Ayers, Liddy, and other political questions about McCain and Obama's associations

[TheBigDog]

First, that is a quote of mine, not Craigs:)

Second, I don't parallel Bush smoking mj to Ayers bombing the pentagon.

I parallel Bush smoking mj with Obama serving on the same board as a man who, 35 or so years ago, blew up a bathroom in the pentagon.

The two may not be identical, there are a number of differences. What they have in common is that they are issues of the past which have no bearing on the actions of today.

Obama, as others have already said, has condemned those actions of violence that occured when we was 8. I don't see why this is an issue the McCain ticket continues to try to dredge up.

It makes him look desperate and out of touch.

Corrected the quote credit, sorry about that.

 

You gave two examples of things you have forgiven, that is equivocating them. You are also minimizing what Ayers did, although you give it more vibrato here by listing it as "pentagon bathrooms" rather than just "bathrooms". The McCain campaign does keep mentioning this and it makes him look desperate and out of touch, to you. Obama has condemned those acts, but he waited until he was politically pressed to do so. He has never had real opposition in an election before, so I guess this is the first time he has really been under political scrutiny (I include the primary as part of this election). In his elections to the state legislature he had all of his opponents disqualified and ran unopposed. In his run for the Senate his initial opponent withdrew when a scandal arose, he then faced a last minute opponent who didn't even live in the state.

 

I don't think this is a non-issue, but I do think it has past its usefulness in providing insight into Obama. We each get our own meaning from that happening.

 

Bill

[Turtle]

He has never had real opposition in an election before, so I guess this is the first time he has really been under political scrutiny (I include the primary as part of this election). In his elections to the state legislature he had all of his opponents disqualified and ran unopposed. In his run for the Senate his initial opponent withdrew when a scandal arose, he then faced a last minute opponent who didn't even live in the state.

 

I don't think this is a non-issue, but I do think it has past its usefulness in providing insight into Obama. We each get our own meaning from that happening.

 

Bill

 

The biography I saw on both candidates that ran on PBS said Obama lost his run for Congress? Can't find that specific link right now; this will fill the Bill. We get our meaning from what we know we think we know is happening. :( >> :D

 

In March of 2000, Obama, then an Illinois state General Assembly member, made his first run for Congress — and lost.

 

Obama sought to unseat Rep. Bobby Rush, who by then had served four terms in Congress, in a Democratic primary. ...

Obama's Loss May Have Aided White House Bid : NPR

 

PS OT; the terrorist list for activists is bad.

[questor]

A little more on Bill Ayers for those who may admire his work:

 

The Ghosts of Bill Ayers

By Sol Stern

FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, October 17, 2006

 

Poor Bill Ayers. The Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois had just returned to Chicago after a delightful summer vacation in Italy, well rested and ready to launch yet another dazzling academic year instructing future teachers on how to bring the revolution into the classroom. But then Ayers found this mood-changing, bummer of a letter waiting on his desk. It was from three academic colleagues from the education school of another university and explained why they had decided – after much soul searching -- not to invite Ayers to a major progressive education conference to be held on their campus next spring. The professors acknowledged that Ayers was “among the most noted progressive educators in the country with a deep commitment to teaching for social justice,” but they then went on to say that “we cannot risk a simplistic and dubious association between progressive education and the violent aspects of your past.”

 

Well, you can see how that last sentence must have rattled the Distinguished Professor of Education. After all, the entirety of Ayers’ post Weather Underground career seemed to prove that everything was possible in what he used to call Amerika, even including normalizing radical anti-Americanism as part of an acceptable pedagogy for the public schools. Yet now the ghost of his violent Weatherman past was being dredged up again and being used to justify abandoning the progressive education movement’s own hallowed principles.

 

AND

 

Still I would agree that it was wrong for the organizers to exclude Ayers -- not only on free speech grounds, but on the merits. The fact is that it’s hard to imagine a big progressive education event without Bill Ayers’ physical presence or influence being felt in one way or another. For better or worse, he is one of the legitimate faces of progressive education in America today. His works are required texts in education school courses all over the country and he’s much in demand as a lecturer in many of those schools. Plus, he’s a pioneer in the progressive education publishing industry, encouraging books by many other authors that show teachers how to bring “social justice” themes -- i.e. the evils of American racism and imperialism – into their public school classrooms.

 

I predict that now that the contretemps about the conference is out in the open and the institution where it is to be held has been identified, the Colorado Ed school’s exercise in pre-emptive censorship won’t stand. And that would be all to the good. The public interest and the cause of truth in advertising would best be served by having Bill Ayers participate at the conference. As we used to say in the 60s, let it all hang out. Let Bill Ayers be Bill Ayers. Not only should he speak at the conference, he should expound on his academic work in which he explains that existing American education is nothing but capitalist hegemony and that the mission of progressive educators (like himself) is to worm their way into the system, to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change. In fact maybe he should even bring his tenured colleague from the University of Illinois, Professor Eric Gutstein, who has written about how he uses his seventh grade mathematics classroom in a Chicago public school to teach children that the U.S. had no reason at all to invade Afghanistan.

 

It seems to me that Ayers is still the unrepentant terrorist sympathizer he has always been, but has now decided to cause his revolution from inside by radicalizing our children. What could this man teach my children that would make them better citizens? How does this type rhetoric fit into a peaceful world? link:FrontPage Magazine

[Zythryn]

Questor, your hammering on an awarded educator who has a violent past and misrepresenting his current teachings is getting old.

However, say that you are right, and he really does want to teach all of our kids to be terrorists.

Do you also feel that everyone else that served on the same education board is also a 'terrorist sympathizer'?

[questor]

Does the presentation of an award automatically mean that the recipient is a noble character or someone whose ideas should be extolled? If I recall, the Stalinist Marxists also presented many awards.

From your reading of Ayers teachings, which of his statements would you consider ones you would have your children live by? Please don't use the quote by James Baldwin again.

[Zythryn]

Questor, would you answer this question.

Should anyone that serves on the same board as Ayers be considered a 'terrorist sympathizer'?

 

No, an award does not automatically mean that someone's actions or ideas should be extolled. However, it does mean that the person/entity giving the award thought the actions or ideals leading the the award should be recognized and rewarded.

Now, the entity giving the award was the city of Chicago (which I believe is in the USA, not Russia;)).

From your reading of Ayers teachings, which of his statements would you consider ones you would have your children live by? Please don't use the quote by James Baldwin again.

I read his page describing his concept of teaching. I have not taken any classes from him. However, as he saw fit to list that quote from James Baldwin first thing on that page, I don't see why you would ask me not to use it. Unless you really are not interested in the concepts he holds, but are interested in accusations which have no support?

However, as you requested, here is what he writes in his own words:

This is the fundamental message of the teacher: You can change your life. Wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, the teacher invites you to build on all that you are, and to begin again. There is always something more to do, more to learn and know, more to experience and accomplish. You must change your life, and if you will, you can change your world.

This sense of opportunity and renewal—for individuals, for whole communities and societies—is at the heart of all teaching; it constitutes the ineffable magic drawing us back to the classroom and into the school again and again. Education, no matter where or when it takes place, enables people to become more powerfully and self-consciously alive; it embraces as principle and overarching purpose the aspiration of people to become more fully human; it impels us toward further knowledge, enlightenment, and human community, toward liberation. Education, at its best, is an enterprise that helps human beings reach the full measure of their humanity.

This is from: Teaching Bill Ayers

So what is it you saw that shows that Ayers is teaching kids to be terrorists?

[questor]

Z, do you mind doing some research on your own? There is a lot to learn out there. How about reading this:

I attended part of a January 20, 2006, "day workshop of interventions" -- aka "a day of dialogic interventions" -- at Columbia University on "Radical Politics and the Ethics of Life."1 The event aimed "to stage a series of encounters . . . to bring to light . . . the political aporias [sic] erected by the praxis of urban guerrilla groups" in Europe and the United States from the 1960s to the 80s.2 Hosted by Columbia's Anthropology Department, workshop speakers included veterans and leaders of the Weather Underground Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, historian Jeremy Varon, poststructuralist theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and a dozen others. The panel I sat through was just awful.3

 

Veterans of Weather (as well as some fans) seem to be on a drive to rehabilitate, cleanse, and perhaps revive it -- not necessarily as a new organization, but rather as an ideological component of present and future movements. There have been signs of such a sanitization and romanticization for some time. A landmark in this rehabilitation is Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days: A Memoir (Beacon Press 2001; Penguin Books 2003). This is a dubious account, full of anachronisms, inaccuracies, unacknowledged borrowings from unnamed sources (such as the documentary, Atomic Cafe, 17-19), adding up to an attempt to cover over the fact that Ayers was there only for a part of the things he describes in a volume that nonetheless presents itself as a memoir. It's also faux literary and soft core ("warm and wet and welcoming"(68)), "ruby mouth"(38), "she felt warm and moist"(81)), full of archaic sexism, littered with boasts of Ayers's sexual achievements, utterly untouched by feminism. (Among Ayers's many errors are some that betray ignorance of the Women's Liberation Movement: he repeats the media-generated myth that 1968 Miss America protesters burned their bras (117).)

 

Ayers is the perfect Weatherman: "Hostility to feminism," writes Dan Berger in a new history of Weather, "characterized the organization from the beginning"4 -- and this at a time when radical feminism was growing. Weather kept its distance from one of the most vibrant movements of its time, taking such archaic positions as "The Women's Question is a Class Question," just a part of capitalism rather than patriarchy.5

 

There are too many inaccuracies in Fugitive Days to list here. Some are petty: Howdy Doody fans will wonder whether Ayers's "Uncle Bob" (24) is the same as "Buffalo Bob." But some of the errors reflect political blind spots. One such error concerns Marion Delgado, who was a kind of a Weather saint, but Ayers can't even keep his hagiography straight. A photo of Marion, a five- year-old Chicano boy, smiling and holding up a piece of concrete, appeared in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) weekly paper, New Left Notes, with a caption indicating that he had caused a train wreck with his concrete.

 

AND

 

JUST AS THIS GOES TO PRESS in May, there are two interesting developments relevant to the rehabilitation of the Weather Underground.

 

1) Weather Rehabilitation and the New SDS. Together with others, Thomas Good -- mentioned above in connection with his admiring views of Bernardine Dohrn -- organized the first Northeast Regional Conference of the refounded Students for a Democratic Society at Brown University, April 23, 2006. (The following account is based on material on the SDS website and postings on the SDS discussion list, "New Left Cafe.")

 

By a top-down process that led to some disagreement within SDS, Dorhn was invited as one of a small number of keynote speakers. (Ironically, Good is a self-described Wobbly and anarchosyndicalist.) Dohrn was billed as a "founding member of the Weather Underground." This is not a neutral self- identification. Allowing herself to be described this way, or perhaps asking that she be so presented, singles out a specific part of her background and suggests pride rather than understanding of her destructive role in those years. (As we will see, her speech offered not a word in response to criticisms of Weather.) Suppose I asked to have myself introduced at a speaking gig as "Jesse Lemisch, who joined the Communist Party in 1939 and rejoined in 1956." This would be kind of in-your-face, and would seem to oblige me to offer some explanation

 

I have seen nothing in the career of Dohrn and Ayers to show me they are anything but leftists still commited to destroying our current societal makeup.

If you want to argue more, please present some evidence or quotes to the contrary. If you won't read about their careers, please don't pursue the subject.

[Zythryn]

Questor, I am aware of Ayers past and what some people think of his writings.

What you have listed are opinion pieces which quote small 2-5 word sections from one of his books. I would like to read those quotes in context and will see if I can find them.

While you accuse me of not doing any research, you seem to ignore the research I have done. And rather than indirect opinion pieces, I have listed quotes from Ayers himself showing his teaching concepts (which seem to be the issue at hand).

 

You also have ignored the question I have asked twice which really may make this whole Ayers thing moot, so here it is once more:

Should anyone that serves on the same board as Ayers be considered a 'terrorist sympathizer'?

[TheBigDog]

The biography I saw on both candidates that ran on PBS said Obama lost his run for Congress? Can't find that specific link right now; this will fill the Bill. We get our meaning from what we know we think we know is happening. :) >> :)

 

Obama's Loss May Have Aided White House Bid : NPR

 

PS OT; the terrorist list for activists is bad.

I stand corrected. He did lose that run for Congress, the only time he faced real opposition. Beating Hillary in the primary would appear to be a small miracle, but that is just a nomination, not an office.

 

Zyth and questor, you two are simply not going to agree on this issue. In the name of the love of diversity (of opinion), it is probably time to move on. ;)

 

Bill

[jackson33]

What I find interesting in Obamas loss to Bobby Rush was Bill Clinton endorsed Rush. As for learning something, well Rush was a former member of the 'Black Panthers', also from South Chicago and well versed on Chicago Politics...Would seem to me he learned well.

[Turtle]

I stand corrected. He did lose that run for Congress, the only time he faced real opposition. Beating Hillary in the primary would appear to be a small miracle, but that is just a nomination, not an office.

 

Zyth and questor, you two are simply not going to agree on this issue. In the name of the love of diversity (of opinion), it is probably time to move on. ;)

 

Bill

 

I think we two too ought to embrace our love of diversity differences in terms of what defines 'real opposition', and agree to disagree. (the fact that Obama is leading in the Presidential election polls notwithstanding as a faceoff against said ill-defined 'real opposition'.. ;) )

 

When we move on to an Obama Presidency, I trust you will be reaching across that isle that John so often refers to, and I'll try not to remind you of his buddy Liddy, who while not a terrorist perhaps, is a convicted felon for conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping. :) :)

[Buffy]

What we choose to equivocate and what we choose to minimize are at the heart of the reason that this is an issue. You parallel President Bush smoking marijuana to Ayers bombing the pentagon, I cannot draw that same parallel in drawing conclusions about a person's character based upon the events of their past. There are millions who share the common background of having smoked pot. It is a select few who found the inner drive required to actually bomb the military headquarters of their own country; you choose to reference this as "blowing up bathrooms".

That's fair. That's why most--including David Letterman--have pointed out G.Gordon Liddy, who's arguably also a criminal (and a convicted one at that) although because its just against the "Democrat Party" it totally excuses his statements like: "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests."

 

Would you trust a man who associates with someone who *to this day* justifies using deadly force against US law enforcement officials?

 

And Mr McCain does not find anything wrong with this man:

I know Gordon Liddy. He paid his debt. He went to prison and paid his debt, as people do. I'm not in any way embarrassed to know Gordon Liddy.

Now for me, I don't have any problem with McCain associating with or taking donations from Mr. Liddy. But if he stands in a glass house like this and throws stones at Mr. Obama on such a flimsy and tenuous "relationship" I begin to question whether or not he has the ability to behave rationally when dealing with situations just as vexing that occur in the course of being President of the United States.

 

If he's simply going to lash out, with anything that pops into the addled brains of people like Steve Schmidt, I do think there's reason to wonder about how well he might lead!

 

I'll ignore the rest of This Week's Talking Points lifted from Michelle and Rush, and leave that for another thread..."Socialist!" Very "on message" Bill!

 

So, back to the thread:

The fear is that there will be a slippery slope. While the people on these lists may not have been adversely affected, putting them on such a list is the first step in the direction of a fascist dictatorship.

Well, no, its the more immediate problem of these folks can't travel without being harrassed, and in fact, if they're on the wrong list, they will not be allowed to travel *at all.* And its simply the most recent example the resurgence of the Paranoid Style in American Politics (something I encourage everyone to read, its not like this topic is *new* or anything).

 

Being against such transgressions of our cherished Constitution and rights is nonsensically being portrayed by the right as "Anti-American," producing calls for witch hunts that call anyone who is against such extreme violations of our own laws equivalent to being in league with bin Laden.

 

In the incident described by Tormod, these people were merely engaging in perfectly legal political activity--far short of Liddy's calls for "head shots"--and simply because the police did not like their political views, this hysteria being drummed up allowed them to rationalize such activity as "Anti-American" and worthy of being put on a watch list.

 

That's harassment, and its vile and "Anti-American." But for some reason its "patriotic" to use it as a "wedge" to create enemies out of the half (or these days, 77%) that don't agree with you.

 

Delightful.

 

For folks who are so driven by morality, their behavior is so embarrassingly immoral, it does indeed bring both citizens and the rest of the world to question the sanity of the United States, and makes it difficult to do anything as a nation.

 

 

Will it instantaneously curve your spine, grow hair on your hands or bring about death and destruction?

 

No, but does it have to in order to be something we have to worry about?

 

The point here is that if we spend so much of our time demonizing our fellow citizens because we have slight policy disagreements--to the point of actually violating their civil rights of free association and travel "just to make a point"--that we will indeed end up like Rome.

 

Probably after we're all dead though, so if you can get short term benefit out of it, ah, its probably okay.

This may be true were it not for the balance of the Constitution. The President does not line out portions of the Constitution. Presidents experiment with the borders of what the Constitution will allow, and are sometimes found to have stepped over the lines, but the balance of power insures that things are ultimately pulled back into check, and may even swing scarily into another direction completely.

Actually it hasn't ensured it. 6 full years of full Republican control, and Democratic impotence have done half the job. But then extra-legal "signing statements", and secret DOJ "findings" and Unitary Executive "opinions" allowing interesting "definitions" of "rendition" and "torture" do the rest.

 

There's a good reason to argue that the current administration has gone out of its way to *eliminate* the balance of power, going so far as to attempt to declare a "fourth branch" of government over which *none* of the other branches has any oversight whatsoever.

 

Nothing to worry about here. Nope. It's "just politics" and you little people don't need to worry your little minds about it. You wouldn't understand anyway. Besides, its just "partisan":

Do the ends justify the means? It is a question of who's ends and who's means. And the way we equivocate and minimize and rationalize the important into the insignificant and vise-verse, insures that we will always have controversy...

Controversy is fine. But when meaningless division is created simply in order to "win" you end up with a really dysfunctional political system. When you start to "redefine reality" by calling people with political opinions "potential terrorists" or saying that drowning people isn't torture, then you're really creating an environment when anything people say is "just an opinion" and there's no "truth" that you end up with *exactly* the old 80's religious right epithet of "moral relativism."

...but I an confident that in the end, as my father explained to me as a child when talking about nuclear war, cooler heads will prevail.

Actually more than a couple of times, we came within minutes of the nutjobs pressing the button *before* the cooler heads prevailed.

 

The overarching theme here is that with the extremists insisting on the removal of checks and balances, we are getting into exactly the trouble that the framers of our Constitution worried about, yet when one complains about it, one is branded "Anti-American" or "traitor"

 

Is that really "okay" with you? Is there nothing you want to do about it?

 

On the whole though, I do admire the fact that you're a lot more rational than some of the folks on the conservative side of this argument, so thank you for your post! I just regret that it will fall on deaf ears of those who do not see it applying to their viewpoint!

For the record, the reason I hang out with you is because at some point a boob might pop out. The fact that you are a liberal just makes the odds more favorable. ;)

While its true that I take more advantage of my décolletage than your typical conservative matron, I can assure you that there's no chance whatsoever that you will ever pop out of my bra! :evil:

 

Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately, :phones:

Buffy

[questor]

Z, why do you persist in pestering me with questions about positions i have not taken?

Should anyone that serves on the same board as Ayers be considered a 'terrorist sympathizer'?

 

The answer here is not neccesarily. It would depend on the beliefs and activities of that person. Please don't ask me more questions unless you quote my exact words.

[questor]

Buffy says:

That's fair. That's why most--including David Letterman--have pointed out G.Gordon Liddy, who's arguably also a criminal (and a convicted one at that) although because its just against the "Democrat Party" it totally excuses his statements like: "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests."

 

Would you trust a man who associates with someone who *to this day* justifies using deadly force against US law enforcement officials?

 

If one reads the history and circumstances of G. Liddy's offences and compares them in weight to the offences of Bill Ayers, I would question the balance of the scales of justice. This misweighting creates one of the great problems of our society, support for your man and punishment for the opponent. Other cases for example: Barney Frank--Mark Foley, William Jefferson--Ted Stevens. Shouldn't Barney Frank and Jefferson be punished?

[Buffy]

If one reads the history and circumstances of G. Liddy's offences and compares them in weight to the offences of Bill Ayers, I would question the balance of the scales of justice. This misweighting creates one of the great problems of our society, support for your man and punishment for the opponent. Other cases for example: Barney Frank--Mark Foley, William Jefferson--Ted Stevens. Shouldn't Barney Frank and Jefferson be punished?

Perhaps the distinction I am trying to draw is a bit too sophisticated.

 

There is always room for spin. Liddy was in charge of several "third-rate burglaries" vs. Ayers "blowing up a toilet." Or conversely Ayers "blew up the Pentagon" vs. Liddy "committed multiple felonies that threatened the lives in seeking to undermine the foundations of our entire democracy and advocates killing law enforcement officers."

 

Both sides can spin, but the unescapable fact is that trumping up of minor offenses to the *exclusion* of real issues is exactly what's wrong with our political debate today.

 

You ignore this issue completely and just whine "they did it too and they're worse!"

Will you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals! That's who. You look in the old newspapers, every picture of Batman shows him with thugs and with thieves and hobnobbing with crooks. Whereas my pictures show me always surrounded by whom? By the police! I am an associate of the law!

Screaming "terrorist" at everyone who disagrees with you is terroristic. And perversely and illogically spinning this into "only conservatives are True Patriots, and liberals want to destroy America" is a far bigger threat to our democracy than Liddy or Ayers will ever be.

 

You might even have gotten this from what Bill said as well, even though he's coming at it from your side of the fence, but I guess that was a bit to subtle too.

 

Prejudice is the conjurer of imaginary wrongs, strangling truth, overpowering reason, making strong men weak and weak men weaker. God give us the large hearted charity which "bearth all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things," which "thinks no evil," :phones:

Buffy

[pgrmdave]

Questor, you quoted a frontpage editorial (FrontPage Magazine)

 

Do you really think they are even close to approaching an unbiased source? That source appears much, much more biased than any mainstream media I've ever read/seen/heard. Just because it's on a "news" site doesn't mean that it's telling the whole truth.

[questor]

Buffy, it seems you have delved deeply into the in indiscretions of G.G. L iddy, while leaving the toilet bowl of Bill Ayers life unopened. I have to wonder why this is true? If you read any reports at all about this man, it would seem he is an unrepentant terrorist and proud of it. He still offers nothing but criticism of the US, and I can see nothing he does that may help our society. Yes, he is a teacher, but I would call him an indoctrinator, similar to Ward Churchill. He seems bent upon tearing down our society and making us into a communist nation. If you have some information from something other than an activist source that points to the contrary, please share it. Also, if you want to accuse me of something, please quote my words rather than your inference of my thoughts. Thanks

Screaming "terrorist" at everyone who disagrees with you is terroristic. And perversely and illogically spinning this into "only conservatives are True Patriots, and liberals want to destroy America" is a far bigger threat to our democracy than Liddy or Ayers will ever be.

 

You might even have gotten this from what Bill said as well, even though he's coming at it from your side of the fence, but I guess that was a bit to subtle too.

snarky comment noted, but you have the right to say it.