Son of Islam? Let's get real.
Aside from his childhood attendance at a Muslim school in Indonesia, a school that was selected for him by his parents, Obama has never shown much interest in Islam. Nor, some would say, has he demonstrated a sincere interest in Christianity. Obama's attendance at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago may have had more to do with political opportunism than religious devotion. In reality, there's little evidence that Obama as an adult has shown much interest in any religion.
So to call Obama a "son of Islam" is true only in a particular sense. His paternal ancestors were members of the Muslim faith, and Obama is their descendant.
In truth, Obama is not really the son of any religion. His father was brought up as a Muslim but became an atheist. His mother was a self-proclaimed atheist who attended a leftist Unitarian Universalist church as a young woman. His maternal ancestors, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, who were not practicing Christians, had multiple ties to the Communist Party USA. As a youth, Obama was also an atheist. His actions as a young man were not those prescribed in the Koran or any other religion. He was, by his own admission, a drug user, a womanizer, and an indifferent student. Had he been a devout Muslim, he would not have been any of these things.
Clearly, Obama is not the son of Islam, or of Christianity, but he is very much the son of Marx. When Rick Santorum referred to the president's radical environmentalism as a "false theology," he was perfectly correct. Obama's "religion" is not Islam or Christianity, but the leftist ideology that Obama learned as a child. If anything, this radical ideology is the opposite of both Islam and Christianity since it would supplant individual conscience, and the conscience of the church, with centralized state control of all of life's functions. No devout Muslim or Christian wishes to inhabit a Marxist state that would run roughshod over the religious beliefs of the faithful. But this is very much Obama's goal.
Within the Marxist state that Obama envisages, all sectors of the economy -- all aspects of everyday life, in fact -- would fall under the control of a centralized bureaucracy. This destruction of liberty is already coming to pass with the implementation of ObamaCare. At the direction of a small panel of "experts," standardized protocols are being constructed that will constrain the health care choices for every American. When it comes time to decide upon end-of-life care, it will not be you, your doctor, and your family who make the decisions -- it will be a computer program implementing the cost-benefit analysis arrived at by a secretive panel appointed by the president.
Nothing this president has done would indicate any genuine interest in religion. His Feb. 2 "performance" at the National Prayer Breakfast is a case in point. His long-winded address was filled with hypocritical professions of faith, including the blatantly self-serving account of his pilgrimage to visit Rev. Billy Graham. It would seem that Obama does not know the meaning of the word "travesty," since his actions so often fall under that category. In this instance, his boastful account of his actions was a travesty of the humble and self-sacrificing faith that Rev. Graham embodied for well over half a century.
Obama's remarks at that same breakfast concerning what the Bible says about the rich were just as much of a charade. According to the president, Holy Scripture can be cited to support his own proposals to raise taxes on the rich. I do not recall any Bible verse that refers to a 30% levy on millionaires or a tax-rate surcharge on those earning more than $200,000 per year. The fact that the president would attempt to slip this message into the National Prayer Breakfast is, in and of itself, a strong indication of where his priorities lie. They do not lie with prayer itself, which has nothing to do with class envy (except, perhaps, the suppression of envy as the deadly sin that it is). Even in the midst of his National Prayer Breakfast address, the president could not resist advancing his class-warfare agenda.
Where this president has shown a great deal of interest is in wealth redistribution. Following the strictures of Marx, Obama constantly and reflexively frames his remarks in terms of class warfare. It seems that it is impossible for him to conceive of the American people in anything but antagonistic terms, with the rich pitted against the poor, whites against blacks, bankers against borrowers, producers against consumers, young against old, and women against men.
For each of these conflicts, or purported conflicts, Obama's "solution" is wealth redistribution. Thus, he has ordered the entire federal bureaucracy to pursue those individuals and companies that have amassed wealth and to litigate, regulate, tax, and harass them until a "fair" settlement has been reached. But after settlement (fair or otherwise) -- as that which will require U.S. banks to hand over as much as $40 billion to "victimized" homeowners and other parties -- the intimidation will not end. It will be advanced further by the Justice Department with its activist pursuit of "disparate impact" litigation and by state attorneys general on a host of other grounds. The strategy is to bleed American capitalism with a thousand cuts until government has in effect nationalized the private sector.
That goal -- the death of capitalism -- is Obama's guiding objective. The passion that he has brought to class warfare -- not just in the current re-election campaign, but throughout his presidency -- is clear evidence of where his heart lies. It does lies not with Islam or Christianity, but with Marx.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and article on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Aside from his childhood attendance at a Muslim school in Indonesia, a school that was selected for him by his parents, Obama has never shown much interest in Islam. Nor, some would say, has he demonstrated a sincere interest in Christianity. Obama's attendance at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago may have had more to do with political opportunism than religious devotion. In reality, there's little evidence that Obama as an adult has shown much interest in any religion.
So to call Obama a "son of Islam" is true only in a particular sense. His paternal ancestors were members of the Muslim faith, and Obama is their descendant.
In truth, Obama is not really the son of any religion. His father was brought up as a Muslim but became an atheist. His mother was a self-proclaimed atheist who attended a leftist Unitarian Universalist church as a young woman. His maternal ancestors, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, who were not practicing Christians, had multiple ties to the Communist Party USA. As a youth, Obama was also an atheist. His actions as a young man were not those prescribed in the Koran or any other religion. He was, by his own admission, a drug user, a womanizer, and an indifferent student. Had he been a devout Muslim, he would not have been any of these things.
Clearly, Obama is not the son of Islam, or of Christianity, but he is very much the son of Marx. When Rick Santorum referred to the president's radical environmentalism as a "false theology," he was perfectly correct. Obama's "religion" is not Islam or Christianity, but the leftist ideology that Obama learned as a child. If anything, this radical ideology is the opposite of both Islam and Christianity since it would supplant individual conscience, and the conscience of the church, with centralized state control of all of life's functions. No devout Muslim or Christian wishes to inhabit a Marxist state that would run roughshod over the religious beliefs of the faithful. But this is very much Obama's goal.
Within the Marxist state that Obama envisages, all sectors of the economy -- all aspects of everyday life, in fact -- would fall under the control of a centralized bureaucracy. This destruction of liberty is already coming to pass with the implementation of ObamaCare. At the direction of a small panel of "experts," standardized protocols are being constructed that will constrain the health care choices for every American. When it comes time to decide upon end-of-life care, it will not be you, your doctor, and your family who make the decisions -- it will be a computer program implementing the cost-benefit analysis arrived at by a secretive panel appointed by the president.
Nothing this president has done would indicate any genuine interest in religion. His Feb. 2 "performance" at the National Prayer Breakfast is a case in point. His long-winded address was filled with hypocritical professions of faith, including the blatantly self-serving account of his pilgrimage to visit Rev. Billy Graham. It would seem that Obama does not know the meaning of the word "travesty," since his actions so often fall under that category. In this instance, his boastful account of his actions was a travesty of the humble and self-sacrificing faith that Rev. Graham embodied for well over half a century.
Obama's remarks at that same breakfast concerning what the Bible says about the rich were just as much of a charade. According to the president, Holy Scripture can be cited to support his own proposals to raise taxes on the rich. I do not recall any Bible verse that refers to a 30% levy on millionaires or a tax-rate surcharge on those earning more than $200,000 per year. The fact that the president would attempt to slip this message into the National Prayer Breakfast is, in and of itself, a strong indication of where his priorities lie. They do not lie with prayer itself, which has nothing to do with class envy (except, perhaps, the suppression of envy as the deadly sin that it is). Even in the midst of his National Prayer Breakfast address, the president could not resist advancing his class-warfare agenda.
Where this president has shown a great deal of interest is in wealth redistribution. Following the strictures of Marx, Obama constantly and reflexively frames his remarks in terms of class warfare. It seems that it is impossible for him to conceive of the American people in anything but antagonistic terms, with the rich pitted against the poor, whites against blacks, bankers against borrowers, producers against consumers, young against old, and women against men.
For each of these conflicts, or purported conflicts, Obama's "solution" is wealth redistribution. Thus, he has ordered the entire federal bureaucracy to pursue those individuals and companies that have amassed wealth and to litigate, regulate, tax, and harass them until a "fair" settlement has been reached. But after settlement (fair or otherwise) -- as that which will require U.S. banks to hand over as much as $40 billion to "victimized" homeowners and other parties -- the intimidation will not end. It will be advanced further by the Justice Department with its activist pursuit of "disparate impact" litigation and by state attorneys general on a host of other grounds. The strategy is to bleed American capitalism with a thousand cuts until government has in effect nationalized the private sector.
That goal -- the death of capitalism -- is Obama's guiding objective. The passion that he has brought to class warfare -- not just in the current re-election campaign, but throughout his presidency -- is clear evidence of where his heart lies. It does lies not with Islam or Christianity, but with Marx.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and article on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
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