Wolf at the Door

On Monday Anita Dunn stepped down from her position as White House communications director—the culmination of recent controversy over her remarks that Chairman Mao was one of her “favorite political philosophers.”  Two months ago, Obama’s so called “Green Jobs Czar,” Van Jones, resigned from his post following furor over his sympathies with Marxism.  Fox News, more particularly conservative commentator Glenn Beck, led the charge in exposing the Marxist stripes of these two Obama appointees.  And it has been interesting to observe how among other media sources more attention has been given to Fox’s “outing” of these two Marxist sympathizers than to the fact they were in the Obama administration in the first place. 

How many other Obama appointees have Marxist convictions?  And what are we to think of the President himself in light of this, especially given the fact that he has had numerous other Marxist associates throughout his career, including his early mentor, Frank Marshall Davis?

It wasn’t long ago that public figures avoided any linkage to Marxism, whether or not they actually subscribed to the principles of this foolish and oppressive ideology.  Even in the days of McCarthyism it was generally agreed that the Reds were evil.  The controversy concerned Joe McCarthy’s tactics, not his concern to root out communists from the U.S. Federal government.

It wasn’t long ago that nearly all U.S. citizens agreed that Marxism fundamentally opposes the American system of government and recognized that to the extent that socialist ideals are taken seriously by those in power our basic constitutional rights are threatened.  Indeed, the very fact that we have a Constitution which guarantees the freedoms it does seemed to be a reliable firewall against Marxist infiltration.

And it wasn’t long ago that the Marxist belief in the necessity of government force to institute a classless society seemed either innocuously ensconced in the pages of The Communist Manifesto or, practically speaking, restricted to distant lands from which we are safely buffered by both great oceans and great moral wisdom.

But things have changed, and a political destiny that was once so unthinkable in our country now seems a distinct possibility.  Fellow lambs of constitutional polity take note.  The Marxist wolf is at the door.