Through our email exchanges, he ended up recommending that I read his book, Heaven on Earth : the Rise and Fall of Socialism
, which was one of the most eye-opening books I've read in years. Muravchik goes back to socialism's origins in 18th Century France and, in genuinely lively prose, examines all of the socialist experiments that have risen and failed -- with most failures etched in blood and tears.What Muravchik's expertise means is that, when he speaks of the "Left," he knows whereof he speaks. He does not use that term loosely, but gives it a very precise political meaning. All of which leads me to the subject of today's post: Murvachik's short, pointed article in this month's Commentary Magazine describing in very careful detail Obama's long history of Leftist associations and Leftist conduct.
Muravchik is too much the gentleman to speak harshly of Obama, but he does call into question Obama's early (and increasingly less repeated) comments that he would be a uniter, not a divider. In the introductory part of his article, after repeating the most salient parts of Obama's famous 2004 speech, in which he introduced halcyon images of bipartisan coaches at Little League games, Muravchik introduces the walk behind Obama's talk:
Four years later, Obama is the Democratic nominee, and even his occasional shrill attacks on his opponent seem to have chipped away little of the cornerstone of his own candidacy: the promise to bring us, all of us, together. Can he do that? Is he well-suited to raise the curtain on a new post-partisan, post-ideological era?
From his record in office, it would hardly seem so. Non-partisanship does not just mean Democrats coaching Little League, lovely as that is, but cooperating with members of the other party in developing compromise solutions to national problems. The Senate has a particularly rich tradition of such bipartisanship, but Obama appears never to have participated in it. On the contrary: according to Congressional Quarterly, which measures how often each member votes in accordance with or at variance from the majority of his own party, Obama has compiled one of the most partisan of all voting records.
Last year, for example, the average Senator voted with his own party 84 percent of the time; Obama voted with his party 96 percent of the time. In the prior two years, his number was 95 percent, making him the fourth most partisan member of the Senate. And not just partisan, but also highly ideological. In 2007, according to the National Journal, Obama’s voting record made him “the most liberal Senator.” Throughout his Senate career, according to Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the dean of liberal advocacy groups, Obama voted “right” 90 percent of the time. Actually this is misleading, since ADA counts an absence as if it were a vote on the “wrong” side. If we discount his absences, Obama voted to ADA’s approval more than 98 percent of the time.
That's just Obama's voting record, which is, euphemistically, merely "liberal." The meat of the article, however, examines his friends, such as Wright, Ayers, and Davis. Unsurprisingly, given Muravchik's intellectual background, the article doesn't just stop with looking at Wright's or Ayer's more inflammatory, stupid utterances, from which Obama has distanced themselves, but focuses on their life's work and meaning.
If you want to have a very good idea about the kind of man running for the White House (and currently in the lead), I strongly recommend that you read Muravchiks' article -- and then email it to your friends. It's an important article, as evidenced by the fact that Commentary is making it freely, rather than "fee-ly," available. Even those Americans put off by Palin's pro-Life stance may find themselves even more put off by Obama's pro-Left stance.
