Chris Coons, Senate Candidate (DE-D): How a Marxist Is Created

Coons, shaven, under the Obama armpit

Candidate background on Chris Coons follows, culled from a May 2010 article in Politico by Alex Isenstadt, “Coons Took ‘Bearded Marxist’ Turn”:

An article Democrat Chris Coons wrote for his college newspaper may not go over so well in corporation-friendly Delaware, where he already faces an uphill battle for Vice President Joe Biden’s old Senate seat.

The title? “Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist.”

In the article, Coons, then 21 years old and about to graduate from Amherst College, chronicled his transformation from a sheltered, conservative-minded college student who had worked for former GOP Delaware Sen. William Roth and had campaigned for Ronald Reagan in 1980 into a cynical young adult who was distrustful of American power and willing to question the American notion of free enterprise.

Coons, the New Castle County executive who is running against GOP Rep. Michael Castle [sic, actually now: Christine O’Donnell] for the state’s open Senate seat, wrote of his political evolution in the May 23, 1985, edition of the Amherst Student.

The source of his conversion, Coons wrote, was a trip to Kenya he took during the spring semester of his junior year—a time away from America, he wrote, that served as a “catalyst” in altering a conservative political outlook that he was growing increasingly uncomfortable with.

Coons wrote, noting that at one time he had been a, “proud founding member of the Amherst College Republicans.” and  his friends noted he was among the “clean-shaven, clear-thinking Americans” on campus.

A trip to Kenya as a college student changed his outlook and personality.

Coons expands upon this transformative experience during his semester in Kenya more than twenty-five years ago:

“…something about Kenya, maybe the strange diet, or the tropical sun, changed my personality; Africa to them (my friends) seems a catalytic converter that takes in clean-shaven, clear-thinking Americans and sends back bearded Marxists.”

“…Amherst had taught me to question, so in turn I questioned Amherst, and America.”

Dave Hoffman, a Coons campaign spokesman, said in a statement to POLITICO “…the trip to Kenya helped lead to Coons’ decision to become a Democrat.”

What brought about this transformation? From Coons’ college article we learn:

1. Witnessing crushing poverty and the consequences of the Reagan Administration’s ‘constructive engagement’ with the South African apartheid regime

2. In the months leading up to the trip abroad, “leftists” on campus and college professors had begun to “challenge the basic assumptions” he had formed about America

3. A course on cultural anthropology, noted Coons, had “…undermined the accepted value of progress and the cultural superiority of the West….”

4. While a class on the Vietnam War led him to “…suspect…that the ideal of America as a ‘beacon of freedom and justice, providing hope for the world’ was not exactly based in reality.”

5. He wrote that he was particularly troubled by his experience with Kenyan elites, whom he said were utterly dismissive of the poor.

“I became friends with a very wealthy businessman and his family and heard them reiterate the same beliefs held by many Americans: the poor are poor because they are lazy, slovenly, uneducated…”

“I realize that Kenya and America are very different, but experiences like this warned me that my own favorite beliefs in the miracles of free enterprise and the boundless opportunities to be had in America were largely untrue.” *

So what kind of interaction with the Kenyan people would inspire a conservative college Republican (with seeds of doubt planted in his mind by his Marxist professors) to become a full blown, free market hating Marxist?

From “Chris Coons: Volunteer for Liberation Theology,” Jeffrey Lord, 9/20/2010, in American Spectator, we may have a clue…

Chris Coons, the freshly minted Democrat opponent of Tea Party favorite and Republican nominee Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware U.S. Senate race traveled to Africa in the 1980s — emerging as a committed leftist after volunteering for an organization supporting Black Liberation Theology.

The controversial religious philosophy espoused by radical left-wing activist James Cone and President Obama’s one-time spiritual mentor the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Black Liberation Theology is an off-shoot of liberation theology, a Marxist-driven interpretation of Christianity.

James Cone, the primary architect of Black Liberation Theology in North America, in his book Black Theology and Black Power, writes:

“A moral or theological appeal based on a white definition of morality or theology will serve as a detriment to our attainment of black freedom. The only option we blacks have is to fight in every way possible, so that we can create a definition of freedom based on our own history and culture. We must not expect white people to give us freedom. Freedom is not a gift, but a responsibility, and thus must be taken against the will of those who hold us in bondage.”

James Cone and, what are those, idols on the counter? Just asking.

Click here for further information on the roots of  religion of “Liberation Theology.”  Back to Jeffrey Lord:

And the liberal media — alarmed at O’Donnell’s success and busily running all manner of stories designed to portray her as a right-wing crazy — has suddenly gone missing on Coons. Silent on a stunning revelation that could prove uniquely fatal to Chris Coons’ Senate candidacy in the year of Tea Party rebellion against the Obama Administration’s agenda of wealth redistribution.

The Washington Post curiously says of Coons in their Coons profile only that he “spent time in South Africa and Kenya doing relief work.” The New York Times never mentions Coons’ work in Africa, choosing instead to describe him as an attorney and mentioning only his work with the homeless, the Investor Responsibility Center, and the “I Have a Dream” Foundation. Plus his educational background, a B.A. from Amherst, a law degree from Yale and a Master’s in Ethics from Yale Divinity School.

Yet nary a word from the Times about the now-New Castle County Executive spending time in South Africa or Kenya.

__________________________

*Coons wrote that upon his return to Amherst for his senior year, he realized that, while he had discovered the faults of his country, he had also “returned to loving America.”

You mean like Michelle Obama loves America?


Janet Smiles, a contributor to Gulag Bound, is an advocate of Internet and person-to-person activism, to overcome the false taboos of “avoiding faith and politics” with well-behaved and vital communication — all for the sake of love for our neighbors.

She welcomes comments directed to mamacooks50@gmail.com.

Comments

  1. Look like idols to me. Just saying.

  2. Looks like a bunch of African idols to me….doesn’t everyone have an idol altar? I mean don’t all idol worshipers have an idol altar? Is that a noose hanging on the cross??

  3. Or maybe it’s a really funky game of Chess.

    I think it’s supposed to be Jesus on the cross.

  4. Mr Cone and his followers need to move to Africa where all black people are equal and blacks are responsible for the populace’s living environment.

    • (It’s generally not Gulag Bound’s policy to delete comments that it doesn’t agree with.)

      Ken, I suppose there is a way to interpret your comments without ascribing racial hostility or negativity, but I don’t think that’s the way they would most often be seen.

      In failing African nations, it is not the skin color that is the issue. Nor, in those nations can it be said that “all black people are equal.”

      Where you have socialism (or other authoritarianism) you have a ruling class and a government-dependent class which feeds the ruling class. That is hardly about equality.

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