Posted by
William D. Dannenmaier on Saturday, February 13, 2010 8:23:58 AM
Obama has been quoted as saying people who use cell telephones have no right to expect privacy, implying that he sees nothing wrong with the government monitoring telephone conversations. Groups that have been among his strongest supporters, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, are upset by this, claiming it is inconsistent with his previous stances. (I believe he had joined other Democrats in condemning the Bush administration’s monitoring of terrorist telephone conversations from overseas telephones through American telephone lines to other overseas telephones.)
I, however, see nothing inconsistent in his behavior with his history. I consider it completely consistent.
Obama spent his early years, until he was ten, attending a Muslim school in Indonesia. I have been reading the Qur′an recently, trying to understand Muslim beliefs. I see it as a very authoritarian religion, one in which the leaders control all aspects of life. I can only assume that some of the “righteousness of authority” which I find in the Qur′an rubbed off on President Obama during his years in a Muslim school. I can see where it would be “right” for authorities to monitor and control telephonic communications.
We know little about Obama’s school years in the United States other than that he attended elite schools following his move to Hawaii. He has not released his school transcripts so there is no public evidence of his achievements and associations. And please don’t mention his graduation with "magna um laude." Grading has become a scandal in Harvard and other Ivy League schools. It appears that to get less than “A” grades you need to be an idiot (or a conservative?). However we know quite a bit about his history in Chicago.
He spent twenty years in a church where the minister, now retired in a luxury mansion, routinely damned white people and the United States government to cheering hundreds in the congregation. Obama now says he didn’t notice that. He worked for ACORN, notorious for its election scandals - unnoticed in Chicago but condemned for corruption in other cities and states. He associated with persons with a history of anti-American violence.
Elected to the Presidency on his rhetorical skills and vague promises of hope and change, he brought with him to WashingtonDC many of his Chicago associates. One of his first acts was to appoint numerous (thirty plus) “czars” who were responsible only to him. They were not elected by the people; they were not evaluated and approved by the Senate, but they were placed in positions to control major elements of American life: industry (automobile for one), banking, and education among others.
The appointment of these numerous and powerful czars was a significant change in the governance of our nation, but consistent with the governance of nations under leaders that Obama praised. For example, he praised Castro and Chavez, both of whom were elected to power on a basis of their oratory (as was Obama) and gradually extended their control over elections (think ACORN) to achieve majorities in their Congresses which modified their nations’ laws to permit those “elected” officials to become, in fact, dictators.
Other leaders to whom Obama has extended the hand of friendship include Putin, who has effectively reduced the power of the people in Russia, and Saudi Arabia, a religious dictatorship.
Simultaneously, he has ignored the attempts of the people of Iran to overthrow their de factor dictatorship and hindered attempts by democratic Honduras and Columbia to maintain and improve their economies.
When I was young, parents would warn their children with sayings such as “birds of a feather flock together.” As a young, working, psychologist, I learned that a person’s history was a better predictor of their future than anything they said. Obama’s history is one of totalitarianism. He is already, through his “czars” and appointments, undermining our democracy. Give him continued, subservient, control of the houses of Congress and he could destroy it completely in a few years. His oratorical skills and behaviors are consistent with those of other dictators beginning, to the best of my knowledge, with Mussolini and Hitler and continuing at present with Castro and Chavez. I do not, as one friend accused me, “hate” Obama: I fear him. I fear him not for myself, at eighty I’m unlikely to be around for his second term, I’m afraid for my nation, which I love.