Coons and Marx: dabbler or disciple?

We have all heard by now about Coons’ “bearded Marxist” coming out party.  But did Coons’ infatuation with Marx end there?  Apparently not, as reported by World Net Daily:

The Democrat running against Christine O’Donnell for the U.S. Senate seat from Delaware voluntarily audited a class with Marxist activist Cornel West…

…Responding to the ensuing controversy, Coons told CNN, “I am not now, nor have I ever been a Marxist or an enemy of the people of the United States.”

“I’m not a Marxist, I’ve never held Marxist ideas,” he said. “I believe strongly in the free enterprise system … .”

When he returned to the U.S., he worked for the Coalition for the Homeless in New York and audited a course by West at Union Theological Seminary…

…”I audited one class at Union Theological with Cornel West when I was at the Coalition for the Homeless in New York and realized I strongly needed and wanted some grounding in traditions and doctrines of my own faith,” he said…

…West, currently a race-relations instructor at Princeton, is an avowed Marxist and senior member at the Democrat Socialists of America…

…West served as an adviser on Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March and is a self-described personal friend of the Nation of Islam leader. West authored two books on race with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr, who was at the center of a recent controversy in which Obama criticized Gates’ treatment by police outside his home after a report of a burglary…

…WND reported West introduced Obama on stage at the fundraiser after first railing against the “racist” criminal-justice system of the “American empire.”…

…From a young age, West proclaimed he admired “the sincere black militancy of Malcolm X, the defiant rage of the Black Panther Party … and the livid black (liberation) theology of James Cone.

Cone’s theology spawned Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s controversial pastor for 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ. West was a strong defender of Wright when the pastor’s extreme remarks became national news during the presidential campaign….

(read more here)