Chicago, Illinois — The Obama Presidential Center is scheduled to open next month on the lakefront in Chicago’s South Side. It sits next to the Kenneth Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, which is housed in a building surviving from the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. The Center’s architectural style blends Soviet Brutalism with Nazi flak towers (Flaktürme), as shown below. It stands as a prime example of Molotov-Ribbentrop architecture — international socialism fused with national socialism. Your columnist visited the exterior this month while attending his law school reunion.

Presidential libraries and museums honoring former presidents typically house the working papers from their administrations, allowing historians to review and analyze them. That is the plan for the upcoming Trump Presidential Library in downtown Miami. Obama, however, has chosen not to make his presidential papers available for such review.

Visitors to the Obama Presidential Center will be required to show photo ID — a requirement Obama has long opposed for voting. Heck, even our campus hotel required a photo ID to check in.


Juneteenth

The Center will open to the public on Juneteenth, the day we celebrate the Union Army’s victory in the American Civil War. Led by Republican officers and commanded by the first Republican President, that victory freed the Sub-Saharan African slaves in America from their Democrat owners and fathers. It also helped inspire the Russian Czar to grant greater freedoms to his serfs. In Haiti, slaves had freed themselves earlier.

The two strongest opponents of slavery in the 19th century were Christian forces: the British Navy and the Union Army. The marching song of the Grand Army of the Republic declared: “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” Soldiers serving under General Grant in Northern Virginia pinned their names and hometowns to the backs of their uniforms so they could be identified if they fell — long before American soldiers wore dog tags.

In contrast, Islam has practiced slavery throughout its history and continues to do so today. An estimated one million Europeans were enslaved by North African and Middle Eastern jihadists from the 7th to the 19th centuries. Miguel Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, was held captive by North African corsairs for five years before being ransomed by a Christian missionary order.

There is no precedent in history for the majority of a country waging war against a large minority, of the same ethnicity and culture, in order to liberate from slavery a smaller minority, of a very different ethnicity and culture. America is indeed exceptional. As President Lincoln observed, the American Civil War launched a new birth of freedom.

Some claim that America is racist. Yet why do people of color continue to immigrate here in large numbers? And why do those already here not emigrate to escape this alleged racism? Haitians live next door to Cuba — a socialist workers’ paradise — yet they sail hundreds of extra miles to reach the supposed racism of Florida.

America has so little real racism that the Southern Poverty Law Center has had to pay proxies in order to manufacture some fake incidents. The real anti-black racists in America today are: black fathers who abandon their children; black mothers who abort their children; and black brothers who shoot one another. That plus social workers and public school teachers who promote serfdom to the welfare state. Claims of racism are usually an excuse for failure.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is renowned worldwide for musical excellence. It selects musicians through blind auditions based solely on performance quality, ignoring ethnicity, sex or any other irrelevant factors. Applying affirmative action or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion criteria instead would undermine excellence and embrace mediocrity.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court serves as a useful reminder of this truth. She and the Obama Presidential Center stand to remind us of the failure of anti-American progressive ideologies and practices. By contrast, her colleague Justice Clarence Thomas offers a sound perspective on the effects of progressivism in America.

American Exceptionalism

Obama once quipped that Americans believe in our exceptionalism just as the British believe in theirs and the Greeks believe in theirs — in other words, he dismisses American exceptionalism.

A few years ago, the curator of Cuban films in the media studies department at Miami Dade College expressed regret on Spanish-language television that Cuba is not a “common and ordinary” country, but a country afflicted by “tyranny and misery.” Your columnist responded that tyranny and misery have been the common fate of most countries throughout history. What is truly exceptional is the liberty and prosperity of the American republic.

That film curator could never say, “Make Cuba Great Again,” because Cuba has never been great. If it had been, then there would not be so many immigrants from there fleeing tyranny and misery. We could say, “Make Cuba Liveable Again.”

If we wish to preserve the blessings of our exceptional American republic, then we must identify their source and conserve it. Essential qualities for those who want to enjoy them include courage, a strong work ethic, and the self-discipline to seize opportunities.

Barry Obama, Globalist

Obama — an affirmative-action law review editor and law school lecturer — is a globalist. As the saying goes, if you are a citizen of the world, then you are a citizen of nowhere.

Obama may be a natural-born U.S. citizen, but he is not an American in the cultural sense. The first is a legal status; the second is a cultural identity. If you seek to “fundamentally transform” America and reject American exceptionalism, then you do not love this country and you are not an American. You are a cosmopolitan and a globalist. Your capital city is Davos.

His political candidacy rested almost entirely on his ethnicity. America’s original sin is said to be racism, yet supporting his campaign supposedly granted absolution. The same dynamic applied to his selection as law review editor and his hiring as a lecturer.

Candidate Obama at first failed to connect with his fellow blacks. In 2000 then State Senator Obama ran for Congress in a black district on the South Side. He was shellacked by the incumbent black Democrat Congressman. Obama’s strongest electoral connection in Chicago was always with Lakefront Liberals who voted for him in order to attempt to show that they were not racists.


Comandante Obama, Communist

As Colonel Kilgore would not have said, “I love the smell of Cuban cigars in the morning. It smells of communism.” Obama maintained friendly ties with Communist dictators, though in a limp-wristed manner. The Obama-Biden administrations, along with Pope Francis, eased pressure on Cuba’s Communist regime. In July 2021, when Cuban dissidents needed internet access during protests, the Obama-Biden administration denied support. Obama also took no meaningful action against Vladimir Putin’s 2014 invasion of Crimea.

In contrast, President Trump and Secretary Rubio are now pressing for regime change in Cuba this year, following the liberation of Venezuela.

Emir Barack Hussein, Jihadist

President Trump bombed Iran to destroy its nuclear weapons program. Obama, by contrast, sent the regime pallets of cash to fund its global jihad. He supported Iran’s mullahs against the Green Revolution protesters in 2009, and consistently provided financial and diplomatic backing to the Islamic Republic.

Before America and Israel confronted it, Iran was the world’s leading state sponsor of jihadist terrorism, operating through proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen. It sponsored the jihadist pogrom on October 7, 2023 outside Gaza.

Obama also worked to import large numbers of Islamic immigrants into America. Most have not assimilated and instead seek to impose Islamic supremacy. This policy opposes the preservation of American exceptionalism. These communities have also been prominent participants in welfare fraud, such as in the Quality Learing Center in Minneapolis.

The Obama Presidential Center is a monolithic and uninviting tower of gloom. Almost entirely windowless, it occupies a scenic lakefront site, yet stands incongruously with its surroundings.


Sheridan Gorman’s Blood Chokes Chicago

The Obama Presidential Center opens on the lakefront at a time when Chicago remains haunted by the murder of Loyola University Chicago student Sheridan Gorman. She and other students were walking along the lakefront, after midnight to see the Northern Lights, when an illegal alien shot her in the back and killed her. The shooter had been allowed into the United States by the Obama-Biden administration and was released after committing other offenses.

Chicago politicians and media have tried to deflect blame or ignore this atrocity. A vigil was held for Sheridan in her hometown of Yorktown, located in upper Westchester County, New York, near Chappaqua. No such vigil has been held in Chicago. The bell tolls for Chicago.

Nevertheless, law schools continue to conduct clinics training their students to defend illegal aliens against federal immigration enforcement. The clinics should also care for the parents, other family and friends of victims of illegal aliens.

Christian Worship Center

A couple of miles away from the Obama Presidential Center, in the middle of the South Side, New Beginnings Church — founded by Pastor Corey Brooks — offers a different vision. Your columnist attended services there last Sunday morning. It represents hope for a renaissance in Chicago.

That hope starts with rebuilding families on the South Side. It is a job that Pope Leo abandoned when he left America for a haven of Liberation Theology in Peru. As a result, teen takeovers and wilding events have occurred this year in the South Side neighborhood where the Center is located. These are conducted by hordes of teenagers without parental supervision, because they are mostly growing up without families to provide their lives with structure.

At the church service, the music was not Handel or Bach, but Gospel rap: “The Devil knows we’re winning…We’re blessed…Winning Season!” They displayed more enthusiasm for their faith than I saw last month in all the churches of Florence, Milan, Rome and Vatican City put together. Then Pastor Brooks reminded the congregation that they must guard the blessings that they have received, because the Devil attacks stewardship. We must discard old contacts and cancel old relationship, and instead develop new habits to implement our faith.

Pastor Brooks may never win a Nobel Peace Prize, but history will likely record him as the most consequential black guy to come out of the South Side of Chicago in this millenium so far.

Christian Learning Center

Across the street from the church stands the newly built Robert R. McCormick Leadership & Economic Opportunity Center, modeled after the Tuskegee Institute. There, community members can gather to learn practical skills, in order to earn a living and break free from dependence on the welfare state. As Cornell West, the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, recently observed during a visit to Florida International University: “You can’t call yourself a servant of Jesus Christ when you are on the payroll of Pontius Pilate.”

The McCormick Center is scheduled to open later this year, and tours will be available. Pastor Brooks has raised sufficient funds, mostly from local philanthropists, to build this center without incurring debt.

Trump Presidential Library

President Trump plans a full presidential library — not merely a “center” — to be built after his term on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami. It will rise next to the Freedom Tower, a symbol of Cuban immigration from the communist regime in the 1960s. The planned modern multi-use high-rise building represents an example of contemporary bourgeois capitalist architecture.

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