Open Thread: Barack Obama's College Roommate Claims Obama Was 'Ardent' 'Marxist-Leninist'

December 12th, 2011 10:37 AM

After President Obama's free market "doesn't work" and "has never worked" speech in Kansas last week, well-received by the media as Teddy Roosevelt-esque, Rush Limbaugh described Obama as channeling someone else, with Obama putting to the forefront "in no uncertain terms that he is a socialist, if not a Marxist."

In fact, one of Obama's peers from Occidental College, John Drew, described Obama as an "ardent" "Marxist-Leninist" who "was in 100 percent, total agreement with [his] Marxist professors." Furthermore, Obama called those who didn't agree that a communist revolution in the West was possible "reactionar[ies]."

Do you find the assertion credible that Obama still has communist sympathies? Or do you think Obama has changed his underlying philosophical beliefs in the past three decades? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

According to the New American's Selwyn Duke, who doesn't believe Obama's views have radically shifted since his college days:

...[S]omething else about conversions is that they often breed a person who hates what he has rejected as much as he once loved it. This is why ex-smokers can be the most ardent anti-smoking activists or why Christian converts can be the staunchest critics of secularism. But from Obama we see no visceral contempt for communism. What we do see, however, is a man who just a few years ago had an alliance with former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, who called himself a “small c communist” and was caught on tape saying that 25 million capitalists may have to be killed to advance the Marxist program. Even more damnably, Obama appointed communists to office upon taking power. One of these was Van Jones, another man who called himself a communist; and former communications director Anita Dunn, who said that Mao Tse-tung — who murdered 60 to 70 million people — was one of her two favorite philosophers.

Furthermore, Duke argues, Obama should not be faulting the free market for any economic problems in America:

...Our nation enjoys wealth unprecedented in man’s history, with its supermarkets stocked with thousands of products from the world over; and with how its “poor” people usually have cars, TVs, cellphones and other luxuries, as well as bellies that come out and greet you. So while “never worked” may describe Obama’s constituents, it can hardly be said about our system.

Do you think Obama still has communist sympathies? Or have the past 30 years evolved him into a standard, Democratic politician?