Dakota Beacon

How is it that the president of the United States holds such little regard for the US Constitution -- the Law of the Land? It is curious to note that in December 2013 President Obama hired John D. Podesta, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, to serve as his counselor. This is a revealing move.

As Obama faces congressional gridlock on his agenda for transforming America, Podesta was hired as a staunch proponent of using executive orders to bypass congress. Throwing the constitutional system of checks and balances to the wind, Obama appears determined to force his will arrogantly and unilaterally on the American people. Following the 2010 midterm victory by the Republicans, Podesta produced a 47-page document of unilateral actions -- executive orders. These actions, if adopted, could impact a broad range of initiatives from greenhouse gas emission standards on power plants to food safety to immigration.

Early evidence of Obama's disregard for the Constitution appeared on September 6, 2001 on Chicago's WBEZ-FM public radio program in which then Democrat presidential candidate Obama described our founding document as having "deep flaws." He went on to emphasize that America's Founding Father's had "an enormous blind spot" when drafting the Constitution. In the same broadcast he stated that the Constitution "reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day." Obama did not elaborate on the "flaws." If he was predisposed to objecting to the Constitution, then any elaboration would be secondary to his ideological belief.

Obama's thinking did not develop in a vacuum. He spent his formative years under the influence of others.
His father was an avowed socialist.
His mother was a communist sympathizer.
His teen mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a member of the Communist Party, USA.
His brother Roy Obama and cousin Odinga Obama were Marxists.
Barack Obama was an acolyte of Saul Alinsky.
Obama's run for the Illinois State Senate was launched by American terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn.
As a youth Obama attended Columbia University. Carrying his left-leaning influence from his formative years, it is little wonder that his predisposed attitude toward the Constitution as a flawed document was further nourished at Columbia.

One of Obama's classmates (Columbia Class of '83) who never knew Obama personally testifies to the liberal / progressive sentiment of the student body. Wayne Allyn Root ("Human Events") states "...I can tell you, almost to a man, my classmates in the Class of '83 proudly called themselves Marxist, communist or socialist. They bragged of being radical like a badge of honor."

In a piece for "Human Events" (4/14/2013) Root writes, "You see political science students at Columbia were taught a detailed plan designed by two former Columbia professors named Cloward & Piven to bring down 'the system,' destroy capitalism, and turn America into a socialist state.... Cloward & Piven taught that America could only be destroyed from within. Only by overwhelming the system with debt, welfare, and entitlements could capitalism and the America (sic) economy be destroyed."

Even before Obama and Root attended Columbia, the university had cultivated the progressive brand of liberalism for decades. For example, while teaching at Columbia in 1913, Charles Beard produced his major assault on the US Constitution in his work "Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States." Beard wrote from the perspective of a Marxist and economic determinist. His thinly disguised ideology predetermined his conclusion that the Founding Fathers created the Constitution to protect their own selfish economic interests rather than holding to the high principles of natural law and inalienable rights. This is the environment that cultivated Obama's thinking.

With this understanding of Obama's thinking, why should anyone be surprised at his disregard for the Constitution? In 2014 watch Barack Obama rule as an authoritarian through the use of Executive Orders. He is bound and determined to transform America into the image of what he thinks it should be with or without the help of congress.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).