Around the time of Christ, the Roman Empire was known for its “Caesars”. Hundreds of years later, Russia had its own version of these leaders known as the “Czars”. Though Communism had not become a coined term at the time of Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great, these oligarchies were eerily prophetic of what was to become of the Motherland – basically an empire run by oppressive thugs who deemed their country’s occupants as slaves and their deaths as collateral damage in exchange for world conquest and the chance to spread serfdom around the globe. Let’s face it: though Hitler is always a popular topic of choice when someone wants to try to put evil into perspective, when it comes to objective sheer numbers, Lenin and Stalin were exponentially worse. And though they were using the nineteenth-century author Karl Marx’s ideas regarding oppressive, huge government, the only difference was that they actually had a title for the type of leadership that had been practiced for centuries.

Regardless of your postion on Communism – whether you are extreme Right and think it is evil at its core and that you believe that there is a grassroots movement in America to strengthen its cause, or are extreme Left and think that its inclusion in any intelligent conversation is hyperbole and baseless fearmongering, or somewhere in the middle – most people who have looked into the system at any depth recognize that it is completely contrary to the American way of doing things, whether in theory or actuality.

Now we have a green jobs ‘Czar” in our President’s adminsitration who is a self-proclaimed Communist. Think about that for a moment: Van Jones (which is possibly not even his real name) has been designated for a good (and likely well-paying) position in Washington and is a person who makes (or at least made) no bones about his loyalties. While he was in jail for disturbances following the Rodney King case, he made friendships with rebels and anarchists (read story).

I am all for giving a person a second chance. I am a firm believer that if a person has served time for his crime and the appropriate persons have deemed him or her worthy for release, they should be able to have the right to continue life in any way a just government sees fit. But this isn’t Wal-Mart. We’re talking about the Obama Administration here! One of the places where any possibility of radical anti-American sentiment being presently or formerly conspicuously practiced should be entirely shunned. Why even flirt with rumor? Why fan the fire of the recently-increased shouts of “Socialist” toward our President?

For a person who claimed to be a unifier during the campaign, I find it quite bizarre during his short stint some of the choices President Obama has made regarding loyalties. During the campaign, though he was basically forced to sever the umbilical cord from Reverend Wright, it was easy to see that it was a difficult decision. As far as friendships go, perhaps that is a noble quality. But as far as being the Leader of the United States of America, it is an ominous characteristic – one that has already reared its head on more than one occasion.

In the 1950s, McCarthy was demonized due to all of the apparitions of “boogeymen” he saw. He was basically written off as ‘nuts’ and placed forever in the American archives of the politically insane. However, today we have a real life communist “boogeyman” – not a figment of someone’s imagination – working out in the open for a pretty penny and the Administration simply continues to function as if everything is normal. Maybe it’s me, but something just doesn’t compute.

By: Erik B Johnson