It’s not every day that a guy provokes the rage of the President of the United States. Now the President has launched a ferocious attack against me and my film 2016: Obama’s America. Posting his comment on barackobama.com, Obama calls the film “an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear” him by engaging in “subterranean conspiracy theories and false, partisan attacks.”
For weeks the President tried to ignore the film, no doubt hoping that it would go away. Unfortunately for Obama, the film has continued to gain momentum. It has been seen by more than 2 million people, earned more than $27 million, and become the second biggest political documentary of all time. So now he has decided to come out with guns blazing.
Originally posted at American ThinkerBarack Obama prides himselfon being a community organizer -- stirring up the disgruntled in Chicago was the sole skill set that earned him the esteemed title of Leader of the Free World.
Using Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals as a road map, Barack Obama not only community organized, but taught others how to follow his lead. Young Obama instructed students that to make a statement that would inspire change, they'd have to be well-practiced in the art of street-level confrontation, picketing, demonstrating, and all-out pandemonium.
He was very good at what he did. Saul Alinsky-style organizers were taught to be "an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions" which, ironically, is exactly what the world is witnessing as the Middle East is ablaze with street-level hatred.
For days the world has watched in growing horror as the fires of animosity have spread. Yet for those wondering why Barack Obama isn't addressing more firmly the upheaval in the Islamic world, a simple answer might be that one community organizer can't very well criticize another community organizer's style of community organizing, now can he?
Back in Chicago, Barack Obama encouraged the underprivileged to take action on their own behalf by reminding the already resentful of past injustices. Wherever and whenever there's strife, there is surely what Obama called "indigenous...charismatic leadership" nearby. There's always a ringleader in the group - an individual or a team that possesses the ability to make something happen by getting "people to understand the source of their social or political problems." In this case the source of the turmoil is rooted in religious zealotry.
Either way, wherever street-level organizing takes place and regardless of the extent of the mayhem, motivating people to unrest to make a point is really nothing more than a mob leader organizing a group of angry thugs and goading them toward hostile confrontation. Sometimes the resulting action takes place in American cities like Chicago, but other times it erupts in unstable pockets in the world like the ones Barack Obama commiserated with in his book "Dreams From My Father" when he said:
"[t]he desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago's South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair."
Barack Obama explained in a chapter he wrote for a 1990 book entitled After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois that the work of a successful community organizer is to devise and map out solutions and strategies with the express goal of moving protesters to "action through campaigns that win concrete changes." In Chicago, broken streetlights were facilitators to discuss jobs, education and crime. In Cairo, poorly made videos and American infidels are the torches that ignited the flames of unrest in an already unstable situation.
Think about it -- thousands of miles away from Chicago, people -- angry, vicious people - under the banner of the late al Qaeda leader Osama 'Alinsky' Bin Laden are rallying together under the Islam black flag of "common self interest."
In the Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt, and even in Libya, the means to the end may be more violent and destructive than what went down on the Southside of Chicago, but it's the same philosophy at work. In Chicago, picketing opened the door to demanding stop signs be fixed and progressed from there. In Benghazi, it started with burning American flags; an embassy was then destroyed and innocent lives were lost as ancient grievances were resurrected from the hot desert sand to make a statement against America, the Great Satan, and Isaac, Ishmael's arch enemy, also known as the nation of Israel.
Whether residing in Chicago, Washington DC, or a remote compound in Pakistan, in their efforts to "make something happen," community organizers have their own unique ways of applying conflict for change.
Although the gripes and tactics are more primitive, what is actually happening in the Islamic world is simply this: common people with a common agenda are coming together, in their own uniquely violent way, to address a common concern. In Obama's Chicago, the goal was to whip up the community to a "fighting pitch" to address political and social justice. In this case, the goal is clearly to deliver "Death to America."
Similar to Alinsky's recommendations in his radical rules handbook, Middle Eastern protesters are merely exhibiting neighborhood empowerment in a culturally innovative way. From a tactical point of view, any community organizer worth his salt would have to admit that the community-organizing stratagem Barack Obama so closely identifies with is what is now crudely on display in the Arab world.
Maybe that explains why the perpetually fundraising Barack Obama is hesitant to criticize the chaos; he recognizes that what's going on thousands of miles from Chicago is an impressive show of "collective power," where a community vision has moved our Muslim brothers and sisters to action. It could be that our Community Organizer-in-Chief, who once praised people for "reshap[ing] their mutual values and expectations and rediscover[ing] the possibilities of acting collaboratively," actually believes that throwing stones, ambushing diplomats, and burning American flags is just another kind of neighborhood effort to foster lasting change.
2016 Obama's America takes audiences on a gripping visual journey into the heart of the world’s most powerful office to reveal the struggle of whether one man's past will redefine America over the next four years. The film examines the question, "If Obama wins a second term, where will we be in 2016?"
Across the globe and in America, people in 2008 hungered for a leader who would unite and lift us from economic turmoil and war. True to America’s ideals, they invested their hope in a new kind of president, Barack Obama. What they didn't know is that Obama is a man with a past, and in powerful ways that past defines him--who he is, how he thinks, and where he intends to take America and the world.
Immersed in exotic locales across four continents, best selling author Dinesh D’Souza races against time to find answers to Obama’s past and reveal where America will be in 2016. During this journey he discovers how Hope and Change became radically misunderstood, and identifies new flashpoints for hot wars in mankind’s greatest struggle. The journey moves quickly over the arc of the old colonial empires, into America’s empire of liberty, and we see the unfolding realignment of nations and the shape of the global future.
Emotionally engaging, 2016 Obama’s America will make you confounded and cheer as you discover the mysteries and answers to your greatest aspirations and worst fears.
You think President Obama is avoiding the subject of the economy?
Think again.
In reality, thoughts and ideas about the economy, and about economics, and about money – especially thoughts about other people’s money – animate just about everything that President Obama says and does. He is fixated on his belief that it is a grave injustice for a private individual, family or organization to be financially successful, and he is determined that his presidency will be the one to save our country from this “problem.”
So, while President Obama conveniently ignores the data on our current economic conditions – 8.3% unemployment, a decline in manufacturing, a rise in unemployment benefits claims and a drop in the labor force participation rate – he nonetheless cannot stop talking about the economy, and his vision of economic “transformation.” His contempt for individual economic achievements is a part of who he is – he cannot stop being himself.
The President’s recent obsession about Mitt Romney’s tax returns is only his latest in a long history of fussing about other people being wealthy. And the President’s disdainful attitude towards privately possessed wealth should surprise absolutely no one- his own father was also a powerful governmental figure who displayed this same kind of indignation.
Barack Hussein Obama Sr., the biological father of our President, was a bureaucrat in the communist government of Kenya back when the nation first declared its independence in the 1960’s. And while Kenya’s government was at that time moving towards pro-Western, free-market economic reforms, Obama staunchly opposed such changes.
Thus, Mr. Obama published an academic paper in 1965, responding to his government colleagues who supported the westernization of Kenya. Entitled “Problems Facing Our Socialism,” Mr. Obama advised Kenya’s then-President Jomo Kenyatta against relying on private investors, private capital, and private property ownership, as a means of improving the country’s dreadful economy. Why was private capital and investment a problem? Because, Mr. Obama reasoned, private investors inevitably seek to earn “dividends” from their investments, and “turning a profit” was the gravest of all immoralities. Instead, Mr. Obama proposed higher taxes on the wealthy, and a redistribution of that money, for the “collective good” of the nation.
“Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income,” Mr. Obama wrote, “so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.” In the view of Barack Hussein Obama Sr., the right of the individual person to freely work, earn, and invest, meant nothing. All that mattered was the “collective good” of the nation. And if confiscating certain people’s hard-earned money could help benefit “everyone,” then so be it. That wealth would be put to better use, Mr. Obama argued, if it were controlled by the leader of the government.
Given this bit of President Obama’s familial history, it is not surprising that throughout his public life he himself has advocated for many of the same ideas that his father did over half a century ago. During the last presidential election cycle, alone, then-Senator Obama pushed for higher income taxes on “the rich” and higher business taxes on “excess profits” (his definition of “rich” and “excessive” changed almost weekly during the campaign); higher taxes on energy companies; government-imposed limits on private corporate salaries; and – his father would be so proud – higher taxes on dividend earnings. He even suggested at one point that the U.S. government should start taxing capital – not a new tax on interest or dividends derived from investment capital, but a tax on money sitting in banks doing nothing.
Now, four years later, the President is running for re-election in an economic environment made weaker by his own policies and ideas. And it is easy to dismiss as “mere politics” the President’s obsession with Mr. Romney’s net worth, his past work at a venture capital firm, and his annual tax returns – presumably the President is trying to portray Mr. Romney as a heartless aristocrat who is “out of touch” with everyday middleclass Americans.
But given what we know of President Obama and his expressed views of the world, it also stands to reason that, for him, the wealth that private citizen Mitt Romney possesses – as well as the wealth possessed by other private citizens like Mr. Romney – really is the most serious problem facing America today. Even just last week, amid more negative economic reports, the President delivered yet another of his speeches on his “new vision of America where prosperity is shared.”
What the President does not seem to understand (and what his father seemingly never understood), is that prosperity must first be created – by inventors, executives, entrepreneurs, investors, small business owners, and yes – sometimes even by “rich people” – before it can be re-distributed and “shared” by anybody. And if a society chooses to punish its wealthy members with ever-expanding taxation, rather than encouraging them to create more wealth, then eventually even the smartest of politicians run out of wealth to re-distribute.
So will the U.S. return to being a country where anybody can pursue the “American dream” without fear of retribution? Or has President Obama successfully supplanted the American dream with – to paraphrase one of his book titles – the dreams from his father?
We, the people, will have our say on this in November. Let’s hope we all make an informed choice.
It’s not every day that a guy provokes the rage of the President of the United States. Now the President has launched a ferocious attack against me and my film 2016: Obama’s America. Posting his comment on barackobama.com, Obama calls the film “an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear” him by engaging in “subterranean conspiracy theories and false, partisan attacks.”
