“Forbid it, Almighty God!” –Patrick Henry

If you are perplexed, even bewildered, by the number of Americans who embrace Barack Obama with a degree of admiration that is akin to a that associated with personality cults, I refer you to a lucid explanation for this phenomenon in the opening pages of the candidate’s political autobiography, The Audacity of Hope. He writes, “I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

Ahead of Obama’s election in 2008, in a column entitled “Obama’s Audacity of Deception Strategy,” I noted: “If you are perplexed by the number of Americans who have embraced Barack Obama with a degree of admiration that is associated with personality cults, I refer you to his own lucid explanation for this phenomenon in the opening pages of his political autobiography, The Audacity of Hope. Obama wrote, "I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

Beyond the projection and deception, however, elections have consequences. Some of Obama’s supporters, the formerly logical and rational, will be first in the soup line of deceived disappointees expressing buyer’s remorse. They will awaken from the stupor of all the good feelings that attracted them to Obama and face the hard realities of the Socialist agenda they enabled.

In this, the final week of the ‘08 presidential campaign, Obama bought 30 minutes of prime time on several networks to air an infomercial in which he endeavored to pass as something other than the ideological Socialist he is. Feigning the fiscal conservatism of Ronald Reagan, Obama claimed he would review the budget, line by line, and cut waste. He even made taxing and spending, a.k.a. “the collectivist redistribution of wealth,” sound like a noble democratic gesture.

At one point he said, “Just because I want to spread the wealth around, they call me a socialist. The next thing you know, they will call me a communist because I shared my peanut butter sandwich in kindergarten!”

Cute. Of course, Barack Obama isn’t proposing to “share” his sandwich. Instead, he’s proposing to take your sandwich and give it with someone he deems more worthy. He’s assuming that you aren’t charitable enough to share it yourself.

Truth is, it is unlikely Obama ever shared a sandwich with anyone. With an average annual income of more than $500,000 between 2000 and 2006, Barack and Michelle only gave two percent – two percent – of their income to charity. Obama’s running mate is even more miserly. The Bidens’ income averaged $260,000 over the last 10 years, but they averaged just $650 a year in charitable giving.

So much for “spreading the wealth around.”

Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain centered his soapbox message on Obama’s penchant to redistribute wealth, even uttering the word “socialist” in several interviews – and not a minute too soon.

Of course, Socialist policies are now the centerpiece of the once great Democrat Party, packaged under the aegis of “fairness and equality” or “investments in our infrastructure and people.”

Obama uses code words such as “political and economic justice” and “coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.” In the last two months, however, given the crisis of confidence in our economy, Obama’s Socialist rhetoric has become bolder. Perhaps he’s heeding the counsel of his mentors’ mentor, Karl Marx, who wrote, “A new revolution is possible only in consequence of a new crisis.”

The fingerprints of Obama’s radical Socialist mentors are all over his “vision for America” – from his early childhood tutor, Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis, to his black radical spiritual advisor, Jeremiah Wright, to the benefactors who launched his political career, radical terrorists William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

These are the Leftists who fed Obama’s unmitigated narcissism and shaped his warped worldview, which he now seeks to inflict upon the entire nation. Even his campaign icon implies “Obama over America.”

Of course, when asked about his relationship with these radicals, Obama responds, “[These people] are not advisors or donors to my campaign,” at which point an adoring press corps dutifully moves on to the next question.

Despite having spent 20 years as a disciple of Wright, the man who officiated at Obama’s marriage and baptized his children, the man whom Obama describes as “a father figure,” he claims he never inhaled any of his spiritual mentor’s racial hatred – never even heard any of it.

Obama claims that Bill Ayers was “just a guy in my neighborhood,” and “I was just eight years old when he was a terrorist.” However, Obama was 34 when Ayers used his radical celebrity to launch Obama’s political career, and he was 40 when this unrepentant terrorist was featured in a New York Times article (on the morning of September 11, 2001) and quoted in the opening paragraph proclaiming, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Ayers added, “America makes me want to puke.” Obama was working on his second major “philanthropic” project with Ayers at that time.

In addition, there are Obama’s ties to the Socialist New Party, the ACORN crowd, Father Michael Pfleger, Khalid al-Mansour, Kwame Kilpatrick, Louis Farrakhan, Tony Rezko, Rashid Khalidi, Raila Odinga and other haters, hard Leftists and convicted felons.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” All committed Socialists understand this principle.

For example, when Obama asserts, “We’ll ensure that economic justice is served – that’s what this election is about. … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” that is tantamount to buying votes.

Michelle Obama echoes her husband’s redistributionist philosophy: “The truth is, in order to get things like universal healthcare and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”

In 1916, a minister and outspoken advocate for liberty, William J. H. Boetcker, published a pamphlet entitled The Ten Cannots. “You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves.”

A century later, Democrats are utterly ignorant of these principles. In fact, Barack Obama’s campaign is built around their antithesis – “The Ten Cans.”

I was speaking with a friend recently, a man who lived most of his life under the Communist regime in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. He has spent several years and continues to incur many legal expenses in his endeavor to become a U.S. citizen, but he has since lost his enthusiasm.

“The prospect of an Obama presidency is like déjà vu for me,” he explained. “The socialist goal back home was that everyone had equal wealth. They met that goal – eventually no one had anything. Any attempt to work harder to achieve a better standard of living for your family was considered contrary to the welfare of the state, and dutifully discouraged. Socialism is a big hole, easy to fall into and hard to climb out of.”

He lamented, “The American dream is not something I want to wake up from – but too many Americans have no idea what they have, and are about to lose it. Socialism seems an appealing ideal, collective ownership, equal society, ‘sharing the wealth,’ et cetera. But it has a downside: It doesn’t work.”

Indeed it doesn’t work. It creates wards of the state – slaves, if you will.

In the 1980s, I spent enough time in Socialist countries, including the old USSR, to know that we want to avoid, at all costs, a USSA. If we could gather up all Americans who, knowingly or unknowingly, support collectivist policies like those espoused by Barack Obama and transport them to the old USSR for a week, they could see the terminus of such policies – the walking dead – and the wisest among them would rethink their support for statist concepts such as “sharing the wealth.”

It is no small irony that as the younger generations of former Communist countries around the world are moving rapidly toward liberty and free enterprise, our nation is moving rapidly toward Socialism and a tyranny of the few.

Barack Obama recently said, “I don’t find myself particularly scary or particularly risky.” It was a weak attempt at self-effacing humor, but make no mistake: Barack Hussein Obama’s Socialist policies are both scary and risky.

“Hope” and “change” may be pleasant catchall bromides, but as Benjamin Franklin wrote in Poor Richard’s Almanac, “He that lives upon Hope will die fasting.”

More to the point, Patrick Henry wrote of hope, “It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth – and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts.”

On change, John Adams wrote, “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

To that end, in 1787, the year our Constitution was adopted, Thomas Jefferson, wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Of course, Franklin was aware that many of our countrymen would not be willing to risk comfort and safety for liberty, and of them, he wrote, “They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

To that end, Samuel Adams, “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!”

So, has the time come for a call to arms?

Let’s not go there – yet.

“We’ve gone astray from first principles. We’ve lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core of everything that we’ve accomplished. Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.” –Ronald Reagan

(For more information on the character of the presidential candidates, see The McCain record and The Obama record.)

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Should Barack Obama succeed in deceiving a majority of voters next Tuesday, our readers have suggested two methods of protest: Either displaying your flag upside down [a sign of distress] or flying it at half mast – or both, for seven days, and doing the same on inauguration day, 20 January 2009.)