Obama Presents Presidential Medal of Freedom to DeGeneres, Others
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to 21 individuals, telling them how impressive they are in their life experiences and adding: “These 21 individuals have helped push America forward, inspiring millions of people around the world along the way…. Everyone on this stage has touched me in a very powerful, personal way, in ways that they probably couldn’t imagine.”

The award is the highest civilian award offered by the United States and is supposed to recognize those who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” As is clear from the roster, Obama used the award to reward those who helped “push America forward” by promoting the liberal-left agenda, from rejecting Christianity as oppressive, to promoting homosexual “marriage,” to building the New World Order. Under Obama these successes are worthy of recognition by bestowing the nation’s most prestigious award on them.

There’s Newton “Newt” Minow who chaired the Federal Communications Commission under President John Kennedy, and who served as assistant legal counsel to Illinois Democrat Governor Adlai Stevenson, working in his two presidential campaigns. He then campaigned for Kennedy in 1960. He was a prominent supporter of Barack Obama, working for his campaign in 2008.

It was Minow who catapulted Obama into prominence, first recruiting the unknown Harvard student in 1988 to work as a summer associate at his law firm Sidley Austin. It’s where Obama met Michelle Robinson, who later became his wife. Minow, age 90, is recently retired as president of the left-wing Carnegie Corporation, which is a significant sponsor of the liberal Public Broadcasting System (PBS).  

There’s Eduardo Padron, president of Miami Dade College and chairman of the board of directors of the world-government-promoting Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the entity most complicit in efforts to abrogate U.S. national sovereignty in favor of a global government. He also served as chairman of Obama’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

There’s Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, formerly Lew Alcindor, the National Basketball Association’s all-time leading scorer, his teams having won six national championships and he himself being named the NBA’s most valuable player six times. But, as he told CBS News, it was his “racial and religious identity” as a Muslim that plays the most prominent role in his life. In a lengthy autobiography published by Al Jazeera America last year, Kareem was forthright about the rationale behind his conversion from Catholicism to Islam:

Much of my early awakening came from reading “The Autobiographyof Malcolm X” as a freshman [at UCLA]. I was riveted by Malcolm’s story of how he came to realize that he was a victim of institutional racism that had imprisoned him long before he landed in an actual prison.

That’s exactly how I felt….

In 1971, when I was 24, I converted to Islam and became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (meaning “the noble one, servant of the Almighty”)….

I was rejecting the religion [Catholicism] that was foreign to my American culture and embracing one that was part of my black African heritage….

My parents were not pleased by my conversion. Though they weren’t strict Catholics, they had raised me to believe in Christianity as the gospel. But the more I studied history, the more disillusioned I became with the role Christianity in subjugating my people…. I found it hard to align myself with the cultural institutions that had turned a blind eye to such outrageous behavior in direct violation of their most sacred beliefs.

Today he labors to “correct” the impression that Islam is a violent movement conducting jihad on the United States: “I’m very concerned about the people who claim to be Muslims who are murdering people and creating all this mayhem in the world. That is not what Islam is about, and that should not be what people think of when they think about Muslims.”

There’s television host and actress Ellen DeGeneres, the self-proclaimed lesbian who “dated” actress Anne Heche for three years before becoming “romantically involved” with actress Portia de Rossi, whom she “married” in California in August 2008. She showed the love to Barack Obama in October 2007, calling it “an honor” to host him as presidential candidate. In April 2008 DeGeneres invited Hillary Clinton onto her show and fawned over her as well: “One thing that is very important to me, and another reason that I like you so much, just today [it was] announced that you are going to defend gay rights as president and eliminate inequalities for same-sex couples in federal law.”

Four years later, when President Obama endorsed gay “marriage,” DeGeneres called it “amazing”:

What an amazing day for our country. President Obama just came out in support of same-sex marriage and I say, Wow, Wow…. There have been moments in history where someone has had the courage to stand up for what they believe in, and then one action changes everything and I hope that this is one of those times. It takes a brave man to take a stand like this, especially in an election year. So, Mr. President, I say to you, Thank you very, very, very much.

This week Obama returned the favor, honoring her with America’s highest civilian award, joining with others getting the same award for the same reason: promoting the cultural and political demise of the United States so that it may be comfortably merged with other morally corrupt and increasingly totalitarian nations in a New World Order.

Photo of Ellen DeGeneres with President Obama upon receiving her Presidential Medal of Freedom: AP Images

An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].