Face-to-Face with Young Marxist Obama: Remembering My Days as an Anti-Apartheid Student Activist

I was going through some old photos and found this picture of me graduating from Occidental College back on June 9, 1979. As you can see, I'm wearing a red arm band. I was doing this to protest Occidental College's investments in South Africa. The fellow handing me my diploma was Occidental College president Richard C. Gilman. As I've written before, I was one of the founders of the anti-apartheid group that President Obama mentions in his book, Dreams of My Father.

From what Obama writes, I guess I had the unusual opportunity to meet the young Barack Obama at a turning point in his life. In Dreams of My Father, Obama writes he got one of the early signs of his interest (and ability) in public speaking during his participation in an anti-apartheid rally at Occidental College in Los Angeles in the fall of 1980.

I met him later that same year in late December 1980. At the time, I was in my second year of graduate school at Cornell. I was visiting a girlfriend who was still attending Occidental College who introduced me to him and his friend Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, a wealthy Pakistani student.

My most vivid memory of my time visiting with Obama was the way he strongly argued a rather simple-minded version of Marxist theory. I remember he was passionate about his point of view. As I remember, he was articulating the same Marxist theory taught by various professors at Occidental College. Based on my more detailed studies at Cornell, I remember I made a strong argument that his Marxist ideas were not in line with contemporary reality - particularly the practical experience of Western Europe.

I went on to become an assistant professor of political science at Williams College in MA, and won the William Anderson Award from the American Political Science Association for my doctoral dissertation. See,

http://anonymouspoliticalscientist.blogspot.com/2010/01/victory-is-so-sweet-for-those-who-have.html

Obama, of course, became President of the United States in 2009. I can't help but wonder if my common sense arguments ended up impacting his decision-making and career planning.

Nevertheless, I think my experience with the young Barack Obama is useful evidence of why he was able to win the trust and support of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Alice Palmer. In 1995, as you may know, Alice Palmer represented the state of Illinois' 13th District. After she decided to run for the United States Congress she named Obama as her hand-picked successor to replace her. In June 1986, Palmer wrote an article for the Communist Party USA's newspaper, the People's Daily World, now the People's Weekly World. Amazingly, it detailed her experience at the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Regarding Rev. Wright's affection for Marxism and socialism, please view the YouTube video below:



My gut feeling is that Obama won the trust of folks like Palmer because he never surrendered that tough, Marxist socialist ideology I saw in him as a sophomore at Occidental College. All in all, it takes me back to remember my days as a young revolutionary, the moments when - like Barack Obama - I sincerely believed a Marxist socialist revolution was coming to turn everything around and to create a new, fairer and more just world.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Your Revolution Failed: An Open Letter to Surprised Democrats

I'm writing this post to the surprised Democrats who do not understand the implications of Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts. As you may know, I'm an award-winning political scientist who is published in the area of child labor and child welfare reform. I have taught at both the University of Oregon and Williams College in MA. I think you might benefit from enlarging your theoretical perspective to take into account a greater number of key facts:

A) Did Republican's Block Obama's Agenda?: No. The reality is that the Democrat party coalition has been divided by Obama's hard left point of view. If he had been able to persuade his fellow Democrats that his ideas - including the public option - were wise, then he would have easily overcome Republican party opposition.

B) Were Jobs Created by the Stimulus Package?: No. You have to admit that unemployment is higher now than when the stimulus package was enacted. Unemployment is way above Obama's original predictions of what would happen in the absence of the stimulus package. The reality of the situation is that the stimulus package has made a bad situation worse. For more insight on why this happened, please read Burton Folsom's excellent book Raw Deal or New Deal (2009).

C) Was Brown's Victory a Result of Coakley's Weaknesses?: No. Martha Coakley won her last statewide election in MA with 75% of the vote. She had the full support of the local Democrat party machine, the full support of the White House, and the traditional support of Democrats inspired by the Kennedy family legacy. Moreover, Scott Brown was way behind in the polls - with little campaign capacity or money - up until weeks before election day.

D) Is Obama Really a Marxist Socialist?: Yes. Obama was a sophomore at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA when I first met him in the fall of 1980. I can share with you that he was already an ardent Marxist socialist at that time. In addition, while I was teaching political science at Williams College, I got to know Prof. Roger Boesche - Obama's favorite professor - on a close, intellectual basis. Boesche is a strong advocate of socialism. If Obama has evolved out of his early Marxist socialist ideology, he has not - to date - provided the public with a detailed explanation of this process or even admitted his earlier affiliation with Marxism.

The reality of the situation is that we came very close to losing our nation's cherished traditions and advantages last year.

Scott Brown's historic victory indicated the high water mark of socialism in the U.S. for at least a generation. Thankfully, new media and the hard work of patriotic citizens averted a crisis which would have doomed our nation to economic weakness and eventual military defeat.

Luckily, a new anti-Marxist anti-socialist Republican party is forming in reaction to Obama's agenda. In retrospect, I'm thankful that the wisdom of our Founding Fathers - the creation of a bicameral legislative branch - successfully protected us from the temporary power of an extraordinary charismatic leader.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Obama FAIL in NYC: Pressure Mounts to Move Terror Trial

Thankfully, one of the best results of Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts is that even Obama's allies feel comfortable confronting one of his most foolish decisions. This is an interesting video which illustrates how Obama's power and influence has declined in the last year. Even as President of the United States, you cannot fix stupid.

Barack Obama - Your Ship Has Sunk: Framing The Failed Revolutionary

Apparently, someone leaked the talking points behind Obama's State of the Union speech earlier. I'm confident that this memo is an accurate prediction of where he will go tonight. To help objective journalists confront the Obama spin machine, here's my take on the big themes wrapped around the Obama Presidency:

1. Obama is a Marxist socialist who pretended that he was a centerist to get elected in 2008.

2. To jam through his Marxist socialist agenda he has sought to exaggerate the possibility of a second Great Depression even though our knowledge of modern monetary policy makes this outcome physically impossible.

3. The stimulus package made things worse - as evidenced by the higher than expected jobs loses associated with its quick and decisive implementation early in 2009.

4. Today, Obama continues to make the economy worse by attacking investors, business people and employers. Much like the New Deal Era, Obama's hatred of the capitalist economy is is causing it to perform in a less than optimal level.

5. As Americans realized Obama was a genuine Marxist socialist, they have rebelled through Tea Party demonstrations, mobilizing themselves on-line and on the ground, and by working hard for candidates who oppose Marxist socialist policies including ObamaCare.

6. We now see a new, revived Republican party building itself up in reaction to Obama extremist agenda. The members of this new electoral coalition know that Obama despises the middle class - its hard work, its values, its cultural strength.

7. As a nation, our present agenda is to neutralize as much of Obama's power as possible so that he can't weaken our defenses against terrorists, so that he can't do more harm to our economy, and so that we can use other institutions to hunt out corruption in Congress and other institutions.

In a parliamentary system, Barack Obama would be removed from office because his views are so completely at odds with the majority of the American people and because he has not performed well at his job. In our U.S. system, however, he will still be our President for another three years, at least. President Obama's big revolutionary dreams have been sunk like a leaky freighter in a shallow harbor. He will be lecturing us from a lifeboat from now on...

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Lonely Days and Lonely Knights: Augustine 25 Was Once a MA Republican Political Science Professor

Republican Scott Brown's victory in MA is especially gratifying to me because I was once a resident of Massachusetts and active in Republican party politics.

As you may know, I was a young assistant professor at Williams College in MA between 1986 and 1989. While I was there, Williams College had the reputation of being the number one liberal arts college in the nation according to U.S. News & World Report.


As a young assistant professor, I was only one of three registered Republicans on the faculty. While I was there, I was friendly with two of the socialist professors who shaped the early intellectual life of Barack Obama while he was at Occidental College in Los Angeles - Professors Roger Boesche and Carlos Egan. I had known both Boesche and Egan when they were political science professors at Occidental College, my undergraduate institution.

Personally, I witnessed the damage caused by affirmative action face-to-face as objectively more qualified white faculty candidates were discriminated against in favor of African-Americans without comparable publication or research records. I complained about this injustice at the time...stressing the idea that affirmative action took away the honor of being a Williams College professor.

My own credentials, by the way, were somewhat spectacular since I was the winner of the William Anderson Award from the American Political Science Association in 1989. See, http://www.apsanet.org/content_4121.cfm

All in all, I'm so pleased to see Scott Brown elected as MA's next U.S. Senator. If the Democrat party liberals who ran Williams College had been more kind to me, then they might have had someone on the faculty who could have predicted the forces which lead to Brown's upset victory over Martha Coakley. Instead, it looks like liberal Democrats in Massachusetts (and elsewhere) were shocked and surprised by this result. It's sad that being the right sex, color and political ideology is now so much more important to college administrators and faculty than being able to explain and predict the political future...

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.