In the ongoing campaign to minimize Bill Ayers (discussed previously in this post and others), the latest meme is an attempted moral equivalency comparison between Obama's friend Bill Ayers the terrorist, and McCain's friend G. Gordon Liddy the Watergate burglar. While others have made this comparison before, it's getting attention now because David Letterman brought it up in an interview with John McCain.
While I think the comparison is laughable in the extreme, I'm assuming David Letterman sees it as a serious moral equivalency argument, and not comedy, so I'll treat it as if it's serious. From the transcript of his interview with McCain:
JM: How long we interact with them and how we interact with them...But the point in this campaign is the economy, the economy and the economy.
DL: But did you not have a relationship with Gordon Liddy?
JM: I met him, you know, I mean...
DL: Didn't you attend a fund raiser at his house?
JM: Gordon Liddy's?
*** commercial break ***
Let me interrupt here at the commercial break, to question the timing of it. Why not let him answer the question? And why come back with a completely new question about Tina Fey? Unless the transcript is wrong, that's what directly follows. But McCain (given an apparent opportunity for dodging) stayed with the subject Letterman had raised:
DL: How about that Tina Fey?
JM: I know Gordon Liddy. He paid his debt. He went to prison, he paid his debt, as people do. I'm not in any way embarrassed to know Gordon Liddy. And his son, who is also a good friend and supporter of mine.
DL: But you understand that the same case could be made of your relationship with him as being made with William Ayers.
JM: Everything about any relationship that I've had I will make completely open and give a complete accounting of. Senator Obama said that he was a guy who lived in the neighborhood. OK, it was more than that.
DL: They served on a committee at one point.
JM: Yes, that gave $230,000 to ACORN which is now involved in what may be one of the great voter frauds in history. It could be. We need to know.
OK, Letterman and the people who subscribe to this nonsensical comparison are forgetting something very, very important.
Ayers was a wartime enemy of the United States, whose organization was 100% on the side of the enemy, had declared war on America, and either murdered or tried to murder police, public officials, and (worst of all) American soldiers. While Ayers believed in killing our troops; Liddy believed in raising them.
For all of G. Gordon Liddy's faults (and I should pause here to disclose my unconventional view of his role in Watergate, as well as my admiration of him) it has to be remembered that Liddy -- working for a wartime president during a period in which domestic terrorists like Ayers were literally waging war against the United States -- was indisputably on the side of his country. He was never anything even close to being a terrorist.
Ayers was not only on the side of the Communist enemy, he considered himself to be waging a declared domestic war on their behalf. Liddy considered himself to be on the opposite side -- waging war against the domestic terrorists like (and no doubt including) Ayers. While both used and advocated illegal methods against enemies, to Ayers the enemy was America, and to Liddy the enemy was those waging war on America.
Yes, they probably would have killed each other. This does not make them moral equivalents of each other.
Ayers the Weatherman was a terrorist. Liddy the "Plumber" was a zealous anti-terrorist.
Ayers was and is fiercely anti-American, while Liddy was and is fiercely pro-American.
Or don't distinctions like that mean anything anymore?
If they don't, we might as well compare Julius Rosenberg to J. Edgar Hoover or Joe McCarthy. Or Jane Fonda to Bob Hope.
MORE: The video of McCain's Letterman appearance is here.
I thought he handled himself quite well.
(That last link is from CBS, so I can't embed it. The other ones I've seen keep getting flagged and taken down.)
posted by Eric on 10.17.08 at 01:19 PM
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://classicalvalues.com/cgi-bin/pings.cgi/7501
Comments
The enemy of America today is unfortunately the Republican Party. They may have started out with beautiful ideals when this country was founded, but in the end they delivered unto us the Great W. Now they are attempting to add insult to injury buy pushing McCain on us.
Nope. Not buyin' it.
Forget Joe the Plumber. I got Mike the Stagehand. And Union Member. And Veteran. And Small Business Owner. And Patriot.
Rob Bird · October 17, 2008 01:37 PM
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is nonsense.
Both Liddy and Ayers had a narrow, myopic view of what they thought American should be, and they both believed in their own bullshit enough to justify subverting the rule of law and hurting innocent people in the process.
Dr. Nobel Dynamite · October 17, 2008 01:50 PM
Liddy tried to undermine democracy during a presidential election. I'm willing to grant some validity in the comparison with Ayers.
The distinctions to be made are, first, as McCain pointed out, Liddy went to jail and paid his debt to society. Americans believe in second chances, but you have to clean the slate first. Ayers did not.
Second, attending a fundraiser at somebody's house (did he? Even McCain might not know the answer to that) is not the same as having somebody throw a fundraiser for you (or coming out party or whatever it was Ayers did for Obama).
I don't know how close Liddy and McCain are (the son doesn't count), but Liddy has been an upstanding citizen for decades (policy disagreements don't count) whereas Ayers is still the same old terrorist. He's just gotten old.
tim maguire · October 17, 2008 03:29 PM
Stupid of me to forget the most important part: I also care less about Liddy. Ayers was a mentor to Obama and helped shape who he is today. Whatever the Liddy-McCain relationship might be, it most assuredly is not that. Ayers tells us something about Obama that Liddy does not tell us about McCain.
tim maguire · October 17, 2008 03:35 PM
Tim, whatever points you get for the intellectual honesty it took to recognize that there is some validity to the Ayers/Liddy connection goes right out the window when you make blatantly false statements like "Ayers was a mentor to Obama and helped shape who he is today."
And tell me, aside from policy differences, how has Liddy been any more of an "upstanding citizen" than Ayers in the last twenty years?
Dr. Nobel Dynamite · October 17, 2008 03:57 PM
The difference between American terrorists Bill Ayers and Timothy McVeigh?
The successful one killed your kids, and the other is just teaching them how to think.
Penny · October 17, 2008 11:31 PM
Dr. Nobel Dynamite - "hurting innocent people in the process." Ah yes, that vague "hurting." You answered Eric's question about distinctions, I guess. Apparently not.
Aside from the relative magnitude of their crimes (which is, perhaps, debatable) and the relative merits of their motivations...
The crucial difference between Ayers and Liddy is this: Liddy has apologized for his crimes, gone to prison for his crimes, and asked for forgiveness. Ayers likes to brag about his crimes, has not paid in any way, and only wishes he had been more successful at his crimes.
The crucial difference is that Liddy is a reformed ex-con, while Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist who considers himself still at war against America.
It's really not that subtle a difference.
Clint · October 18, 2008 12:54 AM
Why does the radical left hate the US so much when they effectively dominate the "discourse" today's multicult republic? For proof you only have to look at W and his support for the Grutter AA decision, the left-egalitarian NCLB, and CIR/Amnesty. I guess they won't tone done the howls of rage and hatred until we have a Bolshevik Supreme Court and Israel is dumped over the side. Then, I suppose, they move on to the
project of totally erasing all human inequality.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
The enemy of America today is unfortunately the Republican Party. They may have started out with beautiful ideals when this country was founded, but in the end they delivered unto us the Great W. Now they are attempting to add insult to injury buy pushing McCain on us.
Nope. Not buyin' it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9wgkuZ5JKg
Forget Joe the Plumber. I got Mike the Stagehand. And Union Member. And Veteran. And Small Business Owner. And Patriot.