Well, obviously, I can't help but notice the relative (although by no means total) lack of enthusiasm, at least so far.

 You're right, Diane, Obama did weigh in on this issue, although he scuttled quickly away from it afterwards.  When he entered the fray again the other day, his "denigration" comments were clear in putting him on the union side, yet still vague enough to skirt the key issues.  Obama is torn on how directly to involve himself here.  I touched on the issue in a post called "Obama's Wisconsin Bind."

Roque, I agree that Obama is trying to generate class conflict.  That's a theme of my book, and many of my comments since.  I do think Obama is flirting with the prospect of financial crisis as a way of stampeding the country into higher taxes and bigger government.  But as president, I think he also wants to be careful not to collapse the economy on his own watch.  That would only harm him politically.  As president, Obama's got to walk a fine line.  Being president is tougher than being an Alinskyite community organizer with no responsibility for the trouble you stir up.

Copperfield, I have no idea whether an audio version of Radical-in-Chief is, or will be, available.  Sorry.

 Thanks to all for these comments.  Hang on, I agree that it's too late to do much about taking care of the baby boomers in their old age, except through immigration, which has its own problems.  Paul, I certainly agree that the welfare state is key here, and I think the invention of the pill as well.  We are talking about a complex and interlocking set of causes, but I do think a crisis could bring back childbearing as a source of care in old age.  In the piece I linked, I also speculate that last-ditch efforts to shore up the new system without a resort to traditional habits could bring forth "Brave New World" style innovations.  In a post-welfare-state world, we either move back to tradition, or forward to radical experiments in human reproduction, or both.

 Troy, having been trained as a social anthropologist of the old school (ie. before the takeover of the discipline by post-modernism), my heart is with the democratization skeptics.  On the other hand, I recognize the claims of your more balanced position.  Broadly speaking, in the two pieces I linked in my original post, I argue for a willingness to shift between universalist and culturalist stances, depending on circumstances.  In the end, that may be the most realistic sort of realism.

 Thanks to all for these comments.  I didn't get what I was hoping for here, which was for someone to explain to me what really does make the two sides tick.  Guess that will have to remain a mystery.  But I am impressed by how the comments seem to vary between realist skepticism and a middle-ground position, with no-one clearly on the side of democratizing optimism.  That confirms my sense that, despite a relatively even division of opinion among conservative pundits, rank-and-file conservatives lean realist.

Michael, I agree with you that the world has not been evolving toward a liberal democratic utopia.  But some democratizers don't see it that way (a case of Charles' lamp and faces).  From the standpoint of many democratization advocates, the world is on a gradual, if bumpy, course toward more democracy.  Until the recent blow up in the Middle East, democracy exporters conceded that things have been slipping a bit in the last few years.  But they still claim the long-term trend is toward democracy, and many see the current changes as proof that the most resistant part of the world is now on board the democratic bandwagon.

 Western Chauvinist, I think you've got the right idea.  We already have an openly socialist senator, Bernie Sanders, and the Washington Post features an openly socialist columnist, Harold Meyerson.  Both participate in everyday American politics without calling for revolution.  Obama is that sort of socialist, and so were his community organizing mentors and sponsors.  I'm not interested in blacklisting Bernie Sanders supporters.  For me, this is largely a question of political honesty.  Socialism is more common and less bizarre than most Americans realize.  That's why one of the things I do in the book is to describe the modified and "domesticated" form of socialism that developed in the United States after the revolutionary hopes of the sixties were dashed.

 etoiledunord, you're right that Obama does not focus on classic socialist strategies of nationalization.  One of the themes of Radical-in-Chief is that American socialists in the eighties largely abandoned that approach in favor of alternative means of gaining public control over the economy.  Community organizing was central to those new strategies.  Kevin Williamson's very thoughtful and important new book puts forward a revised definition of socialism that takes into account regulatory techniques for achieving a kind of de facto central planning, without the political drawbacks of direct public ownership.

AmishDude, I've heard nothing about this case, but in the book I do talk about the fact that Reverend Wright was at war with many in his own congregation over his political views.  That's one reason of many I give in the chapter on Wright for believing that Obama had to know what his minister was up to.

 Chris, I don't have any magical answers.  The mainstream press doesn't want to allow serious criticism based on research into Obama's past to break through to the broader public.  That's why they hype silly theories like birtherism and the notion that Obama is committed Muslim, as a way of discrediting critics.  On the other hand, Obama's critics have provided the media with plenty of fodder for that strategy.

Charles, it's true that socialists argue amongst themselves all the time about what socialism is.  One of the things I do in the book is to show how these factional battles played out among the socialist community organizers who schooled Obama.  And, yes, they did look for indirect ways to achieve socialist ends without formal government nationalization.

Yes, David, in Dreams from My Father, Obama speaks of his time working at a business when he was just out of college, but not yet a community organizer, as something like being a spy behind enemy lines.  Speaking about the business world as your enemy is a pretty strong hint of where the young Obama was coming from, which gets at my response to Harlech's point.

Aodhan, Obama himself tells us that he was a fan of "post-colonial" theory.  This is clearly an element of how he sees the world.  Reverend Wright was effectively an advocate of what Marxist scholars call "dependency theory," the idea that most of the troubles of Third World nations are the fault of Western capitalist exploitation.  So it's not an either/or between socialism and various forms of post-colonial theory.  I just think D'Souza tries to do too much with too little.  I try to build up a careful narrative, using measured language, lots of data, and running along Obama's larger life-trajectory.  I think that puts things in better perspective and makes a more convincing case.

 Stuart, I don't think Obama wants to resurrect old-style authoritarian Soviet socialism.  Like the New Party he joined in 1996, I think he's see the vision of the left parties in Scandinavia as an ideal model.  Obama probably does favor long-term moves toward a transnational legal regime, as many European leftists do.  But mostly I think he wants to downplay foreign policy controversies so as to concentrate on expanding and reshaping the American welfare state.

Harlech, if all we had was information on Obama in 1996 and today, your take would be one plausible way of making sense of his motivations.  When you look at the full trajectory of his life, however, I think Weigel's idea of Obama as pandering liberal hack fails.  In Radical-in-Chief I trace out a continuous thread of socialist activity.  Obama himself, in his memoirs, emphasizes the sincerity and continuity of his deepest political convictions.  I think that's sincere, and tough to fake, even if Obama has omitted to tell us the full dimensions of what his convictions are.