I must admit I may be ill-prepared to write this column since I have not read his book, The Audacity of Hope, by that junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.   All the same, there is a litany of information and opinion which Mr. Obama has disseminated in his run for president, and I have been unable to avoid all of it.

Any American willing to chance obtaining success will be quite adverse to socialist policy and communist ideology because these policies remove the individual, and substitute government as the driving force for that success.

Today these philosophies are marketed as progressive or fair , but they are still the same old tired ideas Russia and Eastern Europe have completely abandoned in their quest to boost their economies and develop wealthier states in an effort to raise the standard of living for all citizens.

Too bad some U. S. politicians can’t seem to learn by watching the mistakes of others.  

When a politician is so far left he makes Hillary Clinton look like a good alternative you’ve got to wonder if the guy is just dumb.   Unfortunately, Mr. Obama is not dumb, he has learned like many tyrants and demagogues before him it is easy to exploit the working class by promising to punish the rich.   Of course tyrants neglect to inform their minions that anytime policies which punish wealth and accomplishment are instituted, those performers making such accomplishments will change their behavior and remove the resources the tyrants guaranteed would help the poor.  

Moreover, the changed behavior generates less wealth for society as a whole, slows the economy, and has most deleterious effects on those whose condition was promised improvement.  

Barack Obama’s determination to subjugate the very people he ostensibly campaigns to help is typical of the socialist doctrine he embraces, from Lenin to Mao.   Once economies rise to the point where government is not needed in the lower classes’ upward mobility, even lower classes vote to support policies which insure a strong economy, if they are not manipulated through deceit.  

With,  fear, intimidation and class-envy, leftist politicians demand there are certain entitlements government must provide, obfuscating the fact that government must take from some other resource to provide the specified provisions.    

Recently the presidential candidate stated, in regard to government’s economic policy, We should be guided by what works and has gone on to chastise President Bush’s proposal to save Social Security through privatization of accounts.   Social Security is clearly a government program which does not work , it is headed for a major overhaul requiring massive tax increases and reduction in benefits, yet Obama rails against Bush without providing alternatives.   He knows by the time the thing really does blow up, people won’t remember a Republican tried to fix it and that Democrats wouldn’t let him.  

To demonstrate the belligerence he is willing to embrace to promote socialist policy, he recently called opponents of the senate immigration bill (a bill most Americans opposed) racist.

He has endeared himself with La Raza, the Mexican nationalist organization which has encouraged worker boycotts and has celebrated by raising Mexican flags over upside-down American flags at public places in the U.S., and has equated the civil rights movement of the sixties with illegal immigration today.

He supports free in state tuition for illegal aliens.

He believes we should have socialized medicine and it should cover all Americans and provide for elective procedures like abortion.  

He voted against both of Bush’s nominees for the Supreme Court saying he didn’t believe they were open-minded enough in interpreting the Constitution’s broader meanings.   In other words, he has echoed the views of many European communists who believe the words of the Constitution should be subjugated to favor their progressive views and international law.

He believes, perhaps even more rabidly than any other Democrat, government must step in and control the market where dumb American citizens have been irresponsible in their expenditures of time and money creating this horrible imbalanced and racist economy which has lifted more people out of poverty and has provided opportunity for more than any other.

For all of Barack Obama’s skill in pandering, and in engaging the class-warfare tactics favored by the political party which cannot win with ideas and arguments, he still has a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming our next president.   A majority of American people are just not going to elect an adolescent chain-smoking black man, middle name Hussein, with big ears, who thumbs his nose at all the traditions and institutions that make America great.   The Soviet Union is dead and gone, but B. Hussein Obama believes we should garner wisdom from those European nations which have embraced the disastrous economic policies which insure their people remain dejected.    

Even some American leftist sympathizers will take pause when they find their new leader wants to remove the fifty stars from the blue field on our nation’s flag, and replace them with a sickle and a hammer.

Mr. Obama ought to trade his Audacity of Hope in for some audacity in simple economic principles and common sense.

Copyright 2007 Jim Pontillo