sat attentively, passively and silently and listened to Wright spew racial and religious hatred.
On the personal side of the Wright-Obama relationship, Wright performed the Obamas’ marriage ceremony, baptized their two children, and was the candidate’s self-described “spiritual advisor.”
In arguing that Obama is not a patriot it is not invoking “guilt by association” to note that Wright has repeatedly lionized Nation of Islam’s anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan (see below) because Obama knew of the Wright-Farrakhan relationship, and yet continued, even grew, his relationship with the pastor.
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should renounce and denounce pastor/spiritual advisor Jeremiah A. Wright. Barack Obama has not!
See, for example:
Louis Farrakhan
The leader of the Nation of Islam is among the worst anti-Semites in America. Merely to utter his name is to be reminded of his tirades of anti-Jewish filth. After Farrakhan’s junket to Libya accompanied by Wright, the “minister” continued to be an apologist for its terrorist regime.
Nothing more need be said about Farrakhan. His name is synonymous with hatred for Jews generally and for the State of Israel in particular.
Farrakhan has endorsed Barack Obama’s bid to be President of the United States.
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should renounce and denounce Louis Farrakhan for the anti-Semite he is, and should expressly and unequivocally reject Farrakhan’s endorsement of his candidacy. Barack Obama has done neither!
See, for example:
Michael Pfleger
The Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Chicago Roman Catholic priest, has been labeled “the white Jeremiah A. Wright.” He defends Farrakhan, he supports jihad, he denigrates Jews, he disdains whites, he abhors the existence of Israel. In short, Pfleger is yet another anti-American anti-Semite.
And Pfleger is a long-time supporter, and current endorser, of Obama’s candidacy for the presidency.
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should renounce and denounce Michael Pfleger for the anti-Semite he is, and should expressly and unequivocally reject Pfleger’s endorsement of his candidacy. Barack Obama has done neither!
See for example:
3. Relationships with, and influence by, Communists and radicals
Just as Obama’s adulthood has been infested with relationships with domestic terrorists (e.g., Ayers) and Jew- and America-hating racists and anti-Semites (e.g., Wright, Farrakhan, Pfleger), for virtually his entire life he has been mentored and surrounded by Communists and radicals. Indeed, there have been so many such relationships, that an entire book could be devoted to this one subject. For the moment, however, the following five sketches will have to suffice.
Frank Marshall Davis
Frank Marshall Davis was a black writer who befriended Obama in Hawaii, and became one of the young man’s mentors.
Davis was a Communist, a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America, and was identified as such in the 1951 Report of the Commission on Subversive Activities of the Hawaii Legislature.
In addition, Congressional committees investigating Communist penetration of United States institutions named Davis as being a member of various Communist-front organizations.
Saul Alinsky
Alinsky, a Left-wing radical of the first order, was a powerful force in the shaping of the person Obama was to become, and the former’s influence profoundly influences the candidate today even from the grave.
According to a somewhat sanitized biography of Alinsky in the Internet resource Wikipedia, “Alinsky formed the Industrial Areas Foundation in 1940. * * * Since its formation, hundreds of professional community and labor organizers and thousands of community and labor leaders have attended its workshops. Fred Ross, who worked for Alinsky, was the principal mentor for Cesar Chavez . . . * * * Alinsky's teachings influenced Barack Obama in his early career as a community organizer on the far South Side of Chicago. Working for [the] Developing Communities Project, Obama learned and taught Alinsky's methods for community organizing. * * * Alinsky is often credited with laying the foundation for the grassroots political organizing that dominated the 1960s. Later in his life he encouraged stockholders in public corporations to lend their votes to ‘proxies’, who would vote at annual stockholders meetings in favor of social justice. While his grassroots style took hold in American activism, his call to stockholders to share their power with disenfranchised working poor only began to take hold in U.S. progressive (social liberalism) circles in the 1990s, when shareholder actions were organized against American corporations.”
In his best known book, Rules for Radicals Alinsky wrote that: “. . . the community organizer . . . [e.g., Barack Obama] must first rub raw the resentments of the people; fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression.”
The Chicago New Party
The New Party was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America. Its primary purpose was to promulgate and promote socialist principles by propagandizing and electing party-supported candidates in local elections.
Obama was a member.
Mazen Asbahi
Mazen Asbahi is a Chicago lawyer. Last July the Obama campaign appointed him volunteer national coordinator for “Muslim affairs”; his job was outreach to Muslims and Muslim organizations. He was also supposed to coordinate “Arab-American” matters.
All it took for Mr. Asbahi to resign from the Obama campaign was an inquiry from The Wall Street Journal about his background. Most likely, Asbahi resigned and never answered any questions about his background because of his connection with a dubious Islamic “investment fund” and various other questionable Islamic groups and Muslim fundamentalists.
Jodie Evans/”Code Pink”
Among the most reprehensible individuals and organizations that inhabit the far Left today most notable is Jodie Evans and her “Code Pink” organization.
It would be gross understatement to say that they hate America, wish for its defeat in the world, lionize our terrorist enemies, and support them with money, propaganda and raucous and violent demonstrations.
Jodie Evans is a money “bundler” for Obama and has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his quest for the presidency.
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should not have been mentored by a member of the Communist Party of the United States.
Barack Obama was!
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should not have been profoundly influenced in the major/social principles of his life by a rabble-rousing domestic guerilla warfare socialist.
Barack Obama was!
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should not have been a member of a fringe socialist party.
Barack Obama was!
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should not have appointed to a responsible position in his campaign a man who refused to answer embarrassing questions about his connection to a dubious Islamic “investment fund” and various other questionable Islamic groups and Muslim fundamentalists.
Barack Obama did!
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States surely should not have sustained a relationship with, and accepted campaign contributions from, perhaps the most vile anti-American organization in the United States.
Barack Obama did!
See for example:
4. Repudiating endorsements
Obama and/or his candidacy for President of the United States has been endorsed by some of the worst people and organizations on this planet, among them Cuba’s Castro, Libya’s Qaddafi, FARC, and even a North Korean newspaper.
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should renounce and denounce these and all other despotic regimes, and should expressly and unequivocally reject these endorsements of his candidacy. Barack Obama has done neither!
See for example:
5. Voter fraud and stealing elections
It is now indisputable that Obama has had a longstanding professional, political and financial relationship with the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN).
Among its other activities, funded in large measure by United States taxpayer dollars, ACORN is heavily involved in voter registration.
Obama’s presidential campaign has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to an ACORN affiliate for its get-out-the-vote services.
ACORN has endorsed Obama’s presidential bid. When he accepted the endorsement, Obama proudly stated that “I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues that you care about my entire career.”
On October 10, 2008, a retired justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, accompanied by a county district attorney and the state’s Republican chairman, that she is “not confident we can get a fair election” in the state this November.
According to the group, most of some 57,435 voter registrations submitted by ACORN have been rejected by the Philadelphia County Election Board because of fake social security numbers, incorrect dates of birth, clearly fraudulent signatures, addresses that do not exist, and duplicate registrations. In one case, a man was registered to vote more than 15 times since the primary election. Unfortunately, the Philadelphia county experience is a mere microcosm of what is occurring throughout the state and around the country.
Even before this presidential election, ACORN has been accused of criminal conduct throughout the United States in registering voters and various election intimidation and fraud.
Currently, ACORN is being investigated for voter fraud in no fewer than eleven battleground states, and has actually been accused of wrongdoing in others. Some election officials throughout the country have estimated that at least fifty-percent of ACORN’s voter registrations are fictitious.
Just this week, ACORN’s Nevada offices were searched by government officials (the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys somehow registered to vote in Las Vegas).
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should refrain from employing criminals who tamper with the most precious right of a free people, voting, and should reject the endorsement of a left-wing criminal organization. Obama has done neither!
See, for example:
6. Hiding the ball
Today, every public official has, or ought to have, a lengthy paper trail—documents relating to his background, employment, and other activities as an adult. Serious questions have been raised about Obama’s birth as it relates to the constitutional qualification for President of the United States. An absolutely unimpeachable birth certificate has not been produced by the Obama campaign. Obama surrogates have made an issue of John McCain’s health, yet none of Obama’s medical records have been produced by the Obama campaign. Only a short, one paragraph summary conclusion has surfaced, from a man claiming to be Obama’s physician. The Obama campaign has played down, even denigrated, John McCain’s military service, yet Obama’s Selective Service System registration, a legal requirement, has not been produced. Serious doubts have been raised about the source and legality of considerable financial contributions to the Obama campaign, but it has refused to even address, let alone resolve, them.
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should be open and honest about his constitutional qualifications and physical fitness for that office, about his compliance with the legal requirement that he be available for military service, and about the source and legality of campaign contributions he has received. Barack Obama has not been!
See for example:
7. Intimidating opponents and the media
In the 2004 presidential election, Democratic candidate John Kerry’s alleged Vietnam War heroics were forcefully impeached by a coalition of Swift Boat and other veterans. One weapon used against Kerry was a documentary film that devastatingly proved that Kerry was, to use the title of a book Erika Holzer and I wrote, a “Fake Warrior.”
Obviously stung by the veterans’ case against him, Kerry unleashed the full force of Democratic Party lawyers against movie theaters and TV stations which were about to show the film. They threatened every imaginable sanction—including lawsuits and complaints to the Federal Communications Commission—if the theaters and TV stations had the temerity to exercise their First Amendment right of free speech by showing the documentary. Sadly, some caved in to the Democrats’ reprehensible intimidation.
Currently, the Obama forces have taken a sleazy page from Kerry’s anti-First Amendment playbook. They have tried to prevent a conservative author from being interviewed on a Chicago radio show about Obama’s long-standing close ties to terrorist Bill Ayers.
Instead of accepting the host’s offer of equal time, the Obama campaign tried to shut down the show by sending an “Obama Action Wire” email to its supporters. It said in part that: “[i]n the next few hours, we have a crucial opportunity to fight one of the most cynical and offensive smears ever launched against Barack. Tonight, WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears. He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers. Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse.” (The Obama campaign falsely denied that it had been offered equal time.)
As a neutral witness to the show, present in the studio when it went on the air, wrote: “In a matter of hours, a major national campaign had called on its legions to bully a radio show out of airing an interview with a legitimate scholar asking legitimate political questions. Coupled with the Obama campaign’s recent attempts to sic the DOJ [Department of Justice] on the creators of a truthful political advertisement —which also happened to feature Obama's relationship with an unrepentant terrorist— last night's call to action represents an emerging pattern. Any criticism of Obama's unknown past is to be immediately denounced as a "smear," and the messenger is to be shut down at all costs.”
Michael Barone has reported that “[o]ther Obama supporters have threatened critics with criminal prosecution. In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Obama that were ‘false.’ I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis. Similarly, the Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Obama's ties to Ayers.”
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should not attempt by intimidation, especially by public officials sympathetic to his candidacy, to silence his critics when they exercise their First Amendment rights. Barack Obama has!
See for example:
8. Undermining the military
Military spending
Article II of the United States Constitution makes the President of the United States Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Principally, that delegation of power charges POTUS with the solemn duty, as does his presidential oath, to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”—which means, among other things, to “preserve, protect and defend” the Nation.
It should be unnecessary to remind anyone that today the United States is under attack, literally and figuratively throughout the world. There are hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are lukewarm wars with Iran and in Northern Pakistan. There are covert wars in dozens of countries. There is an incipient mini-cold war with Russia.
It should be unnecessary also to remind anyone that nuclear weapons already exist in Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan, and that while practical considerations could (and probably would) militate against their use, moral considerations would play no part in those four countries’ calculations.
Then there’s Iran, about which nothing need be said—except that it is a regime in which some of whose leaders avowedly wish for martyrdom, too easily obtainable by the triggering of a nuclear holocaust.
If ever the United States needed to be “preserve[d], protect[ed] and defend[ed] by a President of the United States, it is now.
To do so, Obama has plans for the defense of the United States generally, and for its armed forces in particular. He “will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. [H]e will not weaponize space. [He] will slow our development of future combat systems. * * * [H]e will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, [he] will not develop nuclear weapons; [he] will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and [he] will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal."
In other words, Obama will marginalize one of our most effective weapons of self defense and remove our ultimate deterrent to aggression by others.
Withdrawal from Iraq
Time and again during the campaign Obama has supported, and even tried to legislate, a fixed-date withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq.
Each time he has done so he has been pilloried, even by some Democrats, because of his plan’s naiveté, let alone its danger to American troops and to our country’s national interest. Losing, or at least being seen to have lost, the Iraq War has not concerned Obama. Indeed, the would-be Commander in Chief has repeatedly expressed pride in his cut-and-run scheme.
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should not announce to our many enemies throughout the world that he intends to weaken substantially our military power, let alone that he plans to cut-and-run from a war that we have very nearly won Barack Obama has!
See for example:
9. Meddling in America’s foreign policy
Surely no one who is even marginally awake needs to be told that America’s conduct of foreign affairs today is exceedingly complicated and dangerous, and that our situation in Iraq is, for want of a better image, a minefield.
Yet, while Obama has been only a mere candidate for the presidency but not yet president (though he has acted like one with his ludicrous presidential seal and Grand Tour of Europe), he met privately with Iraqi leaders to persuade them to delay a troop draw-down agreement until after the election. For good measure, he tried to convince General David Petraeus and other US commanders to establish a “realistic withdrawal date.”
Obama’s penchant for interfering in sensitive foreign policy matters has not been confined to Iraq.
Raila Odinga was educated in East Germany, and is now considered the major opposition leader in Kenya. He claims that Barack Obama is his cousin.
In August and September 2006 Obama made a one-man “fact-finding” trip to Africa.
According to the African Press International, “[w]hile in Kenya, Obama consistently appeared at the side of fellow Luo [tribe member] Raila Odinga . . . who was running for President. (‘Senator Rebukes Kenya’s Corruption’ Chicago Sun Times 8/29/2006). Because of his African heritage, Obama was treated as a virtual ‘Head of State’ in Kenya. While campaigning with Odinga, Obama was openly critical of governmental corruption under President Mibaki—usually a fair, if undiplomatic, criticism from an objective observer.”
Note several things. According to API, Obama, a sitting United States Senator “consistently appeared at the side” of a Kenyan presidential candidate, who may be a cousin, while the American politician was “treated as a virtual ‘Head of State’” by his hosts. Obama was “campaigning” for his putative cousin and, not willing to let it go at that “was openly critical” of corruption in his host’s nation. “Undiplomatic”? To say the least!
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should not try to make back-door deals with an American ally to undercut the current administration, should not inveigle our military commanders to make decisions providing political capital for his candidacy, and surely should not roam the world undermining a foreign government which, for better or worse, is an ally of the United States. Barack Obama has done all of that!
See for example:
10. Naiveté
Of the countless examples of Obama’s naiveté none speaks to its dangerousness more than his unequivocally stated intention to sit down with the worst despots in the world, “leader to leader,” with no preconditions whatsoever.
At a July 2007 debate Obama was asked whether he would “be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?”
His answer was that he “would.” He added: “and the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them—which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration—is ridiculous.”
The sad fact is that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro and Kim Jong Il would take the Chicago community organizer to the cleaners, much as Nikita Khrushchev ate the young untested President John F. Kennedy’s lunch when they met after the U-2 incident.
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should not express a willingness to sit down “leader to leader” with some of the world’s worst despotic sponsors of terrorism, with or without preconditions. Barack Obama has!
See for example:
11. Patriotic symbolism
The American flag
The American flag is an icon. Its display, no matter how large or small, is a statement of patriotism. Immediately following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 American flags seemed to be everywhere, with miniaturized versions appearing in the form of pins.
During the Iowa caucuses an enterprising interviewer noticed that Obama wasn’t wearing a flag pin. Obama told KCRG-TV that he stopped wearing one shortly after September 11, 2001.
His reason?
Wearing the American flag was not a patriotic statement, Obama said, but a “substitute” for “true patriotism” which is speaking out on issues.
Obama neglected to explain why when he wore the flag pin he could not speak out on issues, or when he spoke out on issues he could not wear the flag pin.
Obama’s disdain for the American flag has manifested itself in another, more graphic, manner. Famously, at a primary stop in New Mexico during the rendition of our national anthem Senator Hillary Clinton and Governor Bill Richardson can be seen with their right hands over their hearts. Both of Obama’s hands are folded over his crotch.
A patriot running for the presidency of the United States should revere the America flag, display it proudly, and honor its presence with the appropriate gesture. Barack Obama does not!
See for example:
* * *
Patriots don’t associate with and derive sustenance from terrorists, America-haters, and anti-Semites; they don’t countenance fixed elections; they don’t keep secrets from voters; they don’t intimidate their enemies; they don’t denigrate and degrade our military; they don’t gratuitously interfere with their government’s efforts to protect our country; and they don’t disdain the symbol of this great Nation, which for over two centuries men and women have fought and died: the American flag.
Whatever Barack Obama is, we can be certain that he is no patriot!
Obama is, of course, not many other things. For example he is not a truth-teller or experienced executive. These shortcomings in a candidate for the presidency of the United States, however, are not the subject of this article, which is concerned only with Barack Obama not being a patriot.
Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language.
