This was the week when it finally hit most thinking Americans that the United States may be about to elect its first Marxist president. If you don't like the stock market and the economy now, just wait until this nightmare - the a Marxist president and a Democratic Congress taking power in Washington - comes to pass.
How did we get here? More importantly, how did the party of Harry Truman, FDR, Woodrow Wilson and Jack Kennedy succumb to a Manchurian Candidate?
First, of course, the Obama campaign and its media sycophants fought hard to hide the truth. It has only been through the dogged work of the National Review's Stanley Kurtz and Andy McCarthy (available online at nationalreview.com), David Freddoso "The Case Against Barack Obama" and, this week, Larry Johnson of noquarterusa.net and John Hinderaker at Powerline, that the reality that Barack Obama is not only the product of a Marxist milieu but is a Marxist himself has finally broken through. Consider these facts:
* One of Mr. Obama's childhood mentors in Hawaii was a former organizer for the Communist Party USA
* By his own account, in college, Mr. Obama was drawn to a career as a community organizer by the writings of Saul Alinsky, a known Marxist
* Besides the Gamaliel Foundation, one of the community groups in Chicago that Mr. Obama worked for was ACORN, a Marxist organization targeting voting registration for low-income and minority Americans and which is now under investigation for vote fraud in 11 states
* When Mr. Obama ran for the state Senate from Chicago, he sought and obtained the endorsement of the Chicago New Party, established by the Democratic Socialists of America, including passing a screening for ideological purity
* He attended and spoke at Socialist Party conferences and events
* Mr. Obama's first electoral run was sponsored by Alice Palmer, a regular attendee of meetings of the CPUSA and whose state senate seat Obama ran for in the mid-'90s
* The famous coffee at the home of William Ayres and Bernadette Dohrn to launch Mr. Obama's candidacy was simply a gathering of Marxist activists and politicians at which the CPUSA-affiliated state Sen. Alice Palmer spoke;
* At the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayres together administered a $100 million grant program designed by Mr. Ayres and other Marxists to politicize and radicalize school children.
Against this background, Mr. Obama's opposition to the Vietnam War, his negative view of the United States and his membership in a "black liberation theology" church that preached race hatred and anti-Americanism becomes immediately understandable; and so do Mr. Obama's close ties to anti-Israeli leaders like Louis Farakkhan and Rashid Khalidi or convicted fraudster and Syrian immigrant Tony Rezko.
All of these folks, as Thomas Sowell has written here, were not "associates" of the young Barack Obama. They were his allies, sponsors and mentors. It was this network of alliances that launched and sustained the Manchurian Candidate on his political career.
Not least among the obfuscations are the way Marxists such as Katrina Vandenheuvel of The Nation identify themselves as "progressives." This, of course, recalls how the Marxist supporters of Henry Wallace in 1948 called themselves "Democrats in a hurry."
Second, the filtering devices that the Democratic Party once contained to identify and drive out Communists and Socialists no longer exist. A young Democrat named Ronald Reagan once got his start in politics by leading a successful fight to prevent a Communist takeover of the Screen Actors Guild. That wouldn't happen today. In the GOP, we're alert for Nazis, fascists and white supremacists. On the Democratic side, unfortunately, Americans for Democratic Action and the labor union movement no longer weed out Marxists.
Last, perhaps the ability to spot Marxism on the part of the average American has decayed. The Soviet Union, of course, is gone. China is authoritarian but capitalist. As long as you don't start spouting off about "the workers," "the masses," the "means of production" - in other words, if you take care not to sound like The Nation magazine, you get a pass.
One day in 1992, my then-82 year old father and I were watching a Ross Perot event. "You know, Jim," dad said, "that guy's a fascist." And so he was. But it took someone who had seen fascism to recognize it in American clothes.
The strong probability that Mr. Obama is a Marxist frees anyone voting for Sen. John McCain from a charge of racism. If patriotism and simple love of country aren't a sufficient explanation for your GOP vote, the person you're talking with isn't worth listening to. Somebody should ask Senator Mr. Obama if he's a socialist and, if not, why did the DSA's Chicago New Party claim him as a member in their October, 1996 newsletter.
James G. Wiles is a Philadelphia lawyer. He can be reached at jwiles@thebulletin.us