http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/28/obama-affinity-marxists-dates-
college-days/

Obama Affinity to Marxists Dates Back to College Days
Barack Obama shrugs off charges of socialism, but noted in his own 
memoir that he carefully chose Marxist professors as friends in college. 


Barack Obama laughs off charges of socialism. Joe Biden scoffs at 
references to Marxism. Both men shrug off accusations of liberalism.

But Obama himself acknowledges that he was drawn to socialists and even 
Marxists as a college student. He continued to associate with Marxists 
later in life, even choosing to launch his political career in the 
living room of a self-described Marxist, William Ayers, in 1995, when 
Obama was 34.

Obama's affinity for Marxists began when he attended Occidental College 
in Los Angeles.

"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully," 
the Democratic presidential candidate wrote in his memoir, "Dreams From 
My Father." "The more politically active black students. The foreign 
students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural 
feminists."

Obama's interest in leftist politics continued after he transferred to 
Columbia University in New York. He lived on Manhattan's Upper East 
Side, venturing to the East Village for what he called "the socialist 
conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union."

After graduating from Columbia in 1983, Obama spent a year working for a 
consulting firm and then went to work for what he described as "a Ralph 
Nader offshoot" in Harlem.

"In search of some inspiration, I went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly 
Stokely Carmichael of …Black Panther fame, speak at 
Columbia," Obama wrote in "Dreams," which he published in
1995. "At the 
entrance to the auditorium, two women, one black, one Asian, were 
selling Marxist literature."

Obama supporters point out that plenty of Americans flirt with radical 
ideologies in college, only to join the political mainstream later in 
life. But Obama, who made a point of noting how "carefully" he chose his 
friends in college, also chose to launch his political career in the 
Chicago living room of Ayers, a domestic terrorist who in 2002 
proclaimed: "I am a Marxist."

Also present at that meeting was Ayers' wife, fellow terrorist 
Bernardine Dohrn, who once gave a speech extolling socialism, communism 
and "Marxism-Leninism."

Obama has been widely criticized for choosing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, 
an anti-American firebrand, as his pastor. Wright is a purveyor of black 
liberation theology, which analysts say is based in part on Marxist 
ideas.

Few political observers go so far as to accuse Obama, the Democratic 
presidential nominee, of being a Marxist. But Republican John McCain has 
been accusing Obama of espousing socialism ever since the Democrat told 
an Ohio plumber named Joe earlier this month that he wanted to "spread 
the wealth around."

Obama's running mate, Biden, recently contradicted his boss, saying: "He 
is not spreading the wealth around." The remark came as Biden was 
answering a question from a TV anchor who asked: "How is Senator Obama 
not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?"

"Are you joking? Is this a joke? Or is that a real question?" an 
incredulous Biden shot back. "It's a ridiculous comparison."

But the debate intensified Monday with the surfacing of a 2001 radio 
interview in which Obama lamented the Supreme Court's inability to enact 
"redistribution of wealth" -- a key tenet of socialism. On Tuesday, 
McCain said Obama aspires to become "Redistributionist-in-Chief."

Obama has managed to cultivate the image of a political moderate in 
spite of his consistently liberal voting record. In 2006, he published a 
second memoir, "The Audacity of Hope," that leaves little doubt about 
his adherence to the left.

"The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact," 
Obama wrote in "Audacity." "Much of what I absorbed from the
sixties was 
filtered through my mother, who to the end of her life would proudly 
proclaim herself an unreconstructed liberal."

National Journal magazine ranked Obama as the most liberal member of the 
Senate. The publication is far from conservative, employing such 
journalists as Linda Douglass, who resigned in May to become Obama's 
traveling press secretary.

Bill Sammon is the Washington deputy managing editor for FOX News 
Channel.

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