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RE: Bill Ayers
I'll be honest, I hadn't read much about Bill Ayers before you had mentioned him. It was one of those things that was always ancillary to any conversations I'd been a part of, and I hadn't really cared enough to look it up. And when you name-dropped him, I halfway expected to find a hulking, brutish man who preyed on little old ladies and handicapped children.
I should have known better.
After reading up a bit on his background, I've come to find that Bill Ayers is just a man with strong convictions who did some pretty misguided shit when he was younger. Oh, did I mention the worst thing that he did was back in the 70's? When he was in his late twenties and early thirties? You know, back around the time the US was involved in another protracted foreign war?
For the uninitiated, Bill Ayers was an academic who believed in some pretty "radical" things, like stressing cooperation rather than competition in classrooms. He protested an Ann Arbor, MI pizzeria for refusing to seat African Americans in 1965. He protested the Vietnam draft, like many others of the era.
He's been quoted as saying,
"How will you live your life so that it doesn't make a mockery of your values?"
What a monster! Now, for the sake of full disclosure, he became a pseudo-militant who believed (at the time) that violence was the best means of putting an end to the Vietnam War. He helped blow up a statue, and was planning other acts of directly targeted violence. So yes, I guess if you want to use the very literal definition of the word "terrorism," what he was involved with was in fact, terrorism. Then again, by that same definition, so were a LOT of people of that generation.
You know who else would be described as a terrorist using this same template? John Hancock. John Adams. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, etc etc etc.
Now before you get all crazy, my dad is a veteran of the Vietnam war. He enlisted. He still carries around shrapnel in his knee. He's a great man who instilled in both his sons the ability to make informed decisions, a sense of family and community, and maybe most importantly, the desire to educate ourselves and become "better" than the generations preceeding us. He grew up on a farm in northern Iowa, was the first of his family to graduate college, became a distinguished professor of engineering, and still spends a great deal of time at speaking engagements around the world (though retired from teaching). He's brilliant, shrewd, compassionate, and he cares deeply about both his family and his country. I'm not a guy who's going to harp on and on about how Vietnam was a disaster, but I know enough to differentiate the very political means of the war from the sons and daughters of this country who fought in it.
But whatever, let's get back to Bill Ayers. To continue the story for those who still care enough to read this, he went "underground" in 1970 after he and some of his group (the Weatherman, or Weather Underground as it later came to be known) botched building a few bombs in Greenwich Village and blew themselves up (killing a few members of the group). He was later indicted on federal charges. He was on the run for a few years until the federal charges were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct, after which he and his wife both turned themselves in.
He later penned a memoir called Fugitive Days, in which he recounted his days with the WU and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Unfortunately, it was published right around (you guessed it!) the tragedy in New York City in 2001. The book was immediately used as a textbook example of "homegrown terrorism" (HIDE YOUR CHILDREN! BURN THE BOOK!), even after Mr. Ayers himself explained that while he couldn't take back what he did, it was a different time and that he condemned the September 11th attacks. He's also made statements, referring to the former actions of the groups he was involved with, such as:
"(I was) embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way. The rigidity and the narcissism." (Reference)
In other words, he's become the unfortunate poster boy for a nation which was now deathly concerned that the person standing next to them was strapped with a couple pounds of C4. Oh, did I mention that Mr. Ayers is now a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago? Sounds like someone who needs a good arresting!
But even if you still think the guy is some sort of terrible monster, the link between Obama and Bill Ayers is tenuous at best. The both served on the Woods Fund Board from 1999 until Obama left in 2002. They had slight contact as residents of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. They've appeared on education panels together, and Bill Ayers donated $200 to Obama's campaign in April 2001. If that's what comprises an evil collusion, I'm not quite sure what couldn't be described as one.
So thanks for nudging me to do a little bit of my own footwork, wark. I can now throw Bill Ayers/Obama talk in the Fox News bin, along with other pieces of trash like "Obama's a muslim! All muslims want to kill you and rape your virginal butthole!"
Ridiculous, man.
Those references to McCain's acquaintances are coming soon. And I guarantee they've said things a whole lot worse, and a whole lot more recently.
I'll be honest, I hadn't read much about Bill Ayers before you had mentioned him. It was one of those things that was always ancillary to any conversations I'd been a part of, and I hadn't really cared enough to look it up. And when you name-dropped him, I halfway expected to find a hulking, brutish man who preyed on little old ladies and handicapped children.
I should have known better.
After reading up a bit on his background, I've come to find that Bill Ayers is just a man with strong convictions who did some pretty misguided shit when he was younger. Oh, did I mention the worst thing that he did was back in the 70's? When he was in his late twenties and early thirties? You know, back around the time the US was involved in another protracted foreign war?
For the uninitiated, Bill Ayers was an academic who believed in some pretty "radical" things, like stressing cooperation rather than competition in classrooms. He protested an Ann Arbor, MI pizzeria for refusing to seat African Americans in 1965. He protested the Vietnam draft, like many others of the era.
He's been quoted as saying,
"How will you live your life so that it doesn't make a mockery of your values?"
What a monster! Now, for the sake of full disclosure, he became a pseudo-militant who believed (at the time) that violence was the best means of putting an end to the Vietnam War. He helped blow up a statue, and was planning other acts of directly targeted violence. So yes, I guess if you want to use the very literal definition of the word "terrorism," what he was involved with was in fact, terrorism. Then again, by that same definition, so were a LOT of people of that generation.
You know who else would be described as a terrorist using this same template? John Hancock. John Adams. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, etc etc etc.
Now before you get all crazy, my dad is a veteran of the Vietnam war. He enlisted. He still carries around shrapnel in his knee. He's a great man who instilled in both his sons the ability to make informed decisions, a sense of family and community, and maybe most importantly, the desire to educate ourselves and become "better" than the generations preceeding us. He grew up on a farm in northern Iowa, was the first of his family to graduate college, became a distinguished professor of engineering, and still spends a great deal of time at speaking engagements around the world (though retired from teaching). He's brilliant, shrewd, compassionate, and he cares deeply about both his family and his country. I'm not a guy who's going to harp on and on about how Vietnam was a disaster, but I know enough to differentiate the very political means of the war from the sons and daughters of this country who fought in it.
But whatever, let's get back to Bill Ayers. To continue the story for those who still care enough to read this, he went "underground" in 1970 after he and some of his group (the Weatherman, or Weather Underground as it later came to be known) botched building a few bombs in Greenwich Village and blew themselves up (killing a few members of the group). He was later indicted on federal charges. He was on the run for a few years until the federal charges were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct, after which he and his wife both turned themselves in.
He later penned a memoir called Fugitive Days, in which he recounted his days with the WU and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Unfortunately, it was published right around (you guessed it!) the tragedy in New York City in 2001. The book was immediately used as a textbook example of "homegrown terrorism" (HIDE YOUR CHILDREN! BURN THE BOOK!), even after Mr. Ayers himself explained that while he couldn't take back what he did, it was a different time and that he condemned the September 11th attacks. He's also made statements, referring to the former actions of the groups he was involved with, such as:
"(I was) embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way. The rigidity and the narcissism." (Reference)
In other words, he's become the unfortunate poster boy for a nation which was now deathly concerned that the person standing next to them was strapped with a couple pounds of C4. Oh, did I mention that Mr. Ayers is now a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago? Sounds like someone who needs a good arresting!
But even if you still think the guy is some sort of terrible monster, the link between Obama and Bill Ayers is tenuous at best. The both served on the Woods Fund Board from 1999 until Obama left in 2002. They had slight contact as residents of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. They've appeared on education panels together, and Bill Ayers donated $200 to Obama's campaign in April 2001. If that's what comprises an evil collusion, I'm not quite sure what couldn't be described as one.
So thanks for nudging me to do a little bit of my own footwork, wark. I can now throw Bill Ayers/Obama talk in the Fox News bin, along with other pieces of trash like "Obama's a muslim! All muslims want to kill you and rape your virginal butthole!"
Ridiculous, man.
Those references to McCain's acquaintances are coming soon. And I guarantee they've said things a whole lot worse, and a whole lot more recently.
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