Obama's mentors

Editor's note: This is the fourth of a six-part series by the author of "The Audacity of Deceit." Read Part 1, "The Obama-Ayers incestuous money trail" Part 2, "Obama's sweetheart-deal home loan," and Part 3, "The groups Obama kept off his résumé."

Taken individually, you might brush aside Sen. Barack Obama's association with any single radical, but as you look at all of the people Obama met on the incestuous money trail, you find a pattern of close cohorts who can't be ignored. These are all radicals who work for "social justice" through the redistribution of the wealth.

Obama's plan to solve "global poverty," which would send nearly $1 trillion to the United Nations (a sum equal to the recent bailout) is wealth redistribution on a global scale. His tax program would increase the percentage of Americans who pay no federal income tax from 32 percent to 44 percent, and even give non-taxpayers gravy checks from the government. Nearly half of all Americans, for their entire lifetime, would never pay federal income tax.

That Obama is a product of the radical leftist Chicago machine is nothing new. Though we don't know if he is a "hard-core academic Marxist," which he was accused of being during his 2004 Senate campaign, we do know that he's supported by a socialist activist network. This network includes former members of the Students for a Democratic Society, from which the Weather Underground was born, Communist Party USA and the Democratic Socialists of America. This axis wants Obama to hold the reins of power in the White House. They have a socialist agenda for America – one that isn't far from Obama's own agenda. In fact, Obama has yet to point out how his agenda differs from theirs.

While Obama might condemn the terrorist acts that communist Bill Ayers committed when Obama was 8 years old, it doesn't explain Obama's continued association with Ayers when Ayers served both as his boss and fellow board member on so many foundations. Nor does it explain why Ayers recruited so many of his friends to help Obama – friends that are still associated with Obama to this day in his presidential campaign.

Since Obama ducks this issue, with the complicity of the national media, it's worth revisiting not only Bill Ayers, but the entire cast of leftist radicals that surround Obama through his association with Ayers.

Obama's cadre of radical leftists can be divided into three categories: "The Mentors," "The Radicals" and "The Enablers." "The Mentors" are people who helped shape Obama's worldview. They are the focus of this fourth installment of "the incestuous money trail."

The mentors

Barack Obama Sr.: "All of my life, I carried a single image of my father, one that I tried to take as my own," Obama wrote in "Dreams From My Father." What was that image? It was "the father of my dreams, the man in my mother's stories, full of high-blown ideals."

Obama adds, "It was into my father's image ... that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself."

Though Obama said little about what those "ideals" were, they crystallized in the form of a 1965 paper, written by the senior Obama and published in the East African Journal. In that paper, titled, "Problems Facing Our Socialism," the elder Obama advocated the communal ownership of land and even the forced confiscation of privately controlled land. He also called for the nationalization of "European" and "Asian" owned enterprises, and advocated handing over control of these operations to the "indigenous" black population. Further, Obama's father wanted to increase taxes on the rich, even up to the 100 percent level, arguing that "there is no limit on taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measures up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay." Incidentally, this concept is not totally foreign to the younger Obama, whose plan to "spread the wealth around" by raising taxes conceptually mimics his fathers plan.

Frank Marshall Davis: As a teen, Obama's mother abandoned him in Hawaii so she could go to Indonesia to seek a Ph.D. At the age of 16, left on his own, Barack Obama developed a relationship with a non-family member – reputed Marxist Frank Marshall Davis. Davis, a former Chicago resident, was a member of the Communist Party USA and an apologist for the Soviet Union. The 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee, accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations. Obama describes "Frank and his old Black Power dashiki self" as advising him before he left for Occidental College in 1979 at the age of 18. Passages from "Dreams From My Father" suggest that Frank Marshall Davis was something akin to a surrogate dad to Obama in those days. Obama's only contact when he moved to Chicago was Davis.

Alice Palmer: Obama's predecessor in the Illinois State Senate, Alice Palmer introduced Obama to Chicago's radical elite in the living room of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn's home back in 1995 and endorsed him that year in front of a crowd of 200 supporters. Palmer was an active radical leftist in the decade before she picked Obama for her seat. The FBI notes that she served on the board of the U.S. Peace Council, a front organization and affiliate of the Soviet World Peace Council. Palmer attended the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and came away favorably impressed by the Soviet system.

Gregory Galluzzo: A former Jesuit priest and executive director of the Gamaliel Foundation, Galluzzo was interview by New Republic's Ryan Lizza and showed him the training manual he uses with new organizers. Galluzzo told Lizza that many new trainees have an aversion to Saul Alinsky's gritty approach because they come to organizing as idealists rather than realists. Galluzzo, along with fellow trainer Mike Kruglik, schooled Obama in Alinsky tactics. The Developing Communities Project, Obama's first employer in Chicago, was part of the Gamaliel network of organizations.

Mike Kruglik: Kruglik was a regional director for the Gamaliel Foundation. Like his boss, Greg Galluzzo, Kruglik also helped train Obama on Alinsky organizing methods. Kruglik was also involved in 2007 with indoctrinating Obama campaign volunteers on Alinsky methods.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Rev. Wright was a close friend of the Obamas. He officiated their wedding, baptized their children, and Obama regularly touted his 20-year membership in Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ as proof of his devotion to Christianity – until remarks by Rev. Wright became an embarrassment to his campaign. A closer look at Obama's pastor and longtime church reveals that Trinity practices – and preaches – Black Liberation Theology, and Wright sees "his own form of Christianity as profoundly different from Christianity as typically practiced by most American whites and blacks." During one of his more memorable anti-American screeds, Rev. Wright said, "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people."

Trinity church gave between $5,000 and $10,000 to the Community Renewal Society, which was a pet project of Bill Ayers' father, Tom Ayers.

John L. McKnight: John McKnight is a professor at Northwestern University and sits on the board of the Gamaliel Foundation. McKnight is yet another of the Gamaliel trainers who schooled Obama in Alinsky tactics and methods. In his memoir, Obama said he wanted to go to Harvard Law School with the goal of making large-scale change as a national politician, and McKnight was the individual who wrote him a letter of recommendation. Obama said that being tutored by McKnight, Galluzzo and Kruglik was "the best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School." (emphasis added)

Read Part 1, "The Obama-Ayers incestuous money trail."

Read Part 2, "Obama's sweetheart-deal home loan"

Read Part 3, "The groups Obama kept off his résumé"

Order O'Leary's book exposing Barack Obama, "The Audacity of Deceit."

Brad O'Leary is the author of "The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama's War on American Values." To learn more, go to www.BarackObamaTest.com.