The Sum of all Fears...

Over at Pajamas, someone commented that Obama is really not a Marxist, just a narcissist (to sum up a lengthy assertion), and I had to reply as follows:

I'm not sure what it means to say Obama is nothing but a set of "psychological agendas".  Aren't we all.  Yes, he's a power-luster.  That's the very definition of a communist (he's not a socialist).  By definition people are drawn to communism by forms of megalomania -- it's an ideology bred for power lust.  But to dismiss the ideas the man advocates -- which are the narcotics of that creed -- is to miss the great danger. 

A man is what he upholds, and is what he does.  Obama upholds the tenets of communist Marxism, lock, stock and gunbarrel.  You might debate the label "communist" (I don't) but you have to call him a Marxist. That he has a strong nihilist and megalomaniacal streak is simply a reflection of those ideas. Where *didn't* Marxism destroy everything it touched?  Where didn't it seek total control over other people? That Obama exhibits some traits of borderline madness--where *didn't* any Marxist leader exhibit that?  The ideas create the man.

I'm not saying Obama is a genius, nor even a true "intellectual" -- he originates nothing. He is, in Ayn Rand's words, a total "second-hander". But he is well aware of the ideas at play in our world. Ignorant, no. Brilliant no. Evil, yes.  Call the man what he really is, is all I'm asking. Recognize the full danger of the man by the nature of what he is, is all I'm asking. 

Ideas are the prime movers of history, much more than individual men.  Yes, created by men, but once in play, evil ideas infect like a disease any other men who don't have the proper antidote -- adherence to reason, fealty to reality, and the ideas that implement that: a correct understanding of the nature of Man (he has to use his mind to support his own existence and be happy) and individual rights as the only proper function of government--which is the *cause* of capitalism. 

But ignore the role of ideas and you ignore the danger of the disease.  Prune one man from the gene pool -- another replaces him. 

Given the ideas at play in our culture for 100 years, a man like Obama *had* to appear.  It wasn't a matter of "if", but when. So don't place all the danger in the man. He's really a straw man.

Obama is nothing more than the current figurehead of many evil ideas under a red umbrella, which have been stalking this world for far too long.  That he is something of a caricature himself is merely a visceral statement of the fact that his ideals have become something of a caricature:  Marxism.  But he represents, unfortunately, way too many people who still hold and advocate those ideas, at least in this country. (Don't kid yourself, Marxism is discredited as an ideal everywhere else that has seen it in action.) To imbue all the power in the man's shortcomings is to blind oneself to the danger and let the nature of his ideas run amuck, unseen and unrecognized for the full danger they represent.   

(And as a side note:  those same ideas have deeply infected the Republicans. The neo-cons are the arch-examples of this.  Marxism is just the political implementation of enforced altruism, and the neo-cons uphold that ideal. They are more dangerous than the Marxists because they conceal their ultimate motives so well, even from themselves.)