If you Jim, like Lee yesterday were really interested?(I am not sure if you are otherwise, you might take a minute to read what Obama has written). But to paraphrase Marx, the first time history or a questionable post occurs "is tragedy", the second time, it is repeated "it is farce."

For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness.

This isn't to say that she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the world's great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways -- and not necessarily the best way -- that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives.

In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist she would become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well.

This what i guessed yeserday just knowing what she must have been like with her son before I read this today: the key is she was a anthropologist, but I presume such thinking on religion is way over the heads of most Americans and even commentators. They want a one word answer to everything, preferably in a book written in the more or less 1,800 years ago. 64% of Americans literally believe that the world is only six thousand years old. That's okay because they call themselves Christian, no criticism. But, if your definition of being a Christian is someone who takes Jesus seriously, then Obama's mother was a Christian, more than so than many Americans who don't take Jesus seriously but take themselves seriously, and nevertheless call themselves Christians, to avoid actually having to think about the subject.

I asked Lee what his religion is, because he lacerated Obama for being circumspect, as always using much stronger language "lying" about his mother. Lee discovered that in her high school, Obama's mother had defended atheism. Lee puts on atheist youtube videos regularly on our site, which gave me the hint he might be a little sceptical of organized religion too. But just as I knew Lee would never admit he has atheist tendencies even if does, that might cause potential problems for him and actually require the courage of his convictions. Many critics hold Obama (or his mother) to higher religious and intellectual standards than they hold themselves. I can understand Lee being circumspect or quite blunt that youdon't want to go anywhere near your personal religous beliefs but he and now you Jim simply fail to understand why Obama might be one hundreth as circumspect on his mother's religion as Lee is (I think he is the first politician in memory to be remarkably open) and you don't have one percent the risk in your life that Obama has. J'accuse!

Obviously, as an atheist Barack was not raised by his mother to be a Christian, and yet we're supposed to believe that Barack was raised as a Christian - and his mother, and atheist, sent him to a Christian school.

And my religion is none of your business, sorry.

His mother incidentally sent him to a a religious school in Indonesia for two and half years.St Francis of Assisi
..I wonder what atheist or Muslim saint that was?

Obama and his mother are two of those rare courageous individuals who will admit they have been searching and exploring different paths for much of their lives and are not ashamed of it. To some commentators that may seem blasphemous. So much easier to say in effect, 'Don't ask don't tell'. Then you can whisper behind someone's back and mouth platitudes up front from a Irving Berlin song 'God Bless America' our version of 'Allah Akbar', depending on where you were you were born and bash anyone try to go outside the box or even think about going.

I read Frantz Fanon in a Christian religion liberation extra-ciricular course at college and I have said before, I personally attended and was gassed at a Black Panther rally in New Haven organized in large part by by Hillary Rodham who was the co-chairman. In those days Hillary was actually something of an independent thinker but got that beaten out of her pretty quickly...from the sneerers of the establishment in those day. She could probably see that America doesn't reward those that have the courage to step outside the normal path of upward mobility. Don't ask don' tell espcially the first. I used to attend many 'socialist' classes myself, Charles Reich "Greening of America" fame at Yale Law school also with Hillary. He was the Constutution Law professor there and a very popular professor much as Obama was 25 years later at the University of Chicago.

Personally, I don't think many people have any idea of the repression that was going on in the United States in those days, but I doubt if they are particularly interested...It might cause them to think and really look into their own lives and country's history instead of reacting in a knee jerk fashion to every subject that comes along and condemning those who actually try and increase the understanding of the way the world really is.

"And there is more mystery in the book. Why does Obama consider working in a consulting house for international business like being "a spy behind enemy lines?"

The Bandung Conference maxims of political non-alignment and home nation reconstruction in the wake of colonialism. Brown Power. UN version of liberation theology. It shaped the 3rd world in the 50s and 60s. Trickle-down from Pops plus Indonesia.

Using "enemy" loosely like Obama, imagine if you were operations supervisor at an Afro Sheen factory.

Steve: "Obama and his mother are two of those rare courageous individuals who will admit they have been searching and exploring different paths for much of their lives and are not ashamed of it."

Not ashamed about lying about it either, apparently. Obama claims he's a Christian citing his Christian mother as evidence, but that's not the truth.

Comments from neo-communists on this thread: 3

Number of those comments that in any way relate to the topic of the post: 0

"Why write a book about your father and how your political journey tried to understand him without mentioning his core beliefs? It's like they were . . . inconvenient or something . . ."

It's not really a matter of being another of the multitude of inconvenient truths about who the modern American Democrats actually are. To the left, this part of reality simply does not exist.

P. Bunyan..Sorry to go off topic but as far as I know he had little connnection with his father and my interest was really in the continuation of the debate I had with Lee, yesterday linked in the post. Maybe I will get back to your neo communist jibe. Personally I'more of a Marxist...-Groucho admirer than anything, does that count?

The shorthand Lee, (may be to finish off) is that Obama was raised as a 'Christian',(not really accurate) but as much as anything else or more so I suppose,(it may not be the most candid assessment), but in the longhand version, he is more explicit and frank, in that passage I included. Religion as everyone know is a very touchy and incendiary subject, so you have to say some of the right things. I remember the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa lost the Presidential election because people thought he was agnostic...which he didn't go out of his way to deny. Obama goes as close as he can to say his family had athetistic tendencies. You can understand how most or many people would make hay out of that. Atheism has such a bad name that is why most people deflect it as Obama did. Usually they say something like secular Christian, agnostic or 'lapsed catholic' euphemisms. I don't consider that lying, or at the most a white lie. Many priests as you know have severe doubts about whether there is a God, but continue to administer rites...and so on. Obama does say in the introduction in one of his books he changed some of the nmes and chronolgy, altered some of the events for literary purposes in his introduction, so that gives him a cover but may not be the best approach either.

"as far as I know"

That says it all right there.

Context is your friend, Steve.

Obama's lie was in the context of disputing that he was a Muslim.

If he lied about being raised and influenced by his Christian mother, who was in fact an atheist, was he also lying about not being a Muslim?

Because being a communist/marxist is a good thing but being a Muslim is a bad thing?

Actually being either a communist is acceptable, if one is a communist. Being a Muslim is acceptable if one is a Muslim. Being a liar is what Obama is. One must question the reason he is afraid to tell the truth about what he believes.

Let the record show that Ragshaft and I actually agreed on something...once.

Let the record also show that I hold my religion as a personal matter between me and God. It's none of anyone's business but my own, and for the record I am not an atheist.

Steve wrote this:

Lee puts on atheist youtube videos regularly on our site, which gave me the hint he might be a little sceptical of organized religion too. But just as I knew Lee would never admit he has atheist tendencies even if does, that might cause potential problems for him and actually require the courage of his convictions.

Perhaps you could explain what "potential problems" my religious beliefs might cause, Steve. I thought I lived in a country where I had freedom of religion.

Perhaps then you can elaborate on how my personal beliefs (1) have anything to do with the lie Barack Obama told regarding his "Christian mother" and (2) why you would question the "courage of my convictions" simply because I consider my religion a personal matter.

And at any time in your long-winded, meandering comments you'd care to address the substance of the post your commenting on instead of attacking the messengers we'd all be appreciative, I'm sure.

Barack lied. Why?

Perhaps The New Republic's new info on Obama will fuel the fire on ths guy's foundations. He is without a doubt a socialist pacifist. His ideas seem even left of Jummah Carter. Summits for as long as the eye can see. With Iran's thug, with Hamas, with Syria . Oh yes, talking to the enemy. For negotiated peace at what cost? And does Obama really think America has the superior position; the high ground in diplomacy, military postitions, and moral grounds against Islamofascism? This I doubt.

The fear-mongering political smear of calling someone a communist or socialist is so 20th century. I don't think it's going to work as well as the desperate right is counting on. The world has changed. We have just as much to fear from the unfettered crony-capitalism of the last three decades as from some kind of democratic socialism, witnessed by the current state of our union and the apparent slide into second-nation status. We have some big problems and continuing the status quo will only make them worse.

Groucho, where is it written that Obama is a democratic socialist. If he is, let him declare that is what he is. So far he is against NAFTA and for it, he attends a church that teaches racial hatred yet he claims he is above that inspite of his 20 year support, he is anti-semitic and pro Israel. This lying piece of shit will say what ever the teleprompter tells him to say. He has not valid experience that would qualify him to be President of this nation. To think this man should be President is to either not understand what is necessary to be President or has been fooled by the rhetoric of this phoney from Illinois.