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October 23, 2008
Ayers didn't do enough
I've written a number of posts about Bill Ayers, and I was especially horrified by his organization's plot to blow up American soldiers at the Fort Dix NCO club. And while I know that terrorists are generally unconcerned with civilian casualties, still, I had not read about Ayers' role in an attempted Detroit police station bombing which could easily have killed black patrons of a business next door. Nor had Bob Owens known about it, and he was as horrified to find out as I am to read about it: What I did not know at the time that I wrote that article was that this was not the first attempt by the Weathermen to commit mass murder.According to the FBI informant, here's what happened: Recruited into the Weathermen, who valued his limited military experience, the Cincinnati resident worked with Ayers. Grathwohl found Ayers hard to love; he seemed self-important, a controller of subordinates, the type who loved to give orders. Ayers was a key leader. Grathwohl, a government informant, wrote that Ayers had helped direct a pair of attempted police building bombings in Detroit in February 1970. After doing his assigned job in reconnaissance, Grathwohl disagreed with Mr. Ayers over the placement of one bomb, which could easily kill black patrons who favored an adjacent restaurant, but that Ayers dismissed such sentimentality as unrevolutionary. The informant was glad to be dismissed from the operation by Ayers. Forty-four sticks of dynamite were then formed into two bombs and put into place, before Grathwohl's information allowed police to dismantle both. Ayers' memoir -- which freely admits to incompleteness -- says nothing of this episode, or Detroit, or the month of February 1970.Fortunately, there were problems with the fuse, so the bomb didn't go off. Reminding readers of the racist bombings in Alabama, Owens has an excellent question for those who consider criticism of Bill Ayers to be a form of "racism": I wonder if John Lewis and other veterans of the civil rights movement would be so quick to rally around Barack Obama today if they knew his political mentor considered the lives of black patrons in Detroit to be merely "unrevolutionary" collateral damage.Unrepentant to the core, Ayers and his wife nonetheless became respectable. And they threw a party to launch Obama's earliest political campaign: Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn -- the host and hostess of Obama's political coming-out party and close associates of 21 years -- tried to kill hundreds of Americans. They plotted against military and police targets in particular, and Ayers was more than willing to kill innocent black families in Detriot if it served his hateful purposes. Is he any better than the Klansmen in Birmingham? Would his victims have been any less dead, or their families' lives less empty?As I keep saying, there's a bigger issue than how well Obama knew these people or how old he was at the time of their terrorist acts, and that is their respectability, and his ongoing promotion of it. Why can't he say that they are not mainstream, and should not be considered respectable? The only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that it's because he really thinks they are respectable. I think that says a lot more about him than how well he knew them. By the way, Larry Grathwohl (the informant quoted above) seems quite credible and checks out as a source. He has inside knowledge about the terrorist training provided to the Weathermen, and wrote a book about his experiences. (He was also interviewed in Time magazine.) Chillingly, though, any "collateral damage" of the sort type described above would have been a drop in the bucket for the Weathermen. As Grathwohl details in this interview, the Ayers/Dohrn gang had plans to kill approximately 25 million Americans: Hmmm.... Makes me want to ask another campaign question. Should people who wanted to kill 25 million Americans ever be considered respectable? NOTE: Sorry if I sounded overly sarcastic in this post. I do realize this is quite serious. But dammit, these questions are not being asked by those who should be asking them. (I think the problem may be that there's tension between trying to adequately communicate the horror, and the fact that this is after all just another blog post.) UPDATE: Anyone who doubts that the Weather Underground patterned itself according to the usual Communist plan (and its murderous ideology) should read "Prairie Fire" which is reprinted here by ZombieTime. It's of course standard Communist rhetoric about the destruction of imperialism and the seizure of power: Our final goal is the destruction of imperialism, the seizure of power, and the creation of socialism. Our strategy for this stage of the struggle is to organize the oppressed people of the imperial nation itself to join with the colonies in the attack on imperialism. This process of attacking and weakening imperialism involves the defeat of all kinds of national chauvinism and arrogance; this is a precondition to our fight for socialism.And Revolution is a fight by the people for power. It is a changing of power in which existing social and economic relationships are turned upside down. It is a fight for who runs things, in particular, for control by the people of what we communists call the means of production...It doesn't take much imagination or knowledge of history to understand that these goals can be implemented only through mass murder. That is what Communists do when they gain power. Zombietime observes that Ayers has said nothing to change his thesis: There's no getting around it: William Ayers was a violent communist revolutionary bent on overthrowing the government and "seizing power" in the United States. The proof is on this page. And the only difference between the 1970s William Ayers and the William Ayers whom Barack Obama associated with is a change in rhetorical style; a re-wording of his radical philosophy to make it seem more mainstream. But the underlying political thesis (i.e. communism) remains the same.(Via Joy McCann) Read it all. And of course, not only has Ayers said nothing to change his thesis he articulated in Prairie Fire, but the book is listed proudly (under "SELECTED PUBLICATIONS") in his faculty profile, and in his Curriculum Vitae: Dohrn, B., Ayers, W.C., Jones, J. and Sanchez, C. (1976). Prairie fire. New York: Red Dragon Press.Again, the question is not whether a man who espouses a violent Communist ideology is respectable, but whether Barack Obama believes he should be. Sorry, but as long as his answer appears to be "yes," I will continue to maintain that he is unfit to be president. MORE: Just so there be no mistake, I thought I should quote the exact words from the video above: "they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people, in these reeducation centers. And when I say eliminate I mean kill. 25 million people."That would have been about 10% of the United States population of the time. While it might seem like an incredible figure, it's not surprising. In terms of history, killing ten percent of the population is standard Communist fare. It's unspeakably awful, but it's no more suprising than the fact that Nazis killed millions of Jews. But at least Nazis aren't considered respectable. MORE: Bob Owens links the Larry Grathwohl video and Zombietime's post of the Prairie Fire book, and concludes, You'll be stunned at the depth of the seething hatred of the United States and our way of life contained in these pages, and wonder how the protégé of these traitors, people who formally declared war against our nation and plotted murders on scale four times greater than the Holocaust, ever became the Democratic nominee for President of the nation they so loathe that they went to war against it.Via Glenn Reynolds, who adds, APPARENTLY, Pol Pot wasn't the only one with that line of thinking. Good reason to own a gun or ten.This is an extremely serious issue and I'm glad it is not being neglected. That there are people like Ayers is one thing. That his defenders would come here to quibble and call me a wingnut and a kook in the comments is to be expected. I still think the most shocking aspect of Ayers is his respectability, and I don't care how many Republican asses he might have kissed to get it. My question for Obama remains: Should people who wanted to kill 25 million Americans ever be considered respectable? MORE: Here's Jeff Goldstein: We are only a few weeks away from potentially electing the chosen candidate of Bill Ayers, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and the remainder of the moldering radicals whose last political efforts will be in the service of the glorious cause -- the handpicked protege of a man who at one point plotted, along with his fellow WU members, the elimination of 25 million stubborn capitalists who refused their proper re-education.That's the whole problem. posted by Eric on 10.23.08 at 10:32 AM
Comments
Annenberg, a republican and Reagan's friend, gave Ayers millions of dollars to setup Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Republican Arnold Weber, served on the board of CAC along with Obama. Weber, who pals aroound with Ayers, has donated $1000 to McSame's campaign. Ayers was 'Chicago Citizen of the Year' in 1997. It gets even better, Leonore Annenberg, Annenberg's wife - you know the one who bankrolled terrorist Ayers - has endorsed McSame for president. So continue with your ridiculous obsession with Ayers: it only exposes you wingnuts for the kooks that you are :) And in any case, you guys support traitors Palins who support Alaska Independence Party that wants to break up this country. Sarah Palin speaking via video message to Alaska Independence Party (AIP) Convention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwvPNXYrIyI AIP advocates break up of United States. From 1995 to 2002, Todd Palin was registered to vote as a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. As the AIP's founder, Joe Vogler, told an interviewer in 1991: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. ... And I won't be buried under their damn flag." Meyrav Levine · October 23, 2008 04:03 PM Eric....we all keep forgetting that with Ayers & co in the '60's, came al these radical pseudo intellectuals who proceeded to infestt our education system from K-16, over time. They are all out there in our universities, secondary and primary schools as we sit here and say "what's going on?" Think communist sleeper cells now being brought to life in the cause of Obama, himself a verrrrry far left -- dare I say socialist? Yes I do. Where do you think all these crowds of silly people and youths (I repeat myself) come from. They are the product of the '60's radicals and Bill Ayers'vision. Welcome to Barak Obama and Bill Ayers, the Fidel Castro and Che Guevara of the USA. Viva la revoluccion! ptsargent · October 23, 2008 04:21 PM ML That people like you come here and defend Ayers proves my point, which is that he should not be respectable, but he is. Annenberg (who was 86 when he donated to the CAC) never knew Ayers and neither he nor Weber are running for president. Were Annenberg or Weber (or Daley) running for president, my question would be the same. Should Ayers be considered respectable? Maybe they would think he should, maybe not. Lots of people do. I just don't think people who believe in Ayers' respectability should be president. Vogler (who died in 1993) never set off bombs, never believed in the most murderous ideology known to man, and was not a friend of any of the candidates in this race. If you're arguing that there's a moral equivalency between him and Ayers, I'd say that's a bit kooky. Eric Scheie · October 23, 2008 04:31 PM Keep trying to hammer on this, but the association between Ayers and Obama is just not close to paint anything regarding his character and certainly nothing to do with his policies (which is what most people are actually voting on). Keep trying though. Thomas · October 23, 2008 04:50 PM Far from being some ordinary 60s radical, Ayers is so especially heinous that if Barack Obama thinks he should be considered respectable, I don't think it reflects well on his fitness for the presidency. Whether voters think it reflects badly on his character is up to them, but it is certainly a legitimate issue of inquiry. Eric Scheie · October 23, 2008 05:21 PM The association between Ayers and Obama is a 20-plus-year-long cooperative relationship that is probably one of the closest relationships Obama has ever had with anyone. To assert that it was not a close relationship is just silly at this point. Obama is Ayers' protege. Ayers is Obama's mentor. And the commonality of their ideas proves it, even if you haven't noticed all the actual, physical, real-world time they have spent together and projects they have worked on together, and help they have given each other. Book reviews, introductions, political career, disbursing millions of dollars in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, funding for ACORN. I suspect we don't know a tenth of it. I have read that the Ayers babysat the Obama's children, and I wouldn't be surprised. It's all there online. Read about it. The close, almost familial relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers is perfectly clear when you look at the convergence of their activities and the ties between ACORN, Obama, Ayers, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, their close-together offices next to the other communist --Klonsky? -- as Obama and Ayers tried to realize their dream of radicalizing American Chicago school children and their parents and their teachers. In addition, Obama's and Ayers' ideas mirror one another. Read the Weatherman Underground communist manifesto Bill Ayers co-wrote, entitled Prairie Fire. SEE http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/ Read Dreams from My Father. Look at the Frank Marshall Davis connection -- he was an Africa American communist and poet who was Obama's first mentor, when Obama was still in high school. Obama's mother and father were both pro-communist -- she told classmates in her high school that she was a communist. Obama senior was part of the Luo tribe pro-Soviet coalition in Kenya. It is all there if you do the research. Senator Obama is the farthest-Left senator. A University of Chicago professor who used to lunch with Obama said Obama is the closest thing to a Marxist who has ever run for president. I would say that that is like saying that a dalmation is the closest thing to a dog. Of course Senator Obama is a Marxist. If you read about Senator Obama, it is clear that he is a revolutionary who decided early, early, early on to keep his true nature and intentions secret- from his mother when he used drugs, and from the American people now that he is running for president. That is why he voted "present" so many times, instead of taking a stand. That is why there is not body of legal writing to refer to. That is why it was written about him later that when there were disputes on the Harvard Law Review, of which he was the first black president, he gave each person the impression that he agreed with them. And that is why Senator Obama's past is blanketed in silence and secrecy. It's an enigma wrapped in a riddle -- but as Winston Churchill said about Russia in a radio address in October 1939: "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest." And so is Barack Obama's key his interest -- in righting the colonial and racist wrongs of the world, using the United States as his tool box and bank.
But now he is almost 50 years old, and has children of his own. And when you are almost 50 years old, you should know better. And Ayers is even older. He should know better. ... but I digress ... When you read the communist manifesto of Ayers and you hear Ayers' interview comment in recent years, you realize that Ayers is following his original purpose today as he did in the 1960's. When Ayers was asked in recent years if he would set bombs again, he said he wouldn't rule it out! This is a war over the future of America. This is a slow-motion war. But it is a war. It can be lost. If we lose, people will die. Watch the video of Larry Grathwohl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJn5b8_weUY&eurl=http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/276377.php The 1960's violent revolutionaries read Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, cut their hair, and went underground in a new way. They started to lie about their intentions. They pretended to be "respectable." But they are as intent as ever on destroying capitalism. If Bill Ayers is "respectable," then that word is as contemptible as any former 60's radical would have held it to be, back in the 60's. Do you think R. Crumb and the Furry Freak Brothers were "respectable," or wanted to be? Respectability is the epitome of uncoolness. I think Bill Ayers is just longing for the day when he can throw off the cloak of "respectability" and reveal his communist superman suit. Then Ayers can institute some re-education camps and start punishing the white racists whom he hates so much and sees as the BASIS for American society. Someone who studied economics in college recently pointed out to me that of all the "ISMs," only capitalism is not a theory. CAPITALISM IS WHAT WE CALL IT WHEN PEOPLE ARE RELATIVELY FREE TO ENGAGE IN COMMERCE. Isn't that amazing? Capitalism is just what happens when you let people do things and conduct commerce and allow banks to exist, to borrow and lend, to grow their business, to provide goods and service, to invent new goods and services, to employ others, to branch out. It doesn't start as a theory. It starts as activity. It starts as the desire to DO something and to have a good life. Communism is a theory, and the communists have to force people into a distorted model to try make it work. It goes against people's natural life flow. Communism can never flourish, because it forces people to give up their initiative and creativity in order to be safe from the predations of the State. If you succeed in communism, you are a target. I have read that in Russia, even now, the word entrepreneur sort of means "gangster." I thought that communism, thoroughly discredited, was over. Apparently I was wrong. Have you seen the film, "OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES"? See it. If you are an undecided voter, see it. There it is. Can you imagine living like that? I never want to. Which side are you on in the slo-mo war? I know which side I am on. Freedom. Stand up. Vote. And now, gentle reader, I will leave you with two thoughts from two great Americans: A COMMUNIST IS SOMEONE WHO READS MARX. AN ANTI-COMMUNIST IS SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS MARX. RONALD REAGAN “I dont know why they call it common sense. If it was so common more people would have it”. Will Rogers
summer day · October 23, 2008 09:48 PM Only successful terrorists die before their time. We let the rest of them shape who we are as a nation in ways we have barely begun to imagine. Penny · October 23, 2008 10:02 PM Prairie Fire has a telling phrase in it: "dictatorship of the proletariat." We all know the track record of those who use that phrase. Ayers and Dohrn are two of the four authors of Prairie Fire. Moreover, unrepentant. Not just some English professor in the neighborhood. Gringo · October 24, 2008 12:19 AM Eric: You write: Making up strawman and arguing against it works well on dimwits who are addicted to right-wing whackjobs on radio/faux news. In the real world, on the other hand, facts matter: Ambassador Annenberg, a friend of both Nixon and Reagan apparently believed Ayers was repectable. Why else would he (Annenberg) give Ayers almost $50 millions for CAC? Anneberg's daughter persoanlly delivered the check at a ceremony. McCain has no problem accepting endorsement from Annenberg's wife. Mrs. Annenberg apparently believes Ayers to be respectable. Why else would she sent her daughter to personally deliver the check, right? McCain also has no problem accepting money from Republican Weber, Ayers pal.
And I don't think you can pass moral judgments given you support AIP. What the hell Palin was doing speaking at AIP conventions? Her husband has been a member of a party that wants to destroy/break-up US. You guys do know that it is against the Constitution to secede from the Union, right? Is Ayers respectable? McCain's Republican pals seem to think so. And by association, so does McCain. Palin pals around with Anti-American secessionists. And you wonder why 'Ayers smear' isn't sticking? Meyrav Meyrav Levine · October 24, 2008 01:27 AM Eric, Great question. Why is Ayers respectable? That people can rationalize his behavior is sad. That people can't seem to comprehend that Obama sought out radicals like Ayers and the implied implications is downright scary. The only way Ayers would lose his respectability is for students to refuse to take his classes and U of C donors to refuse to give money. You don't associate with people like Ayers, period. Machiavelli · October 24, 2008 08:25 PM Post a comment
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Hmmm, Osama bin Laden hasn't tried to kill any Americans since 2001.
Is that long enough to be respectable?