His beliefs are based on a foundation that men and women are consumed by envy and racial discord. He believes that those with fewer worldly goods will be made whole if only they had more worldly goods and that this should be accomplished by the government seizing goods and requiring services from those with more worldly goods to be given to those with less. This viewpoint is fundamentally so wrong that it is difficult to choose which argument to present against it first.
People make different choices in life. This should be obvious to anyone. If you choose to roll the dice on planning a professional basketball career and put all of your energy into playing basketball and none into studying, on average, you will earn far less income than someone who studies and learns something about work ethics by having part-time jobs as a teenager. If you say that playing basketball is acting black and studying and working is acting white, and you disdain the latter, you will pay a price for that. If your passion for basketball is so great that you are willing to pay this price the rest of your life, then it is your right to make this choice. But if you make this choice and then you expect to spend the rest of your life hiring government thugs to dip into the pockets of those who chose to acquire work skills and mental capabilities that earn them more income, you have become a thief. If you do not do this, then you have pursued your dream and this deserves some respect. If it does not work out, then it is still possible to study and learn work skills. It may be harder, but in America, you can always do this. Our many immigrants constantly show us that this can be done. There is no need for anyone to become a thief in America.
I object fundamentally to the idea that the amount of worldly goods that we have is the source of happiness. There is nothing wrong with having them. There are plenty of things it is pleasant to have. But what makes a man a man is the knowledge that he can identify his own dream, then face the challenges he must in the pursuit of his dream and succeed despite them to accomplish what he set out to do. When he does this, without using force against others, he is likely to actually make the lives of those he interacts with and trades goods and services with better. In any case, he earns the right to respect himself and should be respected by others. If he is a good scientist, doctor, farmer, investor, grocer, homebuilder, basketball player, clothing retailer, or hairdresser, he should be respected for it. But, if he failed to reach his dream and he turns to taking money by force from others through the tax system of a socialist government, we should never, never, never respect his thievery.
Simple-minded people like Senator Obama are consumed with the idea that equality in terms of income and wealth will somehow cause most people to become happy. This is strangely materialistic. It does a huge injustice to the human soul. It also rises in the face of the fact that if material goods had such power, then why isn't everyone extremely happy? Today's poor have much, much more than did early American colonists. Those colonists had much more in America than they generally had had in Europe before they came to America. Food is readily available for the poor, in fact they are more likely than most people to be fat. This is hardly starvation, which for hundreds of years before the wonders of capitalism came into play, was the frequently reoccurring scourge of most of the world's population. The homes of the poor are usually better heated and often air-conditioned, than those of most people in the past. Then there is the ease of entertainment and transportation compared to the past. There is the ready availability of health care and resultant longer lives. If the possession of worldly goods and security is the measure of happiness, then no one in America today has any right to unhappiness! But, of course this is simple-minded. Turning large numbers of people into the receivers of stolen goods or turning them into slave masters is not going to produce universal happiness. There is no honor among thieves. What this does is makes everyone everyone else's enemy. It makes everyone a threat to everyone else's dream.
Senator Obama believes that he can use the combination of widespread envy and either a sense of being discriminated against or a guilt for having a racial association with someone who discriminated against others to attain his dream. He dreams of having the power of being President of the United States and using that power to finally acquire satisfaction with who he is by earning the love of the poor and downtrodden in society. In his pursuit of power, he joined a Black Values, separatist church in south Chicago. This gave him a power base adequate to become an Illinois senator in the state legislature and then to acquire a U. S. Senate seat. But now, the very evident racial hatred and the extreme irrationality in the pulpit at that church, which is applauded enthusiastically by the congregation, have caused him to flee association with it. Yet, he has been enveloped in this atmosphere, by his own choice, for 20 years.
Here is what Thomas Sowell has to say about Senator Obama:
Are Barack Obama's views shown by what he says during an election year or by what he has been doing for decades before?
The complete contrast between Obama's election year image as a healer of divisions and his whole career of promoting far-left grievance politics, in association with America-haters like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, are brushed aside by his supporters who talk about getting back to "the real issues."
There is nothing more real than a man's character and values. The track record of what he has actually done is far more real than anything he says, however elegantly he says it.
Read more in his commentary, "Irrelevant Apologies."
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