Hot off the press is a new book by Paul Kengor called "The Communist." This book is the untold story of President Barack Obama's mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. Davis was a devoted Communist who lived from 1905-1987.
He mentored Obama in Hawaii in the 1970s. Davis believed in government-controlled health care. Paul Kengor published rare declassified FBI and Soviet archival documents on Davis and his work. He presents columns, as well, written by Davis for Communists Party newspapers in the 1940s and 1950s. (These can be viewed on YouTube.)
Among those columns, Davis wrote a piece July 21, 1955, calling for taxpayer funding of universal health care. That column was published in the Honolulu Record, which was the Communist Party publication for Hawaii. As Davis put it, he wanted to "see my tax dollars go to insure health care for everybody."
Given Davis's linking of "tax" dollars to universal health care, and Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court doing the same in their historic decision, that column suddenly has new meaning (and irony) for me.
Another irony of Davis, in light of Obama's and the court's actions on health care, was his bold willingness to declare certain policies "constitutional" even when they were not.
Thanks to the current actions of the Supreme Court, which declared Obama's health care bid "constitutional," Davis is no doubt smiling from his grave. Alas, Obama has at long last fulfilled the dreams of his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis: government-controlled "universal health care," sanctified by the Supreme Court as "constitutional" and declared a "tax."
And the people thought Obama's promise to "fundamentally change" America was a good thing. Even more ironic, some people still DO think that's a good thing. For those people, I reserve not the word ironic, but moronic. History seems to just repeat itself when we never learn from our mistakes.
Dena Schreiner,
Tiffin
