The "What is Obama" Debate

Just how radical is Barrack Obama and how much were his values shaped by his mother and grandparents? The debate continues here.

I would like to comment on a few points. First, there is Obama's mother. His defenders call her a Kansas girl, conjuring conforting, conservative values. That does not match with her biography. Remember, this is a woman who married two foreign Muslim men of color while in college. It is difficult for someone today to understand how radical that was in the early 1960s and on three different levels.

First, mixed-race couples were frowned on, even by people who championed civil rights. A friend who was in a mixed-race marriage in the 1960s was shot at when visiting her husband's family in the South. Please note, I am not condemning her, I am just pointing out how unusual it was.

If mixed-race couples were frowned on, mixed religion couples were outright discouraged. Even Catholics and Protestants or Christians and Jews marrying was a big deal. The country as a whole was far more religious in the 1960s than now and people were expected to marry within their own faith. Islam was so exotic that most Americans never even met one but she married two of them.

Finally, she married foreign nationals who had no intention of immigrating. Think about that. Both of her husbands were foreign exchange students who intended to, and did, move home after college.

So, Obama's mother was seeking and marrying intellectual men who were as far from American mainstream as possible. That she did it twice is important as is the fact that she spent most of her adult life living outside the US. This was a woman who did not like her native country. Some of this has to have rubbed off on the future president.

Obama spent his teens being raised by his grandparents. Again, their Kansas roots are often stressed but, remember, these people raised his mother. They would not be my first choice for imparting love of country to a future president.

What does that tell us about Obama himself? Not a lot, but what it does say argues that he did come from a radical past. Add in his own accounts of seeking out Marxists in college and it is hard to argue that Obama comes from moderate roots.