The nuances of Bill Ayers

Powerline ^ | April 24, 2008 | Scott

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Sol Stern has been on the case of Bill Ayers for the past few years, not for his work as a terrorist in the Weather Underground but for his work as an educator at the University of Illinois-Chicago. In 2006, Stern devoted a long City Journal essay to Ayers in "The Ed Schools' Latest -- and Worst -- Humbug." Now Stern returns with an online column on "Obama's real Bill Ayers problem." Stern holds the work performed by Ayers in his day job against him:

Ayers’s politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America’s future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.

The Chicago Tribune reviews Ayers's take on his terrorist past. Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future:

Ayers was born to wealth in Glen Ellyn, and, like thousands of other young people, was moved to political action by the Vietnam War. He and Dohrn were founding members of the Weathermen, a splinter group that claimed responsibility for about a dozen bombings and the 1969 protests in Chicago known as the Days of Rage.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

FR Thread:

Obama’s Real Bill Ayers Problem -- .city-journal.org ^ | 23 April 2008 | Sol Stern

****************************EXCERPT INTRO************************

Barack Obama complains that he’s been unfairly attacked for a casual political and social relationship with his neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Obama has a point. In the ultraliberal Hyde Park community where the presidential candidate first earned his political spurs, Ayers is widely regarded as a member in good standing of the city’s civic establishment, not an unrepentant domestic terrorist. But Obama and his critics are arguing about the wrong moral question. The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation’s schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today.

A Chicago native son, Ayers first went into combat with his Weatherman comrades during the “Days of Rage” in 1969, smashing storefront windows along the city’s Magnificent Mile and assaulting police officers and city officials. Chicago’s mayor at the time was the Democratic boss of bosses, Richard J. Daley. The city’s current mayor, Richard M. Daley, has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for the public schools and consulted him on the city’s education-reform plans. Obama’s supporters can reasonably ask: If Daley fils can forgive Ayers for his past violence, why should Obama’s less consequential contacts with Ayers be a political disqualification? It’s hard to disagree. Chicago’s liberals have chosen to define deviancy down in Ayers’s case, and Obama can’t be blamed for that.

What he can be blamed for is not acknowledging that his neighbor has a political agenda that, if successful, would make it impossible to lift academic achievement for disadvantaged children. As I have shown elsewhere in City Journal, Ayers’s politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America’s future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.

[Always Right]

"I hear the demand for a general apology in the context of the media chorus as a howling mob with an impossibly broad demand, and on top of that I'm not sure what exactly I'm supposed to apologize for," he wrote.

Perhaps for the deaths that were a direct results of acts of your organization? Just a thought.

[snarks_when_bored]

Once a man has shown himself willing to use deadly force to implement his personal agenda, he ought never to be trusted again. The fact that an unrepentant Bill Ayers is currently employed by an American university is an ugly stain on this nation’s system of higher education. Similar sentiments apply to his certifiable wife, Bernadine Dohrn.

[at bay]

Once a man has shown himself willing to use deadly force to implement his personal agenda, he ought never to be trusted again.

Amen. That's why the only label a violent felon ought to ever carry is "ex-felon"

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Paperback)

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by David Horowitz (Author)

****************EXCERPTS************

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Horowitz, author of Unholy Alliance and founder of FrontPageMag.com, profiles 101 professors whose politics run left of center (in many cases, very, very left of center), and though his list is impressive in size and the amount of research that went into it, the most egregious crimes perpetrated by the majority of these academics is that their politics don't mesh with Horowitz's. Which isn't to say Horowitz hasn't turned up a few surprises: a Northwestern University law professor has a sordid history involving the Weather Underground,

[snarks_when_bored]

Thanks for the reminder; I need to check Horowitz’s book out...

[CedarDave]

Thanks for this, Ernest.
Mark, more ammo if you choose to cover this topic (William Ayers and his relationship to B. Milhous Obama on your show).

[davidlachnicht]