Thursday, August 16, 2012

2016: Obama's America -- D'Souza unveils Obama's background

Dinesh D’Souza and Barack Obama were both born in the same year (1961), lived in foreign countries as youngsters, and eventually attended Ivy League universities in the United States. That’s where similarities end.

D’Souza’s emigration from India left him profoundly grateful for a country that provided a talented foreigner entrée to Dartmouth, the Reagan White House, and a successful career that eventually financed living quarters in Rancho Santa Fe.

According to D’Souza, Obama’s upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia imprinted on the current President a set of ideas derived from anti-colonial, anti-capitalist mentors whose convictions were congruent with those of his absentee, polygamous father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. These convictions, which included seeing America as an exploitative colonial power, were further embedded by Obama’s preferred professors at Columbia (Edward Said) and Harvard (Robert Unger).

This thesis is developed in detail in D’Souza’s book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” and presented more succinctly in a documentary film now showing in Southland theaters: “2016: Obama’s America.”

Beyond Rev. Jeremiah (“God damn America”) Wright and former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers (whose influence upon the Democratic candidate were largely dismissed by the non-Fox media during the 2008 presidential campaign) D’Souza explores the profound impact of Frank Marshall Davis on young Barack Obama.

Davis, whose name “Frank” is mentioned 22 times in Obama’s autobiographical “Dreams from my Father,” was a card-carrying communist (#47544) whose views corresponded closely with those of the missing father Obama idolized.

“2016” doesn’t claim that the President embraces in toto either the up-to-100% tax-the-rich ideas of Obama Senior or the radically anti-American views of Frank Marshall Davis. It does, however, note that the fervid anti-colonialism and leftism of Obama Senior and Frank Davis make sense of various presidential actions from immediately returning to the Brits a bust of Winston Churchill to the downsizing of America’s nuclear arsenal and global influence.

D’Souza also sees policies that restrict American oil production, while touting Brazilian exploration, as congruent with a mindset that seeks to set right the “sins of colonialism.” The film further notes that Obama’s five-trillion dollars of deficit spending is consistent with a desire to undermine the nation’s (presumably exploitative) capitalist system.

One could apply a similar motivation, though the film does not, to recent immigration policies that abet millions of illegal aliens living in America.

Just how much the President’s views have been shaped by the radical mentors D’Souza highlights is hard to say. What’s clear, however, is that Senator Obama would never have become the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2008 if the national press corps had scrutinized his background with half the intensity they devoted to Sarah Palin’s family.

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