By Melanie Philips.
With all eyes glued to the collapse of global capitalism as we know it, attention has been somewhat distracted from the race to lead what still remains the most powerful nation on earth - the United States. We ignore it at our peril.
From the shockingly partisan presentation by the pro-Obama media on both sides of the Atlantic, you'd think this was a contest between twin pillars of rectitude and inspirational high seriousness on the Democratic side, and a joke Republican ticket consisting of an erratic old man and a brainless, wacko, gun-toting beauty queen, who in a fit of madness John McCain picked as his vice-presidential candidate.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, the beauty queen in question, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, has struck an enormous chord with Middle America. As a result, Barack Obama's media supporters are making a huge effort to destroy her.
Inquiry
Now the Left thinks it has shot its moose. It has been crowing that an inquiry by Alaska's legislature has found Palin abused her office by firing Alaska's Commissioner of Public Safety for refusing to fire in turn Palin's former brother-in-law, Trooper Michael Wooten.
This really is a case of half-baked Alaska. First, the inquiry's conclusions were ambiguous. It found that Palin had violated public trust through using official action for personal interest; but it also said the firing was a proper and lawful exercise of her authority, and that personal interest had only been a contributory factor in the Commissioner's firing.
And just what was that personal interest? Palin wanted a state Trooper fired because he had assaulted his 11-year-old stepson with a stun gun, been caught drinking alcohol in his patrol car, and the Palins say was threatening to kill a member of their family.
Certainly, there was a conflict of interest because Wooten was the Governor's sister's ex-husband. But shouldn't the real question be why such a man was
not fired?
What is really astounding, however, is the hue and cry over this non-event in Alaska while a raft of disturbing evidence about Senator Obama's connections is being either glossed over or not reported at all.
This may come as a shock to most people, but Obama is at the centre of a network of radical associations which he has tried to conceal.
Take for example his relationship with William Ayers, founder of the terrorist Weather Underground which bombed federal buildings in the 1960s and who has consistently maintained his radical views ever since.
Obama's own political career was actually launched in Ayers's Chicago house at a fundraising-event in 1995 which fired the starting gun for his run at the Illinois Senate.
Not only that, Obama and Ayers both sat on the boards of two organisations, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund. These organisations put into practice Ayers's revolutionary ideology by channelling money supposed to fund regular educational projects into extreme radical groups instead.
Obama now says he didn't know of Ayers's terrorist past and never endorsed his views, simply working with him on an educational project. But it defies belief he didn't know about Ayers, who was notorious in Chicago.
In 2001, indeed, Ayers told a magazine: 'I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.'
The crucial point was that this educational project was itself a vehicle for subversion; in the view of Ayers, its driving force, education was 'the motor-force of revolution'. Moreover, Obama wrote a rave review about Ayers' book on criminal justice, which compared America to South Africa under apartheid.
Scandal
Through the Woods Fund, Obama also funnelled millions of dollars to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Described by an academic sympathiser as 'a uniquely militant organisation', ACORN played a significant role in the sub-prime scandal - which detonated America's financial crisis - by physically intimidating banks into lowering credit standards for poor and minority customers.
The Obama campaign has paid an ACORN subsidiary $800,000 to register new voters. But now, numerous states are launching investigations into massive voter fraud being carried out by ACORN activists who are being caught falsifying voter registration cards, registering fictitious individuals and hounding voters to register multiple times.
But Obama's connections with ACORN go even deeper. Even though his campaign has denied this, for several years running he trained its activists and in 1992 even ran one of its voter registration projects.
Such radical links fit with other highly dubious associations Obama has made. We all
know that, under pressure, he distanced himself from his longstanding mentor Pastor Wright, who infamously coined the phrase 'God damn America!'
But Obama never distanced himself from the anti-white teachings of his church, which was heavily influenced by the philosophy of the black racist James Cone who claimed that 'whiteness is the symbol of the antichrist'.
And after the controversy over Wright, Obama has become close to another preacher, Jim Wallis, who spews out the same anti-American message - once calling the U.S. 'the great power, the great seducer, the great captor and destroyer of human life'.
That's not all. ACORN is heavily involved with a Marxist group called the Chicago New Party, whose strategy is to force the Democratic Party to the far Left by infiltrating it and ' burrowing from within'. In 1996, the New Party exulted that one of its members who had just been successful in the political primary season was - Barack Obama.
Guilt
Whenever any of this surfaces, the Left tries to suppress it by screaming 'guilt by association'. Not so. This is guilt by participation.
The left cries 'smear' and 'racism'. On the contrary - if Obama wasn't a black Democrat, with this history his candidacy would have been toast before it got started.
Just consider if the boot had been on the other foot and McCain's political career had been launched by an abortion clinic bomber; his mentor for 20 years had been a Ku Klux Klansman, and he had paid nearly a million dollars to far-Right militias who strong-armed voters into fraudulent registrations.
Of course, there is no suggestion that Obama supports terrorism or intimidation. But the question is whether through expediency or ideological sympathy or a combination of the two, he has allowed himself to be associated with thinking that threatens the basic values of America and Western society.
This may sound too incredible for words. But what's really incredible is that, with dozens of reporters feverishly combing Alaska for any evidence to tarnish Sarah Palin, the mainstream media has largely refused to investigate any of this.
What's really incredible is that a man with such a background in anti-Western thinking can now stand on the verge of becoming the leader of the free world.
Please don't get me wrong. I am not a particular fan of John McCain. I think he is indeed erratic, and has run a lousy campaign. And the exhausted Republicans deserve to lose. But the prospect of Obama in the White House as America's first far-Left radical president is deeply worrying.
It would be a crowning triumph for the anti-Western ideology which has wrought such havoc on both sides of the Atlantic.
The reason Sarah Palin has struck such a chord is that Middle America sees her as the first candidate in its lifetime who stands against that destructive nihilism. That's why she is the key target for Western radicals who are now poised to gain the biggest prize of all.
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