Will We Know a Radical When We See One?

We are on the brink of making a historic choice. First and foremost, Barack Obama is on the cusp of becoming the nation's first African American President. Besides that, he will also be one of its most liberal to the point of radical. It is often surreal to watch Obama's radicalism flashed in front of people, and then to watch people defend it as though it isn't really there. The defense takes on many forms. There are two that are most prominent. First, Obama's radicalism is framed into something moderate or even compassionate. The most obvious example is his plan for income redistribution which is framed into a "middle class tax cut". The second is to flip the radicalism around, and use the attackers words against him. This was the most common technique in the fiasco regarding BAIPA. His defenders proclaimed it ridiculous and beyond the pale to accuse Senator Obama of supporting infanticide. As a State Senator, he voted multiple times against a bill that would have provided life saving treatment for babies born after a botched abortion, but yet it is his accusers that are beyond the pale if they dare call this supporting infanticide. Senator Obama has a radical policy, but it is his opponents that are beyond the pale for calling a spade a spade. Yet, on social, economic, and national security issues alike Barack Obama has openly favored radical ideas, and yet, his defenders continue to defend them as mainstream. Furthermore, all of these radical ideas go along with a laundry list of radical associations, and yet again, it is his opponents that are painted as beyond the pale for daring to make the connection.

1) The economy, income redistribution.

It is beyond debate that Senator Obama wants to redistribute wealth. That's been his plan all along. He believes that those that pay 40% of their income to taxes aren't paying enough. On the other hand, he also believes that those that don't pay any federal income tax (only the Social Security pay roll tax) are paying too much. This is boiler plate income redistribution.

Yet, his defenders continue to insist that it isn't what it clearly is. Most of his defenders point out that his is doing nothing more than what Bill Clinton did. Better yet, they defend his plan by pointing out that our tax system is already progressive. Both defenses are totally out of context. First, Bill Clinton didn't also say he was going to raise the capital gains, corporate, and inheritance tax along with raising income taxes. Second, he didn't give a tax cut to those that pay no federal income taxes. Third, what Bill Clinton did is irrelevant. It's not an excuse to suggest income redistribution because someone else did it too. What kind of nonsense is this? Second, our tax system may in fact be progressive, however Senator Obama is specifically trying to make it even more progressive. There is a big difference between favoring a progressive tax system and looking at a progressive tax system and believing it isn't progressive enough. Finally, we also see Obama defenders get on television and call his tax cut a "middle class tax cut". Of course, that is so but what they conveniently don't say is that this tax cut comes as a direct result of a tax increase to those more wealthy than the middle class.

As I watch, Obama defenders defend his policy of income redistribution, I always wonder the exact wording of other radical ideas like Socialism under Marx. For those that defend Obama's tax cuts as "for the middle class", how is it that you thought that Marx sold his ideology? It isn't as though he proclaimed that government would control every part of everyone's life. Instead, Marx, too, said that he had a plan that would benefit the middle class. That's the problem. Obama pits one group against another in a blatant bit of class warfare and masks it in the nice sounding "middle class tax cuts". His defenders seem oblivious to this and continue to defend.

2) Social issues

There is no question that Barack Obama hasn't met an abortion procedure that he isn't in favor of. That is just the facts. He called Nebraska's outlaw of partial birth abortion a slippery slope.

I strongly disagree with today’s Supreme Court ruling, which dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women. As Justice Ginsburg emphasized in her dissenting opinion, this ruling signals an alarming willingness on the part of the conservative majority to disregard its prior rulings respecting a woman’s medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient. I am extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact further measures to restrict a woman's right to choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court justices will look for other opportunities to erode Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and a matter of equal rights for women.

A partial birth abortion only happens in the last trimester, six plus months into the pregnancy. There are two inherent problems with the argument that the health of the mother needs to be taken into consideration. First, "the health of the mother" is far too vague. Any abortion doctor can then perform a partial birth abortion because the mother says that she gets chronic headaches. Second, what's more important the life of the fetus or the health of the mother? Since when is one person's health more important than the life of another person?

Of course, Barack Obama doesn't stop at merely partial birth abortion. He goes so far as to advocate the killing of a baby even after it is born. He voted multiple times against BAIPA (Born Alive Infant Protection Act) in the Illinois Senate. To me it is very simple. Babies were dying. Babies that were meant to be aborted but survived weren't being treated at hospitals in Cook County. The laws that were already on the books weren't protecting them. Barack Obama had an opportunity to save these babies, but instead, he was more concerned with ideology. His fear over the "slippery slope", again, caused him multiple times to vote against this act.

Now, Senators often make bad Presidential candidates because they vote so often and their votes can be taken out of context. In the case of BAIPA, this is exactly the defense that Obama's defenders take. They muddy the issue through a giant maze of procedural matters in order to make it seem as though the vote was really about something besides saving babies. All of this may in fact be so, but ultimately that's the problem. Barack Obama had a clear opportunity to save babies, and instead he chose to turn this into an ideological battle, and a battle to save abortions. In the end, protecting "reproductive rights" was more important than protecting babies. Rather than focusing on this truth, Obama's defenders focus on an endless stream of procedural matters involved with the vote, and then, they use those procedural matters, to proclaim with righteous indignation that it is beyond the pale to say that "Barack Obama supports infanticide". Here, we have a Senator that on more than one occasion voted against protecting infants born alive, and yet, it is his opponents that are beyond the pale.

3) Foreign policy

In a debate in April of 2007, Barack Obama made an astonishing statement. He said that he would meet with many of our enemies without preconditions in the first year of his Presidency.



He's never stepped away from this policy. He has tried to frame it better by proclaiming there would be preparations. Yet, ultimately, the problem isn't that he would jump on a plane and meet with leaders like Assad, Il, and Ahmadinejad before researching them and their nations. The problem is that he would do this without having the nations meet conditions beforehand. It is foolhearty and naive to believe that meetings on the Presidential level between ourselves and our neighbors will lead to anything but disaster. We need only to look back to Kennedy's meeting with Kruschev to see the disastrous results of Presidential meetings with no pre conditions with our enemies. Yet, Obama uses this very meeting as an example of the "positive" that can come out of it. Furthermore, he points to Reagan's meetings with Gorbachev as another example. Reagan never met Gorbachev with no pre conditions. In fact, the U.S. had beaten the Soviet Union into submission before he met with Gorbachev.



Rather than calling this foolish, naive, and radical policy what it is, his defenders muddy the issue and use all sorts of equvocations to try and defend what is truly an indefensible policy. Can you imagine the public relations coup that a photo of Ahmadinejad and Obama shaking hands would be for Ahmadinejad? Furthermore, the absurdity of this policy was proven when Iran set its own pre conditions prior to a meeting.

The vice president for Iranian media affairs says Iran has preconditions of its own. He tells the Islamic Republic News Agency Americans are in dire need of re-establishing ties with the Iranian people and that Iran will only hold talks if “the U.S. moves out of the Middle East and the U.S. government gives up its widespread support for the Zionist regime.”

Those, of course, aren't merely preconditions but rather some lofty preconditions. It seems our enemies understand the power of leverage better than Barack Obama himself. The news from Iran should have been enough to make his defenders understand that his policy is naive to the point of radical. Instead, his defenders have tried to obfuscate the issue. They point to folks like James Baker and Henry Kissinger as suggesting the same thing as Barack Obama. Of course, both those gentlemen suggest low level meetings first, and not Presidential level meetings with no preconditions.



4) Radical associations



It really doesn't matter just how many there are, and how close some of them are. All of them, to his defenders, are totally irrelevant and trivial. Senator Obama can sit in the pews of a racist, anti American zealot for twenty years, and anyone that brings this up is a "racist" themselves and trying to deflect from the "real issues".



He can sit on two boards and make a blurb in a book for an unrepentent former terrorist, and his defenders will claim that the association is loose and tangential.



He can have a twenty year association with a group (ACORN) that is being investigated in more than ten states for voter fraud, and it is also referred to as tangential.



He can have as a neighbor, a friend, a business partner, and a top fundraiser, a convicted felon and crook, and this relationship will also be dismissed as tangential.



Each one of his associations is often defended by pointing to associations of others. For every mention of Obama's association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, there is a mention of McCain "relationship" with Pastor Hagee. Of course, Hagee merely endorsed McCain, and McCain was never a member of his church.



For every mention of Obama's relationship with William Ayers, there is someone pointing to John McCain's relationship to G. Gordon Libby. The difference is that Libby's crimes were siginificantly less violent, he served his time, and he apologized.



For every mention of Obama's relationship with ACORN, a defender points out that McCain made a speech in front of ACORN. Making a speech is not the same thing as a twenty year relationship that included: training their staff, defending them as a lawyer, having staff volunteer for his campaign, and finally currently paying them over $800,000 for "get out the vote efforts".



For every mention of Rezko, someone mentions McCain's ties to Charles Keating. First, the Keating five was over twenty years ago. Second, McCain only was at an inappropriate meeting, and most importantly, McCain not only apologized, but used the ordeal to begin a career long campaign against corruption. Obama dismissed his actions as "boneheaded". He proclaimed he knew nothing of Rezko's illegal activities. Furthermore, Rezko was Obama's neighbor, business partner, friend, and top fundraiser.



Yet, despite a never ending stream of radical associations, all are dismissed, by his defenders, as tangential. How many tangential radical associations can one person have before the sum total is something more than tangential?



So, there you have it. This is how a radical, that frankly makes no secret of his radicalism, becomes mainstream to about half, if not more, of the population. Rather than looking at the issue at hand, his defenders jump to defend. Each and every radical association, connection, and idea, is defended until most don't notice that the sum total of his radicalism can't be overlooked anymore. As such, we are on the cusp of voting in a radical.