How Obama Thinks
I'm always very wary about psychoanalyzing my political opponents. It's fun, sure, but it seems a suspiciously easy way of avoiding engagement with their arguments. Dinesh D'Souza, however, has a remarkably well-argued cover story in Forbes exploring Obama's mindset and it really is worth reading from beginning to end. D'Souza looks at Obama's relationship to the economic philosophy of his father, an anti-colonialist who believed all wealth was essentially ill-gotten. He unearths an almost wholly unexamined article on economics by Obama senior, which reads in part:
"We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now." The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that "theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."
Remarkably, President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama is doing in the White House.
Read D'Souza's entire piece, though. It's excellent.
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Aug '10
Re: How Obama Thinks
Well, yeah, it seems that way because it is.
However, I doubt we can help doing it entirely, no matter our political beliefs. And sometimes... it's useful.
Re: How Obama Thinks
There's always some weird father-son stuff going on with presidents, I think. The Bushes had it; Clinton certainly had problems dealing with the aftermath of his absent dad; Reagan was from a different era, but it couldn't have been easy dragging your drunk father in from the front stoop every night.
Jul '10
Re: How Obama Thinks
What's noteworthy here is that the book was published in 1995 and Dinesh seems to have been the first conservative to actually read it.
The phrase, "...we're being governed by the ideas of a 1950's Luo tribesman..." is Dinesh at his succinct finest.
Jul '10
Re: How Obama Thinks
D'Souza's piece is enlightening. There is a real sense of the unknown about what drive our President's actions. The whole "Chicago politics/socialist" thing never quite explains it. I think the "anti-colonialist" explanation resonates much more clearly. Obama is an "anti" much more than a "pro". That is why is his such a dreary leader. "Anti" doesn't get one very far.
May '10
Re: How Obama Thinks
Fine, you guys can be polite, and I'll be the one to point it out.
Rahe beat you to it, Klavan.
Re: How Obama Thinks
Agh! Y'know, I checked to make sure no one had posted this but I guess I made a mistake. I made a mistake once before, I think. 1972, I believe it was. But that was in another country and besides, the wench is dead.
Aug '10
Re: How Obama Thinks
I think you'd probably agree with me that Obama and his Minions don't truly think, they dictate a preset formula that they've been programmed to impose on us. It's the Saul Alinsky/Leninist plan for a Marxist Utopia; as though the Epic Fail of the Soviet Union and China never happened.
Doesn't it seem that people do everything they can to avoid reasoning and actual thinking? What we have in the world are templates, or prearranged patterns that are force fed to us by parents and schools. Some are useful and some are destructive.
If an individual doesn't make a supreme effort to question those templates, investigate the agenda behind them, determine their value, and reason for themselves, they become robots, essentially.
Jun '10
Re: How Obama Thinks
It's all in substituting one power structure for another. Those who believe they know what is best for all and will do everything they can to get that power versus those that know that individuals will do whatever is best for themselves and fit into society where they are able and will fight to keep that choice. And childhood influence is a huge factor in deciding which side you will ultimately choose to defend.
Jul '10
Re: How Obama Thinks
Mr. D'Souza's analysis of anti-colonialism as the root of Obama's politics is spot on. However, for the same reasons that Mr. Klavan is wary of psychoanalysis of political opponents, I see the daddy complex explanation as certainly interesting, but too much of a reach. I chalk it up to the President's upbringing in Hawaii (where some still believe the mainland US is a colonial power over their sovereign kingdom) and Third World countries. These beliefs were then fortified, enhanced and given articulation at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard.
Sep '10
Re: How Obama Thinks
I enjoyed reading Mr. D'Souza's description of President Obama, however, I remembered reading a similar write-up at American Thinker called "Obama, the African Colonial" by L.E. Ikenga (June 25, 2009).
The first paragraph sums it up:
"Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa."
Worth a read.
May '10
Re: How Obama Thinks
The "bust of Churchill incident" was not mentioned by D'Souza (surprisingly), but it certainly supports his thesis. Churchill, afterall, would have been colonialism incarnate to the likes of Obama Sr.