Who is Williams Ayers, and do voters need to know more about him?
William Ayers is well known as the 60s bomber who belonged to the "Weather Underground," an anti-US group that bombed the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and other government buildings. In 1981, after ten years on the run, he turned himself in to authorities and seemed to settle into middle class life. He teaches English and hasn't been arrested for crimes since turning himself in.
He has become an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign due to his relationship with Barack Obama.
What are Ayers' views of America today? Have they changed since he participated in terror bombings in the 60s? And what is his relationship with Barack Obama?
Barack Obama's path crossed with Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn sometime in the 90s.
Some - including Barack Obama himself - have implied Obama and Ayers were little more than acquaintances who lived in the same Chicago neighborhood. But Steve Chapman points out:
He's appeared on panels with Ayers (arranged by Barack's wife Michelle), served on a foundation board with him and held a 1995 campaign event at the home of Ayers and his wife, fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn. Ayers even gave money to one of his campaigns.
Fast forward to today. Ayers is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education. But in his speeches and writings, Ayers makes no effort to conceal his contempt for the USA.
In 2006 - ten years after hosting the fundraiser for Barack Obama in his home - Ayers gave a speech in Venezuela, honoring Marxist ruler Hugo Chavez. Note the mind-numbing Marxist drivel in this excerpt from Ayers' speech:
Let those of us who are gathered here today read this poem as “The Teacher’s Obligation.” We, too, must move in and out of windows, we, too, must build a project of radical imagination and fundamental change. Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model ofeducation– a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation. This World Education Forum provides us a unique opportunity to develop and share the lessons and challenges of this profound educational project that is the Bolivarian Revolution.
Hugo Chavez is one of the most anti-US leaders in the world. Will voters elect a candidate with personal friends who praise an anti-US ruler?
But comments Ayers has made himself about the US are revolting. Here is an Ayer's quote abut the US from 2007:
Empire resurrected, and unapologetic, war without end. An undefined enemy that is supposed to be a rallying point for a new kind of energized jingoistic patriotism. Unprecedent and unapologetic military expansion. White supremcy changing its form, but essentially in tact. Attacks on women and girls --violent attacks. Growing surveillance in every sphere of our lives. On and on and on. The taregting of gay and lesbian people as a kind of a scapegoating gesture, to keep our minds off of what is really happening.
Ayers has called the US a terrorist state. Check out this 2008 quote from Ayer's blog:
Terrorism—according to both official U.S. policy and the U.N.—is the use or threat of random violence to intimidate, frighten, or coerce a population toward some political end. This means, of course, that terrorism is not the exclusive province of a cult, a religious sect, or a group of fanatics. It can be any of these, but it can also be—and often is—executed by governments and states. A bombing in a café in Israel is terrorism, and an Israeli assault on a neighborhood in Gaza is terrorism; the September 11 attacks were acts of terrorism, and the U.S. bombings in Viet Nam for a decade were acts of terrorism. Terrorism is never justifiable, even in a just cause—the Union fight in the 1860’s was just, for example, but Shernan’s [sic] March to the Sea was indefensible terror. I’ve never advocated terrorism, never participated in it, never defended it. The U.S. government, by contrast, does it routinely and defends the use of it in its own cause consistently.Read the last sentence again. Ayers says the US government routinely engages in terror and defends the use of it.
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Will voters elect any candidate who has friends who see the US as a terrorist government? I don't think so.
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PowerLine has much more in a post called, "The friends of Barack Obama, Part I."
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