As an ex-Marxist, I think it is fair to say that being a Marxist is more of a religion than a scientific pursuit. Although you can, with great effort, change a scientific consensus, it is almost impossible to change someone’s religious beliefs. This is particularly true when traditional contemporary religions are in decline.
As a Marxist, you can enjoy all the freedom of being an atheist (sex, drugs, libertine attitudes) while at the same time enjoying the fellowship and group activities organized by your peers including the nearly constant planning sessions, anti-war protests, and pre-revolutionary activities of the day. The mix gives you a meaning to what is probably an already depressing, exceedingly shallow and unaccomplished life. For insight into the life of a young Marxist, please check out my article below.
The best part is that even though history has demonstrated the utter failure of Marxism as a philosophy, witness the hundreds of millions mass murdered by Communist regimes in the 20th Century, Marxists can pretend to themselves that these earlier regimes were “not really socialist.” The same is true of the horrifying modern examples of the failure of Communism in say Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela.
At any rate, when you confront Marxists with the evidence of their fecklessness they react negatively because you are, in effect, challenging their whole identity, their social group, their career choices and so on. You aren’t just knocking the ridiculousness of their untenable beliefs you’re knocking everything about them.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
In all the mad rush of the last few weeks, I was not aware that IRS employees right here in Laguna Niguel - where I live and work - were involved in efforts to harm Tea Party or conservative groups. I thought all of these rogue agents were gathered together far away in Cincinnati, OH. Now, I am expecting some of my neighbors out here to be doing the perp walk.
According to CNN, IRS staff in Laguna Niguel, CA
participated in the effort to discriminate against
Tea Party and conservative groups.
They were doing so by making it harder for these groups to secure their status as 501 ( c ) ( 4 ) organizations.
According to CNN, Lois Lerner, who was the director of tax-exempt organizations for the IRS, indicated last month that the IRS had targeted these groups because they had those words in their names. She said the activity took place at the IRS office in Cincinnati, which handles applications for 501(c)(4) status.
CNN, however, opened up documents that suggest at least three other IRS offices did the same dirty deed including the one within walking distance from my home in Laguna Niguel. CNN reports that IRS officials in Washington and California contacted conservative groups to demand more information before approving the groups' requests for tax-exempt status.
The American Center for Law and Justice, a legal group representing numerous conservative organizations, provided CNN with four such letters: one each from IRS offices in Washington; Cincinnati; El Monte, California, and Laguna Niguel, California.
The Chet Holifield Federal Building
is something of an eyesore
in Laguna Niguel, CA.
I drive past that building in Laguna Niguel nearly every other day and view it from a distance when I take a walk in the park. It is chilling to know that Obama's re-election in 2012 benefitted, in part, from the intolerable and discriminatory things taking place in this odd looking building.
As you might know, Chet Holifield Federal Building was constructed in Laguna Niguel, California, between 1968 and 1971. William L. Pereira & Associates designed it with an unusual stepped pyramid silhouette. The unusual form references ziggurats, ancient Mesopotamian temples. Here in Laguna Niguel, we usually call in the ziggurat building for short. The parking lot of this building is a total mess. It really is an eyesore in terms of its exterior appearance.
I guess Obama and his crew were never afraid that one of the people working at this IRS office might contact me and share what was actually taking place in terms of harming Tea Party and conservative applicants. Given what I know about young Obama and his ideology - and what I know about his time in Chicago - it is not difficult for me to believe that Obama authorized discrimination against Tea Party and conservative groups. I do not think most people appreciate how much young Obama sincerely hated our American capitalist system.
I do not think most people trully appreciate what it means to be a friend of Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright or Alice Palmer. If they did they would terrified of the Obama administration and demanding that someone go to jail for this abuse of power.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I watched Mitt Romney dominate the presidential debate immediately after viewing the time travel movie, Looper. If I had access to time travel, I would use it now to leverage my role as the only person on Earth willing to testify that young Obama was a genuine Marxist socialist in 1980. Energized by Romney’s performance, I am asking myself what can I do - right now - to forestall a real life enactment of the future imagined by Rian Johnson, writer and director of Looper. After all, Johnson’s vision looked so bleak that my wife’s reaction was to say: “Looks like Obama won.”
If I had the advantage of time travel, I would go full on Bruce Willis right now. I would go to 2008 and introduce myself to the television studios of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.
I believe public knowledge of my face-to-face confrontation with young Obama’s ideological extremism in 1980 would have helped prevent Obama’s election in 2008. My account of Obama’s anticipation of a Communist revolution would have alerted voters to the reality that Obama was not a bipartisan politician, but rather a long-standing advocate of class warfare and other hateful ideas promoted earlier by the likes of Frank Marshall Davis. My story would have highlighted the real Obama, the Obama who asserted, as he did at a at a Martin Luther King Day speech at the University of Chicago in 2002, “that rich people are all for non-violence” simply because “they want to make sure people don’t take their stuff.”
I would share with the people of 2008 that Obama is stuck in the ideological past. He is a partisan extremist who cannot imagine doing what Clinton did to save the American economy or uplift the black urban underclass. Obama is the sort of ideological purist who would never pivot to the middle. I would tell the people of 2008 that Obama’s lack of bipartisan skill would blow a perfectly good deal with House Speaker John Boehner for reducing the federal deficit. Instead of cutting the deficit in half, I would tell them Obama will increase the deficit more than all the presidents before him. I would alert the people of 2008 to the fact that Obama would be eager to weaken the previously rock solid work requirements of welfare reform. I would repeat a key line from the movie: “Trust me, I’m from the future.”
Lacking the option of time travel, I still think my story helps explain why it was fairly easy for Mitt Romney to defeat Barack Obama in a formal debate. I can report that young Obama was no genius. I saw signs of that young Obama last week when Romney pointed out that in 25 years in business he had never seen a special tax break for corporations who send jobs overseas. Obama - without his teleprompter and entourage of liberal sycophants – is apparently incapable of reacting forcefully to a verbal punch from a true business and political heavyweight.
Temperamentally, I remember young Obama treated my more accurate understanding of world history with an abrupt, even demagogic hostility. I distinctly remember young Obama’s dismissive, arrogant attitude even as I was presenting him with compelling evidence that Marxist theory was dead wrong at predicting the path of European social and economic events. I remember schooling young Obama so thoroughly in just one evening myself that he left my girlfriend’s house agreeing with my more moderate neo-Marxist perspective.
Culturally, I can report that when I debated young Obama in 1980 he talked like a white guy. I did not see a trace of the phony accent that highlighted Obama’s shocking comments regarding the redistribution of the wealth to a conference of black ministers at Hampton University in Virginia in 2007. In fact, the young Obama I met in 1980 talked like a wealthy, privileged white guy. It never occurred to me to think of young Obama as African-American. After all, the African-American students at Occidental College were largely uninvolved in radical campus politics. They were more likely to be active in the Gospel choir than the Democrat Socialist Alliance. Instead, young Obama seemed more like a foreign prince visiting in the United States.
While I cannot enjoy the benefits of time travel, I do live within six hours of Las Vegas, NV. I suspect my Bruce Willis moment will come when I share my story of debating young Marxist Obama with swing voters in the nearby Silver State. My wife and I have signed up to spend a weekend in Las Vegas walking precincts for the Romney/Ryan campaign. We will enjoy some meals, hotel accommodations, a night on the town and an opportunity to impact this historic election. I have my tagline ready: “Trust me, I’m from the past.”
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/
The photo I find to be most historically significant is the one that shows details from of the anti-apartheid rally of February 18, 1981, the rally that debuted Obama’s famous first skit in Obama’s Dreams from My Father. In contrast to Obama’s story, the banner above the event proclaims the somewhat more complex cause of “Affirmative Action & Divestiture NOW.” The photo features many of the real life figures who would become composite characters in Obama’s autobiography. These include my white ex-girlfriend, Caroline Boss, the radical student leader who improbably lent her grandmother’s name - and much of her scintillating personality - to the big-boned, black “Regina” character.
For the record, I view these photos from the perspective of an accident victim looking at a long ago car wreck. Caroline and I had parted ways just weeks before this rally. As I recall, the split was painful enough to cause us to temporarily adopt the roles of imaginary divorce lawyers, lawyers who combed through our conflicting feelings and amicably laid out the details of what became our eventual, imperfect separation.
For many years, young Obama was simply a footnote in my own intellectual autobiography. He was an early witness to the process in which I abandoned my expectation of a Communist revolution, dropped my old Occidental College friends, and eventually became a Republican business owner. In contrast, Obama held tight to his Occidental College friends and their causes.
“Decades later,” Margot Mifflin writes in response to these photos, “Obama would spur a new generation of students into political action, forging a connection between sixties radicals and media-savvy millennials.” Mifflin, of course, is only telling part of the story. She leaves out the part where at least one of Obama’s friends was not so pleased by the impact of affirmative action and never quite forgot what it was like to sacrifice everything he had for scholarly achievement only to learn, at the end of the process: “Sorry, you’re white.”
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I want to thank O.C. congressional candidate, Mike Munzing, for taking out time to record my recent speech at the San Juan Capistrano Republican Women Federated meeting on April 20, 2011.
I think this is a pretty good start at explaining the path that lead Obama and I to become Marxist socialists in 1980, the minor role I played in persuading him that there was not going to be any Communist revolution in the U.S., the straight line of ideological consistency passing from Frank Marshall Davis, me, Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright and Alice Palmer, and the dangers posed to our nation by an Obama second term, a second term that would give him the opportunity to stack the Supreme Court with people who would bend the Constitution to facilitate his Marxist socialist perspective.
One of the sweet ironies surrounding my speech is that, on this same day, President Barack Obama spoke at a "town hall" at Facebook headquarters, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Palo Alto, California. Palo Alto is within minutes of where he and I first met in Portola Valley in the fall of 1980.
By the way, please check out the nice applause line for Tricia - for her bravery - in helping me get this message out at about 11:00 minutes into the video.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
It was kind of creepy to watch the young white guy praising President Obama. I don't think this young guy understands what it is like to apply for a number of teaching jobs and to keep coming in second to the minority candidate because of affirmative action. It's painful to get ready for those interviews, know you are the strongest candidate, and then end up living in poverty, without health insurance simply because you are a poor white guy and not a member of a wealthy, privileged, politically protected minority group.
I knew the young Obama. I can verify that he was an ideological extremist in 1980. My story has appeared in Michael Savage's Trickle Up Poverty, Paul Kengor's Dupes, Stanley Kurtz's Radical-In-Chief and Jack Cashill's Deconstructing Obama.
I don't think any older white guy should "trust and respect" Obama until Obama comes clean about his long-standing commitment to extremist revolutionary philosophy. Obama should, at the very least, explain his ties to the extremist Midwest Academy.
My wife has been looking for a new job since March 2009. It is difficult to even write about the financial pain we have suffered as a consequence of the low unemployment associated with the Obama stimulus package. I pray that the American people wake up to this disaster and take the actions they need to take to return our country to fairness and prosperity.
Here's my GOTV video.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
If you'd like a quick glimpse of the young Barack Obama's ideology, then I recommend you check out my article in American Thinker this morning called Meeting Young Obama. As far as I can tell, this article shifts Obama's biography by linking young Obama to the Democrat Socialist Alliance at Occidental College and verifying his commitment to Marxist socialist ideology in much greater detail. I'll be speaking on the topic of "Why Obama's Past is More Important Than His Future" at 9:00 a.m. on April 16, 2011 at the regular breakfast meeting of the Capistrano Valley Republican Women, Federated.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I thought I'd try my hand at the traditional get out the vote commerical. Here's my version. It features my thanks to all the folks who helped me get out the message of young Obama's commitment to Marxist ideology. In this video, I tip my hat to my father, Richard Drew, my co-author Michael Patrick Leahy, and published authors Michael Savage who wrote Tricke Up Poverty, Paul Kengor who wrote Dupes and Stanley Kurtz who just published Radical-In-Chief.
All three leaned hard on my observations and broke out new details consistent with my take that Obama was an ardent Marxist by the fall of 1980. I grateful that they gave thoughtful attention to my brief insight into the mind of President Obama.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I'm predicting that my face to face observations regarding young Barack Obama's Marxist ideology will be of historical interest in the 2012 presidential campaign. In the meantime, I'm doing my part for opposition researchers by collecting what I can off the Internet and YouTube and posting this material here. I'm grateful that Rick Tomei pulled together the audio and video to make this more interesting to follow.
My main point, as always, is that my connection to Barack Obama was powerful and intense. I got a chance to watch the young Marxist socialist Obama in action...fighting for his belief that a socialist revolution was coming to the U.S.A. I still think Obama owes us all an explanation for how, if at all, his views changed over time.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
As you may know, I got hit with my 15 minutes of fame last week. The comments I've been making regarding young Barack Obama's commitment to Marxist socialist thought have finally leaked into the larger sphere of general knowledge. Below, I've added a YouTube video series of my comments as a guest on Breitbart TV's show, The B-Cast.
It has been a lot harder to get this story into the mainstream media than I thought. I'm guessing that my ties to Obama were so fragile and his sophomore era Marxism so innocent that the media didn't think it was worth investigating. Now, however, Obama's record speaks for itself and people are anxious to know whether or not he will tack to the center the way Bill Clinton did. My prediction is that he won't. As a devote of socialism, I think Obama's conscience will not allow him to give up his destructive idea of redistributing the wealth.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I was recently interviewed by the folks at Breitbart TV's "The B-Cast" on the topic of young Barack Obama's commitment to Marxist ideology.
Today, I found the embed code for the first part of that interview so you can see it yourself and - I expect - install it on your own blog site for your own readers and viewers. I'm trying to get this story into the mainstream media. My best idea, for now, is to ask for your assistance in alerting print, radio and television reporters/pundits to my story.
In retrospect, I wish I had been more concise. I'm not ready for prime time. My dream is someone will edit this down to a 2-3 minute piece - legally - that can be easily retransmitted on the Internet. Nevertheless, I'm grateful I got an opportunity to share what I know about the "red diaper" ideology of young Barack Obama.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
As you may know, my fifteen minutes of fame kicked in this week. Award-winning journalist, Ronald Kessler ran a story in Newsmax about me and my observations of the young Barack Obama's radical socialist perspective during his days at Occidental College in Los Angeles. One of the interesting things about this experience has been tracking how the information leaked out and which, if any, channels of communication worked the best.
One of my biggest surprises was the role that YouTube played in getting this message out. Ironically, the biggest impact - so far - has been the interview I did with Breitbart TV's "The B-Cast."
What is most curious to me, however, is that I came to the attention of the B-Cast staff through contacts who knew me from You Tube. Part of the problem is that I never got many hits on the You Tube videos I did in the past, so I assumed that it wasn't a well-regarded channel of information, at least for conservatives. I'm rethinking that assumption right now. At any rate, please subscribe to my You Tube channel. Now that I know people are looking at it, I'll take it more seriously and use it as a tool for getting around the mainstream media.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I was going through some old photos and found this picture of a much younger John Drew 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 spring of 1981.
I met him for the first time in late December 1980. By then, 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.
John Drew graduates from
Occidental College as a fully
trained Marxist in June, 1979.
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,
Obama, of course, became President of the United States in 2009. I cannot 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. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/
As you may know, the girls at Occidental College liked to dress up young men and take their pictures. There are some famous pictures of the young Barack Obama while he was at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA floating on the internet. Posted above, I have the rough equivalent from my own spell at this small liberal arts college. Personally, I was one of the founders of the anti-apartheid group that 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. According to his book, Dreams of My Father, Obama 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 had graduated from Occidental College in 1979.
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 Hassan.
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.
What is significant to me now, in retrospect, was the way he conceded to my argument. At the time, I remember that this was an early victory in my life...the ability to make a powerful, fact-based argument that changed minds. In retrospect, I don't know if he was just trying to restore peace...my gut feeling is that I persuaded him - at the very least - that his education at Occidental College was not really up-to-date or terribly valuable.
Ironically, he ended up leaving Occidental College and transfering to Columbia University in 1981.
I can identify with those "intellectuals" who report that Obama is easy to talk to and seems to take advice well. I think I was one of the first to see this behavior in action...at least according to the timeline presented about his intellectual development in Dreams of My Father.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
I'm noticing that Democrats are howling mad that folks are starting to see President Obama as a second Hitler. Above, I've posted a video that illustrates the issues. These videos are pretty common on YouTube. Most of the one's I've seen feature Hitler complaining about a video game or a pop star. Here's a link to a NYT The Caucus Blog that discusses the controversy: http://bit.ly/57mx6
To the Democrats, the Obama as Hitler meme is an outrageous charge. What they are missing is the way that Hitler was loved by the German people, the way Hitler was eager to control private sector businesses, and the fact that the NAZI abbreviation actually stood for the National Socialist German Worker's Party. Hitler wanted his own Olympic Games to celebrate his regime too.
Reviewing Democrat outrage, it seems to me that they think independents and conservatives do not understand that Hitler's government killed six million Jews during the Holocaust. Liberals seem to attack this comparison without fully appreciating the honest fear of big government and Obama that fuels this comparison. I do not think they completely understand how much damage Obama has already done to our economy with his stimulus package or the considerable danger of moving the U.S. toward a single-payer socialized medical system.
I have been the victim of Democrat ideology - due to affirmative action - so I know how Democrat ideals create real pain and suffering for innocent people. The fact that so many Democrats seem completely blind to the hurt and damage they do makes comparisons with Hitler surprisingly appropriate and healthy for our nation’s future.
Here’s my take away, when large numbers of people are comparing you to Hitler, it’s time to slow down and ask what are you doing to create this sort of extremely negative feedback…
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
Watching the events in Iran this week, I cannot help but think that a quick course in successful revolutions would benefit the freedom-seeking people of Iran.
The most important thing I would stress is that the popular Marxist socialist ideas of the past really aren't relevant to a real revolution. Marx completely underestimated the importance of the power of the state. Successful revolutions occur, in real life, when the existing regime is unable to repress its people because it runs out of ammunition, money, and willing soldiers.
Moreover, what usually tips the balance is outside foreign influence. Without the support of extra-national resources, the existing regime generally manages to temporarily concede enough, temporarily repress enough, and temporarily bluff enough to pull through the crisis. I recommend Theda Skocpol's book, States and Social Revolutionshttp://www.amazon.com/States-Social-Revolutions-Comparative-Analysis/dp/0521294991/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245217542&sr=8-1 which is a comparative analysis of political revolutions in Russia, France, and China. This book provides readers with insight on the reality, and not the emotional fantasy, of revolution.
The main point I'm trying to make is that Chairman Mao's ideas are probably more valuable than ideas like wearing green or having everyone show up at the same time, some place on a map. As Mao wrote: "A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous." Right now, I think most U.S. official observers are betting on the success of Ahmadinejad because they don't think the people in Iran have the willingness to take their revolution up to the level it would need to be to truly succeed. This cold realism, in part, is responsible for Obama's lackluster support of freedom fighters in Iran. For more details on the militaristic reality of modern day Iran, please see an excellent little article by Danielle Pletka and Ali Alfoneh at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/opinion/17pletka.html?ref=opinion.
Nevertheless, based on Skocpol's theories, what would need to happen to make the "Green" revolution in Iran successful?
1. Focus efforts on undermining the financial stability of Ahmadinejad's police and military powers. In a crisis, there is no better friend than ready cash. Thus, one of the secrets for success in overthrowing a corrupt regime is to drain it of the cash it needs to survive. Financial isolation of Ahmadinejad and his allies is extremely important. This means that anything which disrupts his ability to pay the police or the military is a great idea right now. Freezing bank accounts, slowing down financial services, cutting off foreign investment...all of this will have more impact than anything designed to emotionally "rally" the people.
2. Accept that outside assistance should be welcomed, not shunned, and open the gateways to international assistance. Under the old Marxist model, outside intervention was unnecessary...even counter-productive. The reality of revolution, however, is that it is extremely difficult to overthrow a corrupt regime without outside support. The Shah of Iran's family would probably still be in power if it had not been for the influence of U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Outside intervention is essential because a revolution is not usually winnable if it is a "fair" fight that only involves domestic vs. domestic forces. Even the U.S. was dependent on France during our revolutionary war. This means that the opposition to Ahmadinejad and his allies should look for outside cash and other resources to assist them at this crucial moment.
4. Beware of new faces. In moments of crisis, your best friends are your oldest and dearest friends. You know their strengths and weaknesses and you know the extent of their loyalty. The greatest danger for those seeking to overthrow a corrupt regime comes from their "new" friends. Although many of these new friends are decent and honest people, they are also more likely to be spies sent in to undermine your small and developing organization.
5. Trust your own perception and understanding. One of the great advantages of revolutionaries is that they see things fresh and trust their own judgment. This is actually a force multiplier for the freedom fighters because "trusting yourself" speeds up the decision-making process and activates the full use of your mind to take advantage of small moments, brief opportunities, and scarce resources that can make all the difference.
There are more and more ideas and insights I could offer, but sometimes - in emergency situations - it's best to keep things simple. Nevertheless, I'll close by saying that with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan all weakened by their own internal problems...this is an ideal time for a revolt in Iran along the lines articulated by anti-Ahmadinejad forces. My comments above are meant to represent the best distillation of my understanding of politics and social science. Personally, I'm convinced that the long-term prosperity of the whole region will be dependent on the full compulsory education of both men and women, the end of child labor, and the intelligent efforts of all of us - inside and outside of Iran - to adjust to a modern world were religions are judged by their unintended consequences....not their carefully planned promises.
