I have said enough about the connection between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers. To sum that up, no, I don't think that Obama's association with Ayers means that Obama has terrorist sympathies. But the question of how to think about Bill Ayers has a dimension beyond that of Obama's character.
David S. Tanenhaus makes his case for Ayers in Slate. It goes like this: Ayers's participation in the terrorist activities of the Weathermen in the nineteen sixties and seventies is ancient history. You have to view it in the context of the times, which presumably provide some measure of excuse, though Tanenhaus doesn't elaborate. Tanenhaus met Ayers the same time as Obama did, and then Ayers was dedicated to the idea that juvenile lawbreakers should not be treated as adults in court. Let us presume, for the sake of the argument, that this is a noble cause. The argument amounts to this: we should judge Ayers and the people who embrace him by his latter noble work, and not by his history-washed early excesses.
This, I say, is giving the Devil a pass. Let's start with the history-wash part. Bill Ayers was, in 1968, a citizen of the United States of America. The U.S. is and was then a genuine Republic. Ayers was free to say or print anything he wished to say or print about the Vietnam war, or poverty, or anything else. He was free to petition the government for a redress of grievances, or to run for office. He was also free to engage in non-violent civil disobedience, as did the civil rights activists under the leadership of Martin Luther King. Those are the options available to decent and civilized people in a Republic.
Instead, Ayers and his cronies planted bombs at the New York City police headquarters and the Pentagon, being not quite ambitious or intelligent enough to think to hijack airplanes. There is no historical context that makes this okay. The bombings were crimes against the United States and all its people. Ayers said in a TV interview that they went to great pains to make sure nobody was hurt. That is pure worm tongue. There are only two differences between Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in Oklahoma City, and Ayers: McVeigh was smarter and more effective in his purpose, and McVeigh wasn't a leftist and so doesn't have someone at Slate defending him. Well, maybe three differences: McVeigh paid for his crimes.
As for all the good deeds Ayers has done, they might be redeeming, in part, if he had the decency to admit that his youthful terrorism was wrong. But he has never renounced the bombings. He wishes had done more. Too bad he didn't know about fertilizer bombs. Nor is he ready to say that he won't do it again.
Ayers is a monster. He would let loose the worst kind of violence on all sides if, well, he didn't have such a cushy position at the University of Illinois. No decent person should have anything to do with him. That the Left provides him so much shelter and so much esteem is a scandal.
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