“I chose my friends carefully.”

Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father:

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.

[…]

In search of some inspiration, I went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of Black Panther fame, speak at Columbia.
These are not the words of a politically conservative op-ed columnist. These are not words from a press release from the McCain camp. These are Barack Obama’s own indicting words, revealing his choice in how he was influenced during his college years.
“Everyone experiments in college, Phisch,” I can hear someone say. “Sex, religions, philosophies, politics. It’s all about figuring out who you are, what you believe.”
And what Barack Obama figured out is that he is a hard-line leftist. A socialist. Perhaps even a total Marxist. National Journal has ranked Senator Obama as the most liberal member of the Senate, and it is hardly a right-wing publication. Linda Douglass used to write for National Journal; now she’s Obama’s traveling press secretary.
He chose his friends carefully. William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Jeremiah Wright. Hardly people in touch with mainstream America. With mainstream American politics. These people are not moderates. They are not even slightly left of center. These are people who are either hardcore Marxists, or, in the case of Wright, subscribe to a theology heavily influenced by Marxism.
These are the people Obama chose to be his friends. To be mentored by. To be influenced by. To be helped by.
If you are still undecided in this election, if you still think that Senator Obama is just another moderate Democrat with a message of hope and change, think again. His own words show him to be what he really is. What do you think “spreading the wealth around” really means?
Government doesn’t have “wealth” to spread around. Government only has what funds it gains from its citizens by means of taxation. The bottom 50 percent of taxpayers in this country only pay 3% of the taxes. Three percent.
So when Obama and others talk about “spreading the wealth around”, they are talking about taking money from the 50 percent of us paying the 97% of taxes, and giving it, somehow, to the other 50 percent. That is not democracy. That is not free-market capitalism. That is outright Marxism, and Marxism has not worked anywhere it’s been tried. Why do we believe we can make it work here? Because the right people haven’t been in power to implement it yet?
That’s insanity.