Barack Hussein Obama: What’s in a Name?
There is a troubling hint of something very un-American about the American president. I am not alluding to the birther controversy but rather to something in the president’s character, attitudes, personal aura, and worldview. He could just as well have been born in Podunk or Dogpatch and yet an un-American flavor would still cling about him. A little while back I tried a thought experiment with an American friend still partly dazzled by the president’s populist dexterity and acclaim. I asked him to recite the names of a dozen presidents at random, ending with POTUS 43. He proceeded: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George Bush. I then asked him to pause for a moment and repeat the full name of the current occupant of the White House. He waited a moment and said: Barack Hussein Obama. A longish silence ensued and then he said, as if struck by recognition, “I see what you mean.”
Of course, there is nothing wrong with a flamboyant name and much to recommend it. A striking moniker can add a chromatic and ebullient element to the habitual, a dash of playfulness, a spirit of diversity. Nomenclature can be fun. Our athletes, after all, have practically cornered the market on appellate extravagance: Shomari Williams, Tearrius George, Ken-Yon Rambo, Marc-Olivier Brouillette, Na’Shan Goddard, LeBron James, Chip Cox, Dontrelle Inman, Jabar Westerman, Swayze Waters, Prince Amukamara, Jade Etienne — to name just a dozen. But in the context of presidential history and political expectation, “Barack Hussein Obama” remains glaringly idiosyncratic in the calendar of historically resonant names, exemplifying something scalene about the man as an American politician and leader, his conspicuous outrider status in the almanac of legacy assumptions. This is precisely what startled my interlocutor when he performed our little thought experiment. He perceived a basic asymmetry between the name and the office — in other words, to make the obvious transposition, between the man and the office.
Needless to say, liberals will seize upon the suspicion of implicit bigotry or “racism” in such a nominal exercise, but I can assure them that Obama’s lack of fit with the American presidency has nothing to do with origins or skin color, as Leftists will predictably clamor. As far as ancestry is concerned, his name could be Solomon Greenberg or Chjeng Huanyu — or Bobby Jindal — without being negatively emblematic or disturbing in the slightest. When it comes to pigmentation, the same applies. “Obama is sui generis in American presidents,” writes Jean Kaufman, “and I’m not referring to the fact that he’s the first black president.” Martin Luther King Jr. is undoubtedly a fine name for a president of the United States. Thomas Sowell fits perfectly. Herman Cain is good, too. More to the point, all would have likely made decent chief executives.
Drawing attention to the president’s name is both racially and lineally irrelevant. But given its Islamic tinnitus and its flourish of decided otherness, the name functions as a symbol, that is, an allegory of synoptic dislocation, a token of visceral difference. It signifies something bizarre, something nomadic, extraterritorial, and domestically ineffable, something unusual in the roster of commanders-in-chief. For columnist Ben Shapiro, Obama is a “lightweight,” a “joke,” and a “Hollywood president,” a man who prefers appearing on The View and with the Pimp with a Limp to dealing with affairs of state, and who tweets pics of himself standing beside a cardboard cutout captioned “You look familiar.” But the implications are far more serious. The fact is that Obama is not a president in the authentic sense of the term; he is a glittering name acting the role of president, and in this sense Shapiro is right, he is a “Hollywood president,” a man with marquee presence and Stanislavski moves. Similarly, Rush Limbaugh calls the president Barack Kardashian, connoting the man’s celebrity allure and endemic shallowness. Some actors, however, few as they may be, do have a core personality, intellectual marrow, and moral substance. Obama does not, being in effect a mobile simulacrum of a cardboard cutout, which makes him as president of the United States not merely a joke and a lightweight but a disaster and a tragedy.
His acolytes, naturally, see the man by no means as a sort of ideological wyvern or the product of a politically ectopic gestation, or as in any way extraneous or aberrant, but as a Promethean hero intent on breaking the shackles of the past. However, regarded not as a radiant departure from hidebound tradition, as we have been urged to believe, but as an invitation to think twice about the substance of the man, the name should be considered as cognate with the person. They go together in more ways than one. As David Goldman writes, “Obama is an alien intrusion into American political life, a Third World anthropologist profiling us.” He is profoundly out of synch with the main thrust of American values and traditions. America is made up of people of all the races on earth, any one of whom ideally might be president, but Obama exemplifies a fundamental cultural difference that is incompatible with the American essence — at least such as it was before welfare liberalism began its surreptitious advance. His fundamental disparity from the vast majority of U.S. presidents in his orientation to America as an idea, and in his philosophical understanding of what America has been, is now, and should be in the future, is blatant. As Charles Kesler observes in his recent book I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism, Obama embraces “tortuous doubts about American exceptionalism” and “seems to lack both the citizen’s pride and the immigrant’s gratitude.”
Contrary to the media portrayal of his Yankee bona fides and his penetrating intelligence, Obama’s knowledge of America and the world is alarmingly superficial. He may enjoy an ornithological interest in Sesame Street, but such erudition scarcely qualifies as presidential. As Victor Davis Hanson observes, he is a man for whom “Austrians speak Austrian, Hawaii is in Asia, Afghans speak Arabic, the Maldives lie off Argentina, there are seven additional states, servicemen are zombie corpse-men, and Kansas twisters kill 10,000 at a time.” But it is worse than that, for Barack Hussein Obama, with his still occluded or disputed origins, his hermetically sealed records, his Alinskyite training, his Indonesian youth, his diehard, America-hating, Leftist mentors like Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright, his determination to “fundamentally transform” America, his “You didn’t build that” philosophy, his persistent blaming of others for the failures of his administration, his penchant for frivolities like late-night talk shows, his emphasis on racial and class divisions rather than national unity, his palpably willing reliance on the Democrat vote-fraud machine (even the liberal Pew Charitable Trusts estimates many millions of invalid, illegal, or inaccurate voter registrations which Obama’s DOJ is determined to keep in place, patently serving the president’s electoral prospects), his campaign to water down key components of the American Constitution, including, as some fear, the gradual abridgment of the First Amendment, and his clear partiality for the culture of Islam, which his fawning and historically inaccurate Cairo speech and subsequent actions and friendships, as noted below, render unmistakable — this man simply does not belong in the grand tradition of American republicanism and American public comportment.
Former Muslim Nonie Darwish, author of the new book The Devil We Don’t Know: The Dark Side of Revolutions in the Middle East and president of FormerMuslimsUnited.org, is of the same mind. “For 4 years the Obama policy was not on the side of America as it should have been,” she writes. “Unlike any American president, Obama spoke softly to enemies of America while holding a stick to the American people” (italics mine). “Obama’s legacy,” she continues, “will be empowering radical Islam, both in the Middle East and inside America, at the expense of freedom of speech and American power.” She elaborates her thesis in a subsequent article dealing with the Benghazi fiasco: “we have an American president who refuses to make the American people the number one recipient of his empathy…to me, an American born and raised in Egypt, I see many similarities between Obama and Arab leaders I grew up with.” Then comes the clincher: “Obama would be best described as the first Arab president.”
Plainly, the relationship between the White House and the American public should be more or less symbiotic rather than intrinsically predatory or discrepant. Darwish and Goldman are correct. There is something foreign and incongruous about Obama, as if he were not simply an exotic departure from business as usual, but a political trespasser poaching on another’s cultural property, a stark deviation from the norm.
It is noteworthy that 68% of his campaign donations consist of illegal foreign traffic — the campaign is being fed largely from elsewhere, from other individuals, institutions, cultures, and nations with a stake in the American election. Obama represents not a continuation of American history and political life but a menace to its integrity and endurance. Goldman’s conclusion is chilling: “He has done more to undermine America’s standing in the world than any president in history, and the consequences of his re-election are horrible to mention.” Or in the words of economics specialist Monty Pelerin, the country is at an “inflection point” where it will be determined “whether we continue to veer off-course or return to a conventional path.” Obama may be a Marxist interloper, an oleaginous egoist, a closet Muslim, or an incompetent ideologue, but most of all, as Pelerin writes, he “represents an existential threat to the way of life of the American people.” When Obama in a 2008 speech referred to himself as someone who would be a “different kind of president,” many did not realize the irony inherent in his act of self-promotion, for he proved indeed to be a different kind of president, that is, a president different in kind from any of his predecessors.
In his recent pamphlet The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration, founder of the American Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney shows just how estranged Obama is from the political mainstream of American society. Gaffney documents in precise and vivid detail the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on the formulation of American policy, charting Obama’s ties to Islamists, Brotherhood sympathizers, and pro-Sharia proponents. We meet Rashad Hussain, now deputy associate White House counsel, who has encouraged “efforts to ‘bridge the differences’ between the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of expression and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s efforts to prohibit and criminalize expression that ‘defames’ Islam”; Dalia Mogahed, appointed to the White House Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership, who is involved with a host of jihadist organizations; Mohamed Magid, perhaps the most prominent imam and “one of the most important Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the United States, [who] is deep inside the wire of the United States government, helping shape national policy on radical Islam” and engineering “a complete ban on FBI training materials that link Islam to violence in any way”; and of course, Huma Abedin, with extensive affiliations to the Muslim Brotherhood, who is closely associated with the office of the secretary of State.
It is indisputable, Gaffney concludes, “that under President Obama the United States has adopted policies increasingly aligned with the demands of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations,” whose declared purpose is the destruction of America and Western civilization. This initiative is evident from an MB document titled An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, seized by the FBI in 2004, promoting, in the words of the text, a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within, and sabotaging its miserable house.” This manual was mysteriously scrubbed from the Dallas Morning News where it first appeared and is no longer available at Dallas.com or in the ProQuest library database, but it beggars belief to assume that Barack Hussein Obama is not aware of its existence or its contents. “You have a president of the United States,” says former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “who will not be honest with himself about the problem of radical Islam.” I suspect, on the contrary, that it may be not so much a problem of self-deception as of furtive intent.
The name which calls attention to the president’s otherness, as we know, is of Kenyan origin, and it is still being exploited as political capital in that country. Does the name, one wonders, suggest an ideological homology? Obama’s policies, while justly regarded, as Kesler points out, as extensions of the creeping socialism of Woodrow Wilson, FDR and Lyndon Johnson, eerily resemble those of his Kenyan relatives, Sarah Obama, Sayed Hussein Obama (the president’s favorite uncle), and Musa Ismail Obama who, as reported by former terrorist and author of For God or For Tyranny Walid Shoebat, are busy promoting the study of sharia and attempting to “transform Kenya to an Islamic majority.” Obama has admittedly not gone that far, but he has inflated the number of Muslims living in the U.S. from 2.5 million to seven million and has erroneously pronounced that “[S]ince our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States.” We recall Obama’s promise to “stand with them [Muslims] should the political winds shift in an ugly direction,” his UN speech in which he insisted that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” and his 2006 visit to Kenya in support of the presidential campaign of the infamous Raila Odinga, a ruthless tyrant whose slogan was “your agent for change” and who is prone to blaming others for his party’s failures. (According to the BBC, Odinga claims Obama as a first cousin.) We should eschew guilt by association, but the echoes resound. Obama may be an American by birth but he is an expatriate by training, lineage, disposition, and sentiment, as well as by cognomen.
The bottom line is that an Obama by any other name would smell as foul. The president’s name, however, is a dead giveaway. It has a multicultural chime but not a presidential one. It may register as glamorous or romantic, a harbinger of the novel or the harmlessly picturesque, and it certainly possesses greater panache than “Barry Soetoro.” But argue it as one will, “Barack Hussein Obama” is not a name we associate with that of an American president. On the contrary, it simply doesn’t belong. The signal issue, however, is that the name betokens the man himself, a peregrine intrusion into a customary political landscape that augurs poorly for the American future.
It’s all in the name.
Don’t get me wrong – Obama is a balloon and destroying America – but this is just bigotry wrapped up in (dazzling) verbosity. It doesn’t matter what the bloke’s name is, it’s what he does that counts. Khaled Mashal is closer to Norman Finkelstein than Khaled Abu Toameh. As a Brit, I hope for the sake of America that the un-American acting Barack Obama is replaced by the pro-American Mitt Romney – no matter how unusual *his* name may be.
Romans used to say “nomen omen”, that translate “the name is the omen”.
In that case, we wouldn’t have to get to know people. Just look up their names in a book. Even then, what’s a “knife”? A useful kitchen implement or a murder weapon?
Mr. Callen, your point is well taken. But so is Mr. Solway’s. You present the logical and objective view in all its simplicity. But intuitive feelings count for a lot too, I think. I had the creeps about this guy from the beginning, back in 2008. He is now exposed and my intuitive feelings have been validated. I’m glad to see that my cousins in Britain are able to understand the American dilemma. I’m almost as insulted as you are over the return of the Churchill bust. Abomnible bad taste, and deliberately so. (What do you say in England for “gives me the creeps”?)
Avidyananda
Actually, I know how to spell abominable correctly…
You can stretch everything with whatever amount of stupidity. The Roman proverb refers to the people, and is 3000 years ahead of its time. Indeed, in the 20th century it was revealed that PEOPLE do grow in the vision tracked by their name. That’s parents choose names so carefully. I didn’t like mine and changed it. Barack Hussein Obama did like his.
Who would ever have thought that Islam would fool us so much in the open? I thought they had to just plant a pretend-Christian by the name John Smith in the White House. No. They plant a Barack Hussein Obama with a “wedding” ring that reads “there’s no god byt allah, muhammed is his prophet” in his finger for the past 40 years, educated in a madrassa with a Kenyan father who abandoned him at conception.
He was born Barry Soetoro.
A person’s name is like the cover of a book, it might give you some hint of what’s inside but you would be wise not to judge the entire contents by what you see, yet most do. They buy the book because it looked good with compelling endorsements from people they don’t know. But the great books appear basic and plain, belying the wisdom inside, take the Bible as an example. A person of character and substance can transform a plain name into a great one, but a great sounding name can be undone by poor words and actions. You have to look no further than the present, soon to be past, occupant of the White House. My Dad once told me,” Son, your first name belongs to you, your last name belongs to me and all my fathers before. The first has a future, the last has a past, learn from it and lean on it. Knowing from where you came will guide you in days to come.” A wise man with a plain name.
Definitely, definitely.
David, you are indeed shoring up the entire thesis of much of my blog’s commentary, at least in relation to the Islamist-in-Chief, and his plans to ‘transform’ America.
To be sure, in order to do so, every economic underpinning has to be deconstructed, hence, the Muslim Brotherhood Mafia will then be able to destroy ‘the miserable house from within’.
Those unfamiliar with the ways of Islamic supremacists scoff at such parochial, anti-liberal notions. Poppycock. In fact, the amount of damage done to the U.S. body politic has exploded under the reign of Barack HUSSEIN Obama. Of course, this did not start with him, but it was placed on mega steroids under his watch.
Now, this does not obviate his other duality, his red side. As a matter of record, it is the morphing of said constructs which has allowed red forces within America to grasp his hands. Their twin goals are the destruction of America.Period.
Anyone who thinks he is a lightweight (academically he is indeed one, but not politically or ideologically) is deadly mistaken.
This will tell some of the tale – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/10/26/the-white-houses-revolving-door-for-muslim-radicals-courtesy-of-the-islamist-in-chief-addendum-to-the-muslim-mafia-their-overarching-plan-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
forgot to post my name….
Thank You so much for your site on the Benghazi debacle.
I don’t think the Obamas much like this country or it’s citizens. Barry sees America as a means to an end. I think he means to pull us down a few pegs, redistribute our wealth worldwide and introduce a Soros style Progressive utopia. But this madness would never had gotten beyond the pipedreams of a few communist dreamers were it not for a century of slow poisonous rot infecting our culture. One hundred years ago the American people were self-reliant and self-confident. The very idea, even 20 years ago that some TSA agent could grope a young child or old lady without getting a serious beating, would have been laughable. I guess I am taking a long time to say that an Obama would not have been possible without a sad decline in the character of the American people.
But trends do not go on forever. The first step in correcting a problem is realising and identifying the problem. The next step is easier, at least for Americans because our Founders, some of the greatest and most intelligent philosphers this world have ever known did all the heavy lifting for us. We are still free to choose which path we go down, individually and as a nation.
This article is simply not up to scratch (in fact it’s illogical), there is soooooooo much to knock Obama for, his name is irrelevant. There are people with Muslim names (even Mohammed) who are anti-dhimmi, basically decent etc (including not having an ounce of bigotry in their bones against anyone), not Muslim extremists at all; and there are people with WASP And Jewish names who are the pits, dhimmis, anti-Semites, liars, frauds, bigots against blacks, women etc.
Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, David Duke, Richard Falk, Helen Thomas, Glenn Greenwald, Seumas Milne, Gilad Atzmon, Norman Finkelstein, Robert Fisk, Adam Shapiro, Avi Shlaim, George Galloway, Alan Rusbridger, Steven P. Rose (I could go on and on and on) – all such nice English/Scots/Irish/Jewish names, I guess they must be just like um Allen West and Robert Spencer now! Not.
Solway himself has written some of the best articles out there on self-hating Jews. That entirely undercuts his thesis on the relevance of names, and then some!
Barak btw means ‘lightning’ in Hebrew. So I guess oh wait…
So, what does “Hussein” mean in Hebrew?
Oh, and Solway’s citation of Bobby Jindal only makes sense if you conveniently forget that the LA governor’s real name is Piyush, not Bobby; and that, moreover, he goes by Bobby to make himself more palatable to the yokels down in David Duke country.
Can you seriously imagine someone named Piyush winning a statewide election in Louisiana?
“…..the yokels down in David Duke country.”
Klansman David Duke was purged from and repudiated by the Republican party. Klansman Robert Byrd was embraced and honored by Democrat elites and by the Democrat party. So the folks who live and vote in the deep south are “yokels” are they? Are you sure you are not just a little prejudiced?
When, precisely, was David Duke “purged” by the Louisiana GOP? When Tony Perkins purchased his donor list on behalf of Woody Jenkins? He has, effectively, been marginalize in LA politics, but I do not recall on official condemnation by the state party. If I am wrong, Yooper, then please correct me.
I know it’s true that the national party has rejected him. During Duke’s senate runoff against Senator Bennett Johnston in 1990, every Republican in the U.S. Senate collectively endorsed Johnston. Bob Dole and Alan Simpson even campaigned for him.
For obvious reasons, guys like Jindal, Charles Boustany and Joseph Cao have rejected Duke. I would also include here Louisiana’s Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, who is Jewish. This slate of officeholders must make David Duke deathly ill. But there are still elements of the LA GOP– mainly in the northern part of the state– who still sympathize with the man and his incontrovertibly wicked ideas.
All this said, it still has to be admitted that Louisiana and the Jindal-wing of the state GOP deserve a lot of credit for their electoral achievements. Twenty years after nearly electing a former klansman to the U.S. Senate, the Pelican state boasts an Indian governor, a Jewish lieutenant governor, a Jewish attorney general, a Lebanese congressman, and a Vietnamese former congressman. Lousiana’s last race for attorney general was between an Asian and a Jew! This is all pretty impressive, especially in contrast to all the empty rhetoric the left emits about racial and religious diversity.
He should have picked Peter if he was going to ape a Brady. Then the young desies wouldnt be so put off by him. Piyush and Peter at least have the same sounding first syllable.
Meaning of names? Depends on how they’r written in the underlying language.
“Barack” – that could(in theory) be from “baraq”, which does mean “lightning”, or it could be from “barakh”, which means “to bless”
Interestingly, the verb from which “Muhammed” is derived DOES occur in Hebrew, though as far as I know there is no-onewith a derivative name from it in the Old Testament.
Your list of names is a pretty sufficient counterargument to Solway. But consider the inverse: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq and Salman Rushdie.
Barak does mean lightning in Hebrew. But what does Barack mean in Arabic? Think, rather, of Barukh, meaning blessed. That is more logical considering 0bama’s middle name Hussein, the grandson of Muhamad. Now we can understand the name Barack Hussein: blessed is Hussein, the grandson of Muhamad.
I disagree that his name is irrelevant. I would be irrelevant if it had been his given name, but it is one he specifically chose. He identified with it. He lives it. And he chose to keep it. It is as much a part of who he is as is his color, or height, or weight.
Surely Barack Obama is the first POTUS who was never baptised? Surely every President before him was a baptised Christian? Doesn’t that mean a lot? Leaving aside the religion of his father, and leaving aside the loyalty to Lucifer shown by his mentor Alinsky, surely the fact that he never bothered to pay his respects to the majority religion of his country means he marches to his own beat. He does not feel the need to march with his country. He simply pretends to sometimes and he has gotten away with that falseness till now. Many people are Christian in name only, but he is the first POTUS to show contempt for Christianity. To say you are a Christian and refuse to undergo the ceremony of baptism means you have no respect for the religion.
“To say you are a Christian and refuse to undergo the ceremony of baptism means you have no respect for the religion.”
Um no. Many Christians don’t “undergo the ceremony of baptism” for the simple reason that they believe it is a ceremony based on tradition and not applicable to the Church in the current time.
Not applicable to modern times? You mean like the Resurrection, the divinity of Jesus, the immaculate conception, original sin, redemption, the Trinity, and all the other ideas that many “modern” Christians think are too outdated to be part of a hipper Christian canon?
I have never heard of a true Christian who refused to be baptized.
I don’t know if Obama is a Muslim or not (though it’s clear he favors Islam over any other religion). I do know that a Muslim risks a lot if he or she were to be baptized as a Christian.
OK You got me. I looked it up on Wikipedia, as I should have done before posting, and I read “Today, some Christians, particularly Quakers and the Salvation Army, do not see baptism as necessary, and do not practice the rite.” So BHO is such a principled, thoughtful, doctrinally pure Christian that he is in that company? No he is not. He is as shallow as they come on matters of religious doctrine, and he hardly observes any ceremonies apart from Muslim ceremonies. My main point is that he shows barely concealed contempt for his fellow compatriot’s religion. He “converted” without witnesses or ceremony. Where does he belong? In America? In a world of his own? Halfway between Islam and Christianity?
I do respect the Quakers and the Salvation Army. In many ways they outdo other Christians in their Christ-like-ness. That said, there has been no time in which Christians do not get baptized as a symbolic death and resurrection marking their rebirth and entrance into Christ’s church (cf. Bible, New Testament, Romans 6). The Quakers and Salvation Army stand outside the whole history of Christianity in this regard.
Can it Larry !-David Solway made himself perfectly clear that the President’s very name was a dead give-away that he would be likewise, utterly anomalous as President -and so it has proved.
Abraham Lincoln was never baptised.
B.S. I was there!
ad1
As a Southerner, that wouldn’t surprise me.
Dixie was politically sound in principle but used it to support a morally evil institution. And we lost.
THe real point is that “Barack Hussein Obama” is his made up name. Most of his life he was Barry Dunham/Soetero. He even at some point changed the spelling of “Barack” from Barak to Barack. It is not that the name is “other” , it is that is is completely inauthentic, fashioned to appear exotic–much like his composite autobiougraphic memories.
Barack is just a facade that Barry hides behind. Just like other facades created by the MSM: smartest president ever, most transparent administration, etc. In reality he’s just an average intelligence, far left ideologue without any real accomplishments other than self promotion.
David, generally I enjoy your essays but this is fluff and patent nonsense. He has a funny name? I don’t find it any funnier than Theodore (NMN) Roosevelt, Richard Milhouse Nixon or Dwight David Eisenhower. What I find “funny” is his politics and attitude. Besides, he was Barry Soetoro for much of his early life. Is that too funny, as well?
O B A M A
Oh, Benghazi, awful mess! Americans
overcome by a mischievous alliance
of bastards and malfeasant amateurs—
overlooking bungling and manufacturing alibis
offensively. By all means, America,
obliterate base, abrogating, meretricious aggrandisers;
offload braggart, anæmic, malevolent autocrats;
oppose bitter, avaricious monsters always!
When has a Christian person ever changed their name given Christian name to a Muslim name, WITHOUT becoming a Muslim? Cassius Clay changed HIS name, WHEN HE BECAME A MUSLIM. I can not think of one single Christian who has changed his name to a Muslim name without BECOMING a Muslim. CAN YOU?
A few weeks ago, I made the comment in a facebook discussion that Obama could commit murder in the presence of the whole world, and his supporters would find a way to justify or deny it. One friend was offended until I explained my comment was an analogy, not to be taken literally. Well, he has done exactly that with our people in Benghazi, and his supporters are in full denial.
The author’s comments make perfect sense if you are open to think it through, but those who have sold their soul are no longer open to the truth. Johnny Reb’s point about changing one’s name nails it.
Does not reflect well on PJ Media that this drivel made it to the front page. Maybe the author should write a follow up article, “Barack Hussein Obama: What’s in one’s skin color?”
Urban II, you appear to be hung up on skin color. This piece is not about race, and it isn’t drivel. I conjecture that its length and vocabulary were too much for you, hence the reflexive retreat to trivialization and oblique speculation about the author’s racial views. I wonder if you would’ve said the same if Mr. Solway’s picture revealed a black face, or if Thomas Sowell had authored this piece.
I too believe that Obama’s name reflects his political philosophy, which is indeed alien to the American way. For some of us, it was a flashing caution light even before we knew he chose it for himself. We tried to sound the alarm but were ridiculed and inevitably silenced or marginalized as “racists” by the mainstream media and/or by politically correct people such as yourself. Now any doubt about his philosophy has been wiped out by, among other things, four years of his making respectful references to Islam in his speeches, often at the expense of America’s world image and pride. It is now obvious that Obama’s political agenda is an outgrowth of his Islamic indoctrination and that it’s fundamentally incompatible with our country and our Constitution.
Obama’s race was never an issue for the vast majority of us and still isn’t. His political philosophy and allegiance to America, and to us, are in question and very few people are judging him on the basis of his race, except of course, for those who support him solely on that basis. The problem for most of us who cannot support him is that he is more Islamic than American in his politics and that he is imposing those unconstitutional views and values onto our country. It is clear that the philosophical journey which began with his name change and promise of “fundamental change” for America has a destination somewhere in the vicinity of Islam, not where our founders had in mind. While some people may not have understood the significance of his name four years ago, only those who choose not to see are missing the message now.
His “fundamental change” continues growing like a diagnosed but unacknowledged, untreated cancer in a patient in denial while people such as yourself continue to use the race issue to deflect attention from how un-American his administration has been. Nowhere is his contempt for America more obvious than in his dismissal of our Constitution, which is the only thing that stands between us and whatever subjugation he has in mind for us. To disdain our Constitution is to disdain America. To disdain America is to disdain the lives of our people. Obama has disdained American lives all the way from infants in American wombs to American warriors, abandoned by his administration and fighting for their lives on the roof top of the American consulate in Benghazi.
And still, in the face of all this, you choose to try to cast doubt on Mr. Solway’s racial ethics instead of questioning Obama’s lies, his hidden allegiances and agenda, or his respect for the country and people he was elected to protect and serve. That is a screaming example of the liberal blindness that results from years and years of bowing to political correctness and kneeling before those who impose it.
As to Obama’s choosing to re-label himself with a more intriguing, politically correct name, an act you seem to find unremarkable, I suspect he wanted a name that would “play” better with his immature, uninformed but oh, so politically correct base in the co-dependent left of the democratic party. Just ask any ad agency about how important a name is to the acceptance and success of a product. Better yet, ask the marketing and PR experts, psychological consultants, politicians, “progressive” socialist professors, foreign nationals, unrepentant terrorists, and burned out hippies who invented, packaged, “labeled” and sold the image of Barack Hussein Obama to the ignorant, unthinking, unobservant half of America that elected him.
You know an article is a home run when it draws out the fanning race-obsessed liberals.
And here I was thinking that Mr Solway was suggesting that an in-your-face foreign name might have been a clue about an in-your-face anti-American point of view.
But after the smelling salts reviewed me after glancing at Urban’s aghastment, I realized that the author is really just and unrepentant grand wizard. Next thing you know he’ll be drawing crude linkages between Tiger Woods and the man who had to be pulled off the golf course to be informed he had made a gutsy call.
How could possibly a half-Kenyan become President of the US is beyond me, and has been since February 2008 – when I took a close look at this guy for the first time as a serious candidate for the office of the President.
It is now very clear that the anti-American leftist elites of this country, their “media” outlets and funding sources, their Chicago/Alinsky based electoral fraud machine, and their Hollywood crowd image makers, all produced, advertized, packaged and sold a phony “image” and a rotten “product” to a largely naive American public; in that “public,” it must be sadly acknowledged, these groups found more than just a willing buyer.
Yes, the ascent of this moron – referred to as “BHO” – to the Presidency of the United States of America has been the most glaring act of treason by all these “elite” entities, and possibly the darkest moment in American History. November 4th, 2008 will be recorded as the pivotal moment that this country took the wrong turn towards permanent decay, far more so that the September 11, 2001 tragedy.
But, notwithstanding the treasonous role of those aforementioned groups, the guilt born by the American public itself (due mainly to currently prevailing apathy, moral norms, and gullibility) for accepting and going along with this fraud for four years, must not be and will not be overlooked by future historians.
An interesting essay Dr Solway. “But given its Islamic tinnitus and its flourish of decided otherness, the name functions as a symbol, that is, an allegory of synoptic dislocation, a token of visceral difference.” The novelty has worn off and the “token” spent. There is no longer anything truly exciting about voting for BHO. He is going to lose and lose big.
BTW, I finally received a copy of your book “Global Warming: Trials of an Unsettled Science” and am enjoying it very much! Well worth the wait.
If there is no such thing as an outsider, alien or does-not-fit name for the leader of a country, then what does that say about the identity of the country? That it has no identity.
And that is the assumption and goal of liberalism in its multicultural guise: to eviscerate the identities of (White) nations for the sake of domestic minorities and global majorities.
Look, this guy is a pretender who chose himself as offensive a name as he could find, rubs it in the face of the public, and somehow laughs all the way to the bank.
But even I am offended by the way you’ve written this article.
For an unqualified numbnutz to put himself up for high public office, hide what little background he has (and what we can see is all bad), sporting an Islamic name in the direct shadow of 9/11 with the exceedingly weak and dubious (and wrong and offensive) notion that he can *do* something with even his watery pretense of Islamism to make things better – rather than say, worse, these are all bad. But the name itself, that it doesn’t match those on the list – stuff it.
Just one quibble.
The U.S.Marine Corps was formed BECAUSE of Muslims.
And we never thank them for it.
We tried to warn them.
We in Atlanta used to laugh at the local newspaper whose socialist editor-in-chief (Cynthia Tucker) forbade any mention of the race of any purported criminals. And then in the story would be, “Arrested at the scene were Congolia Thigpen and Napoleon Leroy Jones.” And everyone reading the article would laugh and say “Obviously they are Chinese.” An intern at the Grady Memorial Hospital later became a Lutheran Pastor in our church, and he told us that somewhere in Atlanta there were twin girls named “Formica” and “Dinette” — he having suggested that name to their mother. And of course they too were Chinese.
P.S. The next President of the USA is going to be named Willard Mitt Romney. WILLARD.
Willard?
Isn’t that the nutjob that talked to rats and got them to do his bidding?
Now we’re down to names. This is about as silly as counting bayonets.
Someday we’ll have election campaigns that don’t dwell on silly stuff, but not in 2012.
It would be galling to me were I descended from the Ellis Island wave. No other Irish Catholics (maybe Ryan in 2020 or 2016), no Giuliani, no ‘skis , no -aks, no ‘ic/iches. That and Vietnam war veterans not getting a shot, either.
“sui generis” – “tinnitus” (among others); I would like to have forwarded this article to some friends, but few (if any) of them would instantly understand the language of this very erudite essay. I consider myself more erudite than most, but I still had to consult the dictionary to refresh my understanding of these terms. I have never seen “tinnitus” used in a context such as this before. More common synonyms for many of the words used herein would have made the reading far more accessible.
That aside, I agree with the thrust of this piece, and have proposed it myself to others as having a bearing on the appearance of alienness of our Chief Executive.
Do you also do phrenology?
What a ridiculous load of nonsense. The people who obsess on obama’s middle name are the people who already think he’s the spawn of satan / a muslim (take your pick). So at best you’re begging the question, and at worst you actually believe this stuff.
If a moonbat wrote an article that speculated on romney’s magic underwear, it would sit nicely alongside this effort.
It is not just the middle name; all three together create a much clearer picture of the man. Someday Obama’s books may be regarded in the same light as Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ – spelling out what Obama wants for whatever nation(s) he rules. Consider also that Romney will NOT be making us all wear ‘magic underwear.’
No he couldn’t be a muslim, Heh Heh…
https://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/obama-ring-there-is-no-god-but-allah-obama-worn-ring-for-30-years-shahada-first-part-of-islamic-declaration-of-faith-obama-not-christian/
One of the criticisms of the Republican Party has been its allowing ‘socialist creep’ to invade the Land of the Free. Years ago it was said that the only difference between Republicans and Democrats was the speed with which they were transforming the country towards Socialism. Perhaps Obama has been good for the US in suddenly bringing into focus the dangers of entitlement and ‘free’ healthcare, and inspiring deeper study and understanding of the Constitution.
Just look into his eyes. He embodies RESIDENT EVIL. I’ve never trusted him, and if you look at his czar selections and cabinet members, for prime example, Communist Van Jones, Hilda Solis, Lisa Jackson, how can there be any doubt? Remember, communism is much like islam, both are cruel and oppressive. And if anyone thinks he’s not a muslim acolyte, well, you’ll get yours (as will we all). He says at every campaign stop “we have to finish what we began.” I don’t know who the “We” is, but I’m sure he’s not talking to the recipient crowd. He’s subtly providing direction to his henchmen. He has to go or their MUST be a new revolution.
Relax, Gallagher. The man is clearly incapable of governing, and in a fit of pre-defeat desperation he has resorted to foul and childish rhetoric, creepy propaganda, and rank dishonesty. But, in spite of all this, I still seriously doubt he’s a bad person. He seems very much a good husband and father. He is, despite is ineptitude in statecraft, a highly intelligent man and an immensely talented writer. (And don’t try telling me or anyone else that Bill Ayers wrote Dreams from My Father. I know an authentic prose style when I see one.) No serious person who has looked him in the eye has seen evil.
Find me one politcian who, certain he or she is about to lose, acts like the second coming of Benjamin Disraeli. Even Churchill, sensing imminent defeat, made outlandish public pronouncements about Clement Atlee and the Labour Party.
He may be a “good father” but he is also a narcissistic sociopath as shown by his stand and voting for post birth abortion, his willingness to let Americans die in Bengahzi, etc.
And by the way, no one who considers himself conservative should ever endorse the idea of revolution. Go brush up on your Edmund Burke if you think I’m in error here.
Michelle’s Last Four Years – Lest We Forget
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiGjE4_k0jI&feature=player_embedded
The racism of yesteryear has come full circle in our county. The entire world embraced our choice of a black President four years ago and most nations still support him. The fringe elements of bigotry have crept through into the mainstream once again with conservative mouthpieces planting the seeds of hate. The only doubt lies here at home rooting from bigotry. Watch the white hands paint Obama in Blackface at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/10/bamboozling-obama.html
LOL, Pulling the race card. Never heard that one before. By the way his grandfather is Arabic, that makes him 6% black, Heh Heh.
For the record, I’m 100% convinced that the Fraud was born in Hawaii, but I do find passingly strange the seemingly endless contortions about the birth certificate. Apparently, a lot of people who make a pretty good case that they know what they are talking about are dead certain the latest incarnation is a transparent forgery.
Which bring up the question of why the Fraud would expend so much energy on the whole thing. I’ve wondered from time to time what there could be on something as simple as a birth certificate that would inspire a Texas Chainsaw Death Match to hide the real document. At one point, I thought it might be that the drunken, wife-beating pretend father’s name didn’t appear, and that still may be the secret since it would fly in the face of the gag worthy “improbable romance”.
But in passing, I bumped into another possibility the other day, and it is an interesting one. Somebody, possibly even somebody here, suggested that the Fraud’s name on the original birth certificate was Barack Hussein Mohammed Obama.
I can TOTALLY see that. Totally.
I’m pretty sure that Barack Hussein Mohammad Obama is his real name. As to the original BC, Sheriff Arpaio’s lead detective, Mike Zullo, interviewed the infamous U.K.L.Lee whose signature appears (it was copied) on the long form BC presented a few years ago. Her name is really Verna K.L.Lee. She told Zullo that the BC he presented her had been altered as the empty spaces where the #9 had originally appeared (they were still evident), which back then meant “unknown”, were now filled in. Those original “unknown” spaces were for birth dad, birth date, time & place of birth. Obviously, the original BC was not generated in a hospital or they would have known the answers to at least the birth date, time and place questions. So it appears that baby Barry had been registered for one of those infamous Hawaiian BC’s given to children born abroad to Hawaiian residents who had resided in the state for a period of at least one year and who could produce something proving an address, such as a utility bill. It appears that the Dunhams had moved to Hawaii from Kansas one year earlier (almost to the day) and that a BC had been secured for baby Barry as soon as he was eligible. He might have been a few days old or a few months old at the time as the child need not be present at registration. This was a loophole in Hawaiian law where many residents secured Hawaiian BC’s for their foreign-born children after Hawaii became a state. So it’s possible that a pregnant unwed mom could have gone in the early stages of her pregnancy to Kenya where a family friend (Barack Sr.) had family and given birth there and then returned to Hawaii as soon as it was legal for her to register the child for Hawaiian citizenship. Barack Sr. may have agreed to the arrangement in exchange for a visa. This could also explain why he only saw the child once, when Barry was 10. Of course, he might have been the father anyway, but as he had a wife back in Kenya, the “arrangement” was a temporary one. There was no marriage certificate for Barack Sr. and Stanley Ann, just divorce papers. However, he was thrown out of Harvard and then the US for allegedly being a polygamist. Convoluted, I know.
There’s a lot of evidence that the family moved to the Seattle area from Kansas and then to Hawaii a few years later, including numerous interviews with her high school friends in Seattle. The motivations for both moves are unexplained. In the 50′s, people simply didn’t make major moves like that, particularly middle class people who had family in the original location. Personally, I think the three family members were all communists and were probably moved around to be organizers or foot soldiers of some kind in new locations, but I haven’t seen any hard evidence of that.
But I think it is clear they were in Hawaii at the time of the birth. It seems to me to be highly unlikely that a teenage girl would make a long trip away from her parents and good hospitals to have a baby in a primitive country. Just doesn’t make sense, and that’s the reason I’m sure the Fraud was born in Hawaii.
The things you say about the certificate sound plausible. The best explanations for the subterfuge seem to revolve around the information about the father, or lack of information. There is no resemblence whatsoever between obama jr and obama sr. In fact, the faces, sizes, bone structures, everything about them seems to be direct opposites. Even the Nation of Islam has pointed this out. I suppose at some point a photocopy of the original certificate will appear, but they may have altered that as well.
This guy is the most amazing Fraud of all time.
Regarding the part about being born in Hawaii or born in Kenya, the biggest problem with that is that an NSIS document explicitly labelled Barack Obama’s birthplace as being in Kenya.
And as for the theory about Barack Obama being related (or not related in this case) to Obama sr., considering the fact that I have an uncle on the maternal side of my family who looks a lot like Nathan Lane despite having absolutely no blood relation to him (certainly not any immediate blood relations, anyway), I doubt them not looking alike would necessarily disqualify them from being father and son.
Like I said, for a teenage girl to travels thousands of miles from a known and safe environment to an unknown, unsafe enviroment to have a baby doesn’t seem rational to me.
As for the lack of resemblence, I don’t claim it’s proof, I just find it interesting. And not trying to insult you and your nathan lane lookalike, but it is well known that there is a measurable percentage of children raised by men who unknowingly are raising another man’s child.
There are pictures of the Fraud where he is the spitting image of his grandfather and mother. There are no pictures that anyone would claim look like obama sr.
I don’t put too much stock in what’s in a name. What generally counts is what’s in one’s actions. Nonetheless, I am struck by the fact that, in Latin, Obama’s first name, Barak, is Benedict. Anyone remember any Benedict’s in America’s history?
It’s amazing what the Fraud has hidden from the world. Here is a clip from a Canadian TV show in which the guest says that some of the Fraud’s favorite African relatives are supporters of the most virulent form of Islam, including terrorism.
http://www.therightscoop.com/sun-tv-walid-shoebat-discusses-the-taboo-topic-of-obamas-islamist-family-members/
Has this ever been hinted at in any way in Amerian media, print or visual?
Barack Hussein Obama is an un-American name for an anti-American man. His mother’s entire life was about rejecting the USA. The name of her son is the embodiment of her ideology. Of course he can not help his name and could have rejected his mother’s world view but he has not, has he?
“I am not alluding to the birther controversy,”
WHAT controversy? WHY controversy?
“He could just as well have been born in Podunk or Dogpatch…”
But Obama has himself told us in his 1995 acclaimed AUTObiography “Dreams From My Father” that he “was born in Kenya”. When this via the internet to people outside his fanclub, it became 1. a “fact-checking error” of the publisher and 2. not autobgraphy but memoir and metaphor of his life.
This information CHANGED many years later to “born in Hawaii”. But ONLY AFTER he was bruited as Democratic Party candidate for POTUS.
An understandable mistake as when born as infant would probably not have know where he was.
He was elected POTUS with the promise to “fundamentally transform” the USA of which he and his spouse volunteered they “were ashamed”. ANY fundamental change requires change of the Constitution, i.e. the foundation of the identity of America.
That Constitution sets requirements for representation of We The People. In Article I, Section 2: No person shall be a representative who shall not have attained the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States… Article I. Section 3: No person shall be a Senator who has not attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine years a citrizen of the United States…
In Article II, Section 1: NO PERSONN EXCEPT a Natural Born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution SHALL BE ELIGIBLE to the Office of President. emphasis added. NB that SHALL.
Obama is reputed constitutional scholar/expert with credentials in Law from Harvard. We might therefore assume he is au fait with that Constitution in all particulars. And KNOWS there is a difference between eligibility requirements for the various representatives, i.e. ONLY the POTUS is required to be natural born citizen. Not Congessmen nor Senator is so required.
Those pedants, strict constitutional constructionists and other forms of nutcases and fruitcakes have their reservations about Obama’s lawful right to be POTUS from observing his own bizarre actions and the means by which he and his colleagues/supporters advance his provenance.
With the additional question as to why so much money, time, energy is spent by him and his fans to not only refuae to except by insult, menace and dismissal as beneath notice respond to what is a fundamental question of constitutional compliance AND the safety of the nation.
And then there’s Obama’s secreting/sealing documents – what and why we cannot know – under Executive Privilege. That IS the controversy. And leads to the question:
Have Obama and his allies, troops/troupes in the major civic institutions including Congress already begun under our eyes their “fundamental transformation” of the USA?
I have been thinking and feeling everything you said in your column- Thank you for putting it in writing