The Communist and the Catholics, Part 2

Editor’s Note: The following is Part 2 of Dr. Paul Kengor’s series that blows the lid off of what really drives the current administration. If you missed Part 1, go here.

The Communist and the Catholic

In my previous commentary, I talked about Frank Marshall Davis, Hawaii mentor to a young Barack Obama, and the subject of my new book.

I noted that Davis, a literal card-carrying member of Communist Party USA, saw the Catholic Church as an obstacle to his plans for the state. “The Catholic hierarchy,” he complained, had launched a “holy war against communism.” And so, Obama’s mentor targeted the Church in commentaries he wrote for the Chicago Star, the Communist Party publication of which he was the founding editor-in-chief.

In one commentary, a July 20, 1946 piece titled, “A-Bombs for Russia,” Davis began by expressing his admiration for Stalin’s Russia: “I salute the Soviet Union,” said Davis. “I admire Russia for wiping out an economic system which permitted a handful of rich to exploit and beat gold from the millions of plain people…. As one who believes in freedom and democracy for all, I honor the Red nation.”

Yet, as Davis hailed Joe Stalin’s state for its alleged freedom and democracy, there was something else he didn’t admire: It was the “Big Money Boys” and so-called “prostitute press [that] brazenly solicits public hate for [the Soviet Union].” Among those that Davis listed as “hate evangelists” was Cardinal Francis Spellman, who, by Davis’s estimation, longed to “knock out Russia” by bombing it to the Stone Age.

Said Davis: “We’ve got to make the plain people realize that those hate evangelists preaching war against Russia are their enemies, and that peace, freedom and democracy can come only from forcing official America to work in harmony with the Soviet Union.”

Yes, that is, Stalin’s Soviet Union—which, according to Frank Marshall Davis, wanted peace.

Who was obstructing that peace? Davis blamed Harry Truman, the Marshall Plan, Wall Street, big business, capitalism, the press, and the likes of Cardinal Spellman and the Catholic Church. Not only were these “hate evangelists,” according to Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s mentor, but they were the new “Pontius Pilates.”

I’ll share more on those Pilates in my next commentary.

For Catholic Exchange dot com and Ave Maria Radio, I’m Paul Kengor.

 

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” and “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.”

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Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” and “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.”

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