A shocking article written by a young Barack Obama while he was at Columbia sheds some light on the president's real attitudes toward the United States and our system of "economic injustice."
Andy McCarthy of NRO's The Corner has the story that should have been front page news a year ago:
During the campaign, I wrote a piece called "Why Won't Obama Talk About Columbia? - The years he won't discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about." So now, nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign - other than in Wasilla - and whaddya know? The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, "Breaking the War Mentality," that Columbia student Barack Obama wrote for a campus newspaper. The article shows that Obama dreaded American "militarism" and its "military-industrial interests," while effusing enthusiasm for the dangerously delusional nuclear-freeze movement.
Moreover, while indicating a preference for the political wisdom of reggae singer Peter Tosh over Ronald Reagan or Scoop Jackson, Obama bewailed the "narrow focus" of anti-militarism activists, worrying that they were targeting the "symptoms" rather than the real "disease," namely, America's underlying economic and political injustice.
Some of the things Obama wrote in this March 10, 1983 article or so out of the mainstream of even today's far left Democratic party that it is clear we have a radical leftist on his way to Moscow to negotiate our nuclear arsenal while threatening to bypass the senate altogether in order to make it stick.
Generally, the narrow focus of the [Nuclear] Freeze movement as well as academic discussions of first versus second strike capabilities, suit the military-industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion dollar erector sets. When Peter Tosh sings that "everybody's asking for peace, but nobody's asking for justice," one is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem instead of the disease itself.
And that "disease" is American "militarism" and "economic injustice." Here's our president writing what McCarthy aptly calls "leftist gobbldygook:"
Indeed, the most pervasive malady of the collegiate system specifically, and the American experience generally, is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy. What the members of ARA and SAM try to do is infuse what they have learned about the current situation, bring the words of that formidable roster on the face of Butler Library, names like Thoreau, Jefferson, and Whitman, to bear on the twisted logic of which we are today a part. By adding their energy and effort in order to enhance the possibility of a decent world, they may help deprive us of a spectacular experience - that of war; But then, there are some things we shouldn't have to live through in order to want to avoid the experience. Is it possible that Obama moderated his views over the years and is now just a good old fashioned Democrat rather than a far left radical loon who quotes a reggae singer to make his case against the military?
I will allow that as we get older, we are not quite as sure of ourselves as we were in our youth. But I think Obama's policies bear out the idea that he despises capitalism, is distrustful of our military, and still harbors extraordinarily naive views of how the world works and America's role in it.
Absolutely remarkable that this article is just emerging now. If anything proved that the press failed to do its traditional job of vetting candidates for the presidency it is the discovery of this article which no doubt will be suppressed to some extent. Not so much to protect Obama but to hide the fact that journalists failed to do their job before the election.
