It is truly staggering to take a cursory look into the life of Barack Obama. In a recent column, I read where a writer quoted directly from Mr. Obama’s book “Dreams of my Father” where he explained that in college, “I (Obama) chose my friends carefully.” This list of carefully tapped friends included “Marxist professors, and instructional feminists and punk rock performance poets.”

After seeing the type of individuals Mr. Obama called “friends,” is it any wonder that he would support the rhetoric of a leftist preacher that has promoted the agenda of class warfare among the American populace?

The truth is anyone who engaged in such deliberate selections of “friends” in his early college career would continue to be just as calculating and deliberate with the selection of those closest to him throughout his life. That explains his choice of Rev. Wright and those among the Democratic Party that are furthest to the left as being his most valued confidants.

As the Bible teaches us, we are known by the company we keep. If anyone wants to know Obama, he needs only to look at those around the man to see the image of what he supports and deems valuable.

As the mainstream media has explained, Obama’s voting record in the Senate, what little time he has been there, has consistently fallen further left than any other senator, period. This includes the records of both Teddy Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.

I feel this bears repeating — there is a remarkable consistency in what Obama has supported over the years, despite the many inconsistencies in what he has said over the past several months.

Nothing has appeared to be too far left for his support until media pressure forced him to throw both his beloved preacher, along with his elderly white grandmother, under the bus of political conformity.

Another example of the far-left tendencies supported by Obama has surfaced through a YouTube video of his wife Michelle’s address to a crowd in Columbia, S.C. She described Americans as being “stereotypical” racists “justified in your own ignorance.”

While there is no doubt many have dealt with the travesties of racism in the past, the question must be asked today if there will ever be a point where every ethnic group in America is totally satisfied. Again, we see another example of the choice of hate surfacing from the Obama camp — the choice being whether or not such negative name-calling is truly necessary.

America needs now to look at the choices of Obama and ask itself if this man who would be president is truly representative of its collective ethnic and moral agenda. And if not, what would an Obama presidency mean to the fabric of this country’s social mantle?

Larry Brooks is a staff writer for the Walker County Messenger. He can be reached by email at lbrooks@walkermessenger.com.