Whether you are an Obama fan or not, The Roots of Obama’s Rage is a must-read. I rarely give the full five stars but this is a ringer. Be sure to read the last chapter though, because if you agree with Obama about the evils of American and formerly European hegemony, D’Souza delivers a potent rebuttal.

In this book D’Souza takes us back to Barak Obama’s childhood and explores how his experiences and particularly his attachment to his father formulated his world view. This world view might be summarized as anti-neo-colonialism. Of course this is not a particularly popular world view in mainstream America because the chief villain in this view is indeed America. Therefore, Mr. Obama has had to hide his views and couch them in ways that make them appear politically palatable. His world view comes, as Mr. Obama’s book itself declares, from Dreams from my Father. It’s not dreams of or to his father but specifically from his father.

D’Souza asks himself this perceptive question: If Obama’s dreams come from his father, and he is carrying out those dreams, then what exactly are those dreams? His book is a quest to answer that question and thus explain his oftentimes strange behaviors and actions. And D’Souza’s thesis goes a long way toward explaining them.

Saying that Obama is a closet Muslim extremist, as some hint, is way off the mark. Saying that Obama is the fulfillment of a long civil rights tradition in America obscures his objectives. Saying that Obama is a socialist is not a sufficient explanation. Only anti-neo-colonialism makes sense of it. And since we cannot actually know Mr. Obama’s thoughts, the value of any theory is in how specific actions conform to it and indeed its predictive power. D’Souza includes in his book three predictions about what Mr. Obama will do next.

So what are some of the sometime inexplicable actions Obama has taken that can only adequately be explained by his fervent anti-neocolonialism? Here’s a list.

• Why did Obama eventually reject Barry, the name everyone, including his father had called him since he was born?
• Why is President Obama who is superb speaker, so careful to use to use his teleprompter even in front of school children?
• Why does Obama find corporations and rich people particularly irritating?
• Why has Obama tried to win friends in Europe and the “third world” by criticizing the US?
• Why in one of his first actions as President, did Obama return a bust of Winston Churchill?
• Why did Obama at first refuse to wear an American flag lapel pin? And why did he later “change” his mind?
• Why did Obama secretly favor the release of Lockerbie bomber master-mind Al-Magrahi?
• Why has Obama thoroughly distanced himself from any notion of American Exceptionalism?
• Why has the administration actually refused attempts by banks to pay back Tarp funds?
• Why did Obama use Tarp to take over GM and Chrysler?
• Why during the oil spill crisis did Obama repeatedly refer to the oil company mostly known as BP as British Petroleum?
• Why during the spill crisis instead of working to contain the problem did he repeatedly make reference to America’s “oil addiction”.
• Why did he choose as Supreme Court justice a woman whose main allure seemed to be her decision to keep military recruiters off the Harvard campus?
• Why would General McCrystal claim that in regards to the Afghanistan War, Obama “didn’t seem very engaged.”?
• Why is Obama at best luke warm about America’s relationship with traditional ally, Israel?
• Why has Obama been lackluster in efforts to dissuade Iran and N. Korea from developing nuclear weapons?
• Where did Obama get his potent power to capture the attention of others, and to persuade them?
• Why does Obama keep his distance from traditional liberal Black American civil rights leaders?
• Why does Obama emphasize his solidarity both with Muslims and Christians?
• Why is so little known about Obama’s time at Columbia, and to some extent, Harvard?
• Given his father’s tragic death in a drunk driving accident, why does Mr. Obama seemingly ignore this issue?
• Why did Obama enter into relationships with the radicals, Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers?
• Why has Obama made subservient bows to several world leaders?
• What was behind Obama’s suggestion to Joe the Plumber that he “share the wealth”?
• How does his Cap and Trade proposals square with his idea of sharing the wealth?
• Why, despite the fact that Social Security and the Great Society Programs had wide bi-partisan support did Obama insist on pushing through the health care legislation with absolutely no Republican support?
• Why was the Norwegian Parliament so quick to confer the Nobel Peace prize to a president, who had of yet done absolutely nothing to further the cause of peace?
• Why did Obama strike a tone of moral equivalency by noting to the Turks, who had massacred thousand of Armenians that we’ve had trouble in our treatment of Native Americans.
• Why did Obama abandon Checkeslovakia and Poland in reneging on our promise to deploy antimissile defenses there?
• Why did he work so hard to negotiate a largely irrelevant nuclear reduction treaty with the Russians?
• Why did Obama, despite his belief at the time that Iraq actually did have weapons of mass destruction opine against the Iraq war?
• Why did Obama direct his NASA chief to make its primary mission not to explore space but to improve relations with the Muslim world?
• Why is increased taxes on the rich the main way Obama plans to tackle the deficits he is largely responsible for?
I could go on…… but please, read the book. 