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It looks like the Orlando reporterette’s question on whether Obama is a Marxist is getting closer to being answered–by Obama himself, in this 2001 interview with a Chicago public radio station:

Some comment is in order.

One of the things that has always struck me about the whole “social justice” debate in the U.S. is that it has always centred on everything but economic inequities: race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.  Yet any real Marxist will tell you that the issue that’s the “only thing” (like winning to Vince Lombardi) is economic, and Marx’s whole system is based on resolving that problem while ignoring the rest.

The weakness of any redistributive system, however, is one that countries organised on Marxist-Leninist principles found out the hard way: it doesn’t matter how a country redistributes wealth if it can’t create it.  As Hillare Belloc so eloquently put it:

Without wealth man cannot exist.  The production of it is a necessity to him, and though it proceeds from the more to the less necessary, and even to those forms of production which we call luxuries, yet in any given human society there is a certain kind and a certain amount of wealth without which human life cannot be lived…

Therefore, to control the production of wealth is to control human life itself.  To refuse man the opportunity for the production of wealth is to refuse him the opportunity for life; and, in general, the way in which the production of wealth is by law permitted is the only way in which the citizens can legally exist.  (The Servile State, from the chapter “Definitions.”)

In a country as complex and politically vindictive as this one, such a redistribution would grind the economy to an effective halt.

I should also add that such an economically focused agenda would go against “boutique” causes that favour groups who are in reality economically advantaged, such as the LGBT community.

Obama’s adherence to Marxist principles is stronger than many of us suspected.

Joe Biden finally gets confronted with some tough questions:

Although many liberals weren’t impressed with these questions, the Obama campaign must be: they cut the station off from future interviews.  And this in a swing state.

Armed with a more in-depth knowledge of Marxism, I would have put things a little more subtly.  That also would have increased the possibility that Joe Biden would blurt out another gaffe, which would have been wonderful.

As the last day of voting (that’s Election Day) in the U.S. approaches and the first day of suing (the day after Election Day) also approaches, people are already trying to figure out what this election means.  We won’t know that until a) we have a formal winner and b) we have an idea what kind of margin he won by and what states he took.  Back home in Palm Beach, the law requires that campaign signs be taken down within 48 hours of the election and, as Joyce Reingold notes,”(h)ope we’re finished counting ballots by then.”   As South Florida found out the hard way eight years ago, that could take a while.

So looking for meaning in this election overall is a little premature.

There’s one issue that keeps getting lost in all of this, and that issue is William Ayers, the 1960’s radical who certainly was Barack Obama’s political colleague in Chicago.  With the financial meltdown, people tend to think of Ayers and other radicals Obama associated with as side issues.  But Ayers has spent his life working not to be a side issue, and we should give him due respect in that regard.

Calling Ayers and people like him “terrorists” may be accurate but it’s uninformative.  Terrorism, like war, is politics by another method; that’s certainly the way it’s regarded in the Middle East.  The term doesn’t illuminate the motivations that drive its practitioners.  Terrorism is hard to sustain indefinitely; its aficionados are either killed, obtain the power they’re looking for through violence, give up and disappear into the woodwork, or decide to pursue their goals through the “system.”  It’s the last that Ayers and many other troublemakers in the 1960’s have decided to do, and that’s why junior Democrat careerists such as Obama end up rubbing shoulders with them.

All 1960’s radicals started with the premise that the U.S. was a reactionary, oppressive, warmongering and terminally bourgeois country which could only be transformed by the violent overthrow of the system.  Ayers is no exception, and there is plenty of evidence that his opinion of the country has not changed over the years.  The only thing that has changed is his methodology; he now seeks to use the educational machine to spread his idea amongst those who are too young to remember what a mess that he and other 1960’s radicals made of our college campuses and other places in our society.

It’s not a stretch to say that a significant part of the Democrat Party has spent the last forty years trying to implement the 1960’s radical agenda.  The more “mainstream” implementation of that agenda is embodied by the Clintons, and the party cast them aside in favour of someone who, although too young to be a direct product of that idea, has been allied with that agenda’s most “pure” advocates.  That characterisation is true for both Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.  The really important question is this: how much have these people influenced Barack Obama?  And will he make their agenda his top priority?

There are two ways of looking at the answer, and it’s like looking at an overweight person trying on clothes too small: no matter what angle you’re looking from, the view isn’t pretty.

The first is that he hasn’t been influenced by them all, that his character is such that he just uses people without them making an impact on him.  That goes to the “sociopath/anthropologist” charge that I mentioned in my piece There’s a Reason Obama Didn’t Plege the Flag, and if that’s the case then there’s no telling how many people he’ll throw under the bus if he’s President.  That would make an Obama presidency a game of Russian roulette: no one will know who gets shot next.

The second is that he has been, in which case we’ll have what I’ve been hoping to avoid for a long time: a country run by an elite that basically hates it.  Getting past the obvious problem relative to foreign policy, if those at the top don’t like this place, it’s only a matter of time before those at the bottom get the same idea.  It will be hard to fill our military, and even harder to get our economy going when hopes of improvement are dimmed by a hefty tax take and the realisation that the taxes are going to people who neither like us nor have our best interests at heart.  Such a realisation will make the downward turn in the stock market look minor.

Although I can see Art Rhodes’ point that making William Ayers a campaign issue was a non-starter, that’s due to the general historical amnesia that dominates the life of our country.  That’s too bad.  As Karl Marx used to say, history repeats itself, the first time as a tragedy, the second as a farce.  So which repetition are we looking at?  At this point, only God knows.

Evidently great minds think alike, even on the Internet, as The Republic’er also (and independently) made the connection between Barack Obama and Huey Long:

We Americans are faced with another Huey Long in the person of Barack Obama. He will pave roads, bring overreaching government programs to the people, and take money from the rich to give to the poor. He will be a socialist knight in shinning armor. Yet as he is placing penny’s into the hands of the poor he will shackle their wrists and place them into a government of dictatorship. When the government supplies you with everything they also are in a position to own you.

He’s also got some great videos of “the Kingfish;” check these out.  My own piece is here.

One thing that the Republic’er brought up that deserves some comment is the issue of public works.  Having spent a good deal of time riding over some of those public works in Louisiana, it’s true that he did upgrade the infrastructure of the state.  But there’s two things that need note.

First, public works have traditionally been a politician’s road to popularity.  In Louisiana, they were a good way to entrench yourself, both for the jobs they created and the roads and bridges that resulted.  Edwin Edwards did the same thing forty years later.  But, as politicians like Long and Edwards are secured into power, they become corrupt, and the money starts going to places other than public works.  It’s a great thing up front, but in the long run (sorry!) it goes downhill.  That’s the lesson of Louisiana politics.

Second, it’s unlikely that Barack Obama will pursue public works with the same gusto that Huey Long and other “old time” Democrat politicians did.  Before the 1960’s the Democrats sponsored many major public works improvements (TVA is a good example, Al Gore Sr.’s support of the Interstate Highway System is another.)  But the environmentalists–an important constituency for Obama–will simply not permit this.  The deficiencies in our infrastructure will not be addressed the way they need to be, even by the successor of Huey Long.

Henry Cisneros gets himself into trouble again:

A grandson of Mexican immigrants and a former mayor of this town, Henry G. Cisneros has spent years trying to make the dream of homeownership come true for low-income families.

As the Clinton administration’s top housing official in the mid-1990s, Mr. Cisneros loosened mortgage restrictions so first-time buyers could qualify for loans they could never get before.

Then, capitalizing on a housing expansion he helped unleash, he joined the boards of a major builder, KB Home, and the largest mortgage lender in the nation, Countrywide Financial – two companies that rode the housing boom, drawing criticism along the way for abusive business practices.

Honestly, I have a soft spot for Henry.  He’s an Aggie and so am I.  Aggies stick together.

I’ve noted elsewhere that no less of a left-wing pub than the Village Voice has pointed a finger at misguided government policies as the root problem in the current financial crisis.  In their case, they focued more on Andrew Cuomo, who succeeded Cisneros.  But such a crisis is too large for one person to pull off.

The interesting thing is this: we have to be the only nation on earth who would dream of improving the housing of economically disadvantaged people through single-family or low-density home ownership.  Most do so through the construction of large housing developments (“estates,” as they’re called in the UK) which make affordable rent possible.

Such a scheme avoids messes such as we have now.  However, the government–or the well-placed landlords who are “allowed” to build such things–keeps title to the place, or at worst has to concede condominium rights to the tenants.  The result is a nation of perpetual renters; ownership becomes the exception rather than the rule.  That in turn centralises control of the life of the nation.

My guess–especially with an Obama administration–is that someone in our government will push for this.  They will argue that we can afford neither financially nor environmentally afford the low-density housing we have had for so long.  So they will use both of these avenues to encourage this (and discourage the alternatives) and make it a reality.

Although this may sound entirely sensible for New Yorkers, the rest of us will probably not find it to our taste.  It will be politically unpopular.  But then we will run into the next problem: with restricted credit and a slower economy, people’s choices will be restricted.  And with other changes afoot, people’s political choices will be cut back.

Our system only works in an environment where discipline comes from somewhere other than the state.  It must come from God (a concept that escapes anti-fundamentalists) and/or from the free market.  When either or both are distorted, we have problems, as we have now.  We end up with a different country, where the state is all.

And, as noted elsewhere, it will not be nice.

Again from Art Rhodes:

Overall, the third debate was by far McCain’s best performance. Although he is an awful debater, he was better prepared and seemed to be more confident during last night’s performance. Obama, as always, was cool and collective, even when under some pretty severe fire from McCain. McCain went after Obama on almost every issue that was raised.

While Joe the Plumber was mentioned better than 20 times, I did think that McCain could have been more forceful in going after Obama on his comment to Joe that he wanted “to spread the wealth around.” Obama has not made any truer statement during this campaign than his off the cuff remarks to Joe the Plumber. He DOES want to spread the wealth around. Every one of his proposals, from changes in the tax code to healthcare reform, involves taking from those who have worked for a living and redistributing that wealth to those who have not. Obama believes that he can create a socialistic Utopia – a scary thought indeed.

I wish that Art would remember Huey Long, but…I am obsessed with Louisiana politics.  It’s in the blood.

If John McCain wins this election, it will be because of Obama’s candor with “Joe the Plumber.”