Paul Berman, one of the most influential political intellectuals writing today, has penned a searing indictment of former Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers. His essay is no surprise. Berman was the first activist/writer to tie SDS’s drift towards Leninism with its cadre’s decision at the Port Huron conference to admit to its ranks representatives of the American Communist Party. At its very start, SDS took the pose of “no enemies on the Left.” Writing at TheDailyBeast.com, Tina’s Brown’s new website, Berman correctly calls Ayers “the stupidest man in America” who “has learned nothing” since the 1960’s when he sought to launch guerrilla warfare against the United States through his now well-known bombing campaign.
Berman continues to note that Obama “is saddled with Ayers” not only because of his past associations with him, but because of what Berman calls “a culture of mendacity on the far left in America, …that allows Ayers to go on proclaiming his own nobility and ideals, quite as if his own principles were those of any liberal-minded person, which they are not.” Berman is rightfully angry that over 3000 people have now signed a petition of support to Ayers, that depicts the unrepentant terrorist as a victim of McCarthyite slander. The petition’s writers are furious that Ayers has been described as a “lunatic leftist.” As Berman writes, “if this phrase does not apply to Ayers, it applies to no one.”
It is a great shock to find that among those who signed the support Ayers petition are two editors of the social democratic magazine Dissent, educator Debbie Meier and the journal’s co-editor, Mitch Cohen. Meier signed, she explains, because her own conversations with him convinced her that Ayers “has fundamentally changed his mind” since his Weatherman days. Either Meier is disingenuous, or she has failed to read most of his recent political statements.
Their signatures are especially disheartening because the magazine, founded by the late Irving Howe in the 1950s, was once the stalwart of anti-Communist socialism as well as an opponent of the emerging New Left’s anarchism and proto-communism. Back then, Howe wrote a seminal and later suppressed essay, “New Styles in Leftism,” in which he had the honor being the very first figure on the Left to attack head on the new youthful leftists and their illusions. Years before Ayers even conceived of breaking away from SDS and founding the Weathermen, Howe pointed to the new “kamikaze radicalism, …white Malcolmism,” that he saw emerging. This New Left, he noted, castigated everything American, and thought that any talk “about Communist totalitarianism were simply…a bogey to frighten infants.”
This group according to Howe, was neo-Stalinist, authoritarian at its core, espoused black nationalism and racism, favored guerrilla warfare, and rejected the intellectual heritage of the West and a commitment to democracy. They had a “vicarious indulgence in violence,” Howe wrote, and even when merely theoretical, was still “all the more irresponsible.”
Howe might just as well have been talking about Bill Ayers today, which is why it is such a shock that some of his old associates now sing Ayers’ praises. On these points, Berman stands true to Howe’s old argument. But even Berman, who so accurately describes Ayers’ real legacy, begins by calling Ayers “a good and decent educator” whose old pre-school center in Manhattan was “first-rate,” and whose post Weather Underground educational work as a professor has been carried out with “admirable sincerity and skill.” The old Ayers:bad- the educator Ayers:good. The disjunction between proclaiming Ayers still stupid and yet a good educator today does not seem to strike Berman as strange.
Berman’s misjudgment of Ayers goes to the heart of the actual threat posed by him today. It is not that 40 years ago he was a terrorist, and that Barack Obama still associates with him. Even if Obama did not know about Ayers’ past as he now asserts, a response that is actually more than difficult to believe, he did know- and did fund through the Annenberg Challenge, Ayers’ extremely radical educational projects. All one has to do is read the many articles and critiques of Ayers written by Sol Stern for The City Journal and The Wall Street Journal,to see what Ayers’ “educational” work is all about.
Stern points out, rather than being a school reformer, Ayers is “a school destroyer” who hopes “for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism.” Rather than see public schools as a way of assimilating children, especially immigrants, into a common civic and democratic culture, Ayers sees education as the mechanism to destroy “capitalist hegemony.” One has only to look at the course outline for his UIC course on Urban Education: “Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression- we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things…We cannot be child advocates…in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine.”
Stern documents Ayers’ favored curriculum elsewhere. Here he cites sections of books Ayers and Maxine Greene have edited on social justice teaching, published by Teachers College Press. Education schools are rushing to implement such a curriculum. Science, for example, is heralded as a medium that is essentially a “political activity” that can be used to transform “institutional and interpersonal power structures” that play a role in student’s lives. Math too has to be politicized. One must teach percentages and fractions by using charts of income distribution, to show students how wealth is concentrated at the top in America and benefits mainly the superrich. One has to show, for example, how military budgets for Iraq deprive Americans of their fair share of the nation’s resources.(They do not have to go into history; there the option for the radical educator is simple: assign the works of Howard Zinn.)
All these themes appear in Ayers most recent writings. In the newspaper Revolution, the organ of The Revolutionary Communist Party USA, a split off from the old SDS, Ayers defines the progressive education he advocates as an education that works to promote student opposition to “the most reactionary cabal of ideologues” that control the federal government and the media. To create a genuine democratic education, teachers have to work to overturn the repressive, racist and imperialist system that he believes is the United States. Education cannot be separated from the politics of “social justice and liberation,” Ayers writes, since urban classrooms were at present merely preparing students “for prison, for unemployment and for war.” Even if Republicans lose the White House, Ayers argues that the ruling class will remain irritated by education- the one area that they cannot control. To keep education out of their hands, he argues that one has to fight to stop proposals favoring charter schools and vouchers. Ayers does not seem to realize, or care, that such reforms gain access to good education for precisely the poor whose interests he claims to represent.
Ayers, it seems, is still searching for a Latin American revolutionary hero to carry on Fidel’s cause.In a speech he delivered at Hugo Chavez’s side in Venezuela in 2006. Ayers sounded like he was reliving those glory days of the Cuban revolution. Standing by Chavez’s side, he ended with “Viva Presidente Chavez!Viva La Revolucion Bolivariana! Hasta La Victoria Siempre!” You get the idea.Education, he told the assembled revolutionaries, “is the motor-force of revolution,” and Venezuela shows the path of how “to overcome the failings of capitalist education.” If anyone has any doubt about how education has replaced bomb-throwing as the way to attain his old goals, reading Bill Ayers relieves one of all doubt. Against the words of those he calls “everyday liberals” and other “radicals and armchair intellectuals,” in Venezuela Ayers has found the new revolutionary paradise. Echoing Hellen Keller in the 1920’s, Ayers endorses her cry: “Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.” Venezuela, he assures us, proves that “the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome.”
To call Bill Ayers an educational reformer, in other words, is reminiscent of the 1950’s, when old China hands called Mao “an agrarian reformer.” Yet, the Left- even some of the so-called moderate Left- continues to uphold Bill Ayers as a model. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Thomas Frank penned a column “My Friend Bill Ayers.” Frank, like Obama, says that he too became Ayers’ friend when he met him in the neighborhood. Trust Mr. Frank, who also knows what’s wrong with Kansas, where regular people vote against their economic interests by regularly supporting those reactionary Republicans. And trust him about Bill Ayers, whom he calls “a dedicated servant of those less fortunate than himself.” Perhaps Frank is whom Paul Berman was thinking when he talks of “respectable” people who sing Ayers’ phrases. Not only is Ayers a good man, Frank writes, he should be “an honorary Eagle Scout.” Doesn’t Frank realize that Bill Ayers probably perceives the Boy Scouts as a homophobic and imperialist organization? After all, when the revolution comes, they would not be in the streets with Ayers’ cadre, but would probably be supporting the police and trying to pick up the nails the Ayers group would be throwing on the streets to break police car tires.
Whatever the actual exact nature of a tie between Obama and Bill Ayers there is; we can at least now be thankful for one thing. In the last debate, Obama promised that in his administration, he would not be taking advice from or consulting with Bill Ayers. Without this publicity, for all one knows, he might have considered appointing Ayers Secretary of Education. One might recall that Bill Clinton almost gave that position in his first administration to Johnetta Cole, only to pull back when he found out from David Twersky’s expose in Seth Lipsky’s Forward that Cole was associated with major American Communist front groups. Now, at least, Ayers’ nasty work will continue to be important only in education schools and in the tragic following he has created in scores of our nation’s future teachers.
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1. Pajamas Media » Pajamas Media Welcomes Ron Radosh:[...] to announce that Ron Radosh is joining us as the latest PajamasXpress blogger. His latest entry: The Real Threat Posed by Bill Ayers… October 21, [...]
Oct 21, 2008 - 1:20 am 2. USPEIN:Theodore Sizer Coalition of Essential Schools is a failure in the two locations in NH where they are being run…
Ayers types are who are radicalizing our educational system and now they are nothing more than indoctrination centers for the UN.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/USPEIN
Find out about IBO.org and other UN indoctrination programs that are taking advantage of the captive audience of our children.
Please look into HB 3036 as well.
Oct 21, 2008 - 2:25 am 3. somercet:The Left just hand waves all these crimes away, Mr Radosh. The truth itself has no interest for those who are convinced W is the devil and that “the poor” are suffering as never before. I believe that fits the definition of “fanatic.”
Oct 21, 2008 - 3:40 am 4. dan:Welcome, Mr. Rodosh! It looks like we’ll need all the clearminded anti-communists we can get in this upcoming political season. Very glad to have you, and very fine opening shot here. That the thrill of socialist revolution continues to outweigh the now-well-known horror of its actual applications is cause for more than a little concern. If only McCain would lay out a timeline of Obama’s relationships, punctuated with “What do all these American Bolsheviks see in Obama? What do they know about him that he isn’t telling you?”
Oct 21, 2008 - 5:43 am 5. BMoon:“Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.” Venezuela, he assures us, proves that “the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome.”(Ayers)
Last month Chavez murdered the courageous student leader who organized protests against his regime. I suppose that is what Ayers meant by “resisting” and “overcoming.”
Oct 21, 2008 - 6:29 am 6. cfbleachers:Howe pointed to the new “kamikaze radicalism, …white Malcolmism,” that he saw emerging. This New Left, he noted, castigated everything American, and thought that any talk “about Communist totalitarianism were simply…a bogey to frighten infants.”
And watching this play out in today’s political landscape, has a much more nefarious blend of ingredients. The infiltration into the “traditional liberal” landscape by the weeds of Ayers & his even more malignant wife…infuses not just a “respectability” element to their fraud, but an inherent shield by the useful idiots who parrot the reflexive “McCarthyite” slurs against anyone who points out the truth.
It is remarkable in its similarity to the overuse of the “race” card, even in the most ridiculous of equations…because it stops the legitimacy of the observation dead in its tracks.
In each instance, the whistleblower who is armed with truth…is put on trial, summarily adjudicated and then hanged not by disproving the truth of the allegation, but by merely making the allegation.
And if you believe our education system has been infiltrated and that is a horrifying prospect, then our information stream and its complicity in advancing this treason must render mulitple nightmares.
This group according to Howe, was neo-Stalinist, authoritarian at its core, espoused black nationalism and racism, favored guerrilla warfare, and rejected the intellectual heritage of the West and a commitment to democracy. They had a “vicarious indulgence in violence,” Howe wrote, and even when merely theoretical, was still “all the more irresponsible
Now, back to the seminal point at hand. “This group” is now an amalgam of individual cells, acting independently, autonomously and yet in concert to undermine and dominate traditional liberal ideals. They do not seek to “engage” in dialogue, they seek to destroy and strangle dissent. They do not seek to bring peace, but to incite violence. They do not seek to speak with enemies such as Chavez and Castro without preconditions, they seek to embrace enemies without preconditions.
America and Israel are the targets and it is important to embrace the revolution at hand, but not to wave a red flag in front of the bull, until the picadors have raised their lances at the ready.
I believe that traditional liberals are to willing to avert their gaze at the team assembled, not in a fleeting moment, but over a lifetime by Senator Obama. I believe traditional liberals are too willing to remain in ignorant bliss, with preference for the cool waters of soothing words instead of the scalding rhetoric that inspired them.
Neo-Stalinism combined with black nationalism…doesn’t that pretty much define James M. Cone’s liberation theopolitics? In point of fact, doesn’t that pretty much define Jeremiah Wright, Moss, Pfleger…and also help to understand THEIR fealty to Farrakhan?
Doesn’t that describe Frank Marshall Davis? Wouldn’t we be wise to put Michael Klonsky and Carl Davidson into this bag of horrors? Where Neo-Stalinism (or in Klonsky’s case…Maoism) meets black nationalism and blends into a cocktail designed to produce class and racial warfare, first to dominate traditional liberalism then to create the revolution.
The first part is nearly complete. Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton…along with Bill Clinton…have been eaten alive. The “first black President” of yesterday, is painted as a racist today. The soft hearted and gentle Vice Presidential candidate Lieberman of yesterday…is a vicious, blood thirsty monster today. The soft “social democracy” of Hillary yesterday…is corporate pandering and war machine infused today.
And the information stream did not stand idly by as witnesses, they were co-conspirators in delivering the steaming pile of lies.
Yet, still…Senator Obama is held aloft, …there is no “evidence” that he orchestrated or even participated …certainly none that he embraced this bubbling cauldron of leftist agitprop. That is, if you ignore the influence of “Frank”, ignore Ayers and his wife of no soul, ignore 20 years with Wright and Cone’s hatefest, ignore Pfleger, ignore Klonsky, ignore Odinga, ignore Rashid Khalidi, ignore Khalid al Mansour, ignore his father’s writings, ignore Edward Said, ignore Sam Graham-Felsen, ignore “discomfort” with the “wrong kind of patriotism”, ignore the “spread the wealth”, ignore Robert Malley, ignore Samantha Power, ignore Brzezinsky, ignore McPeak, ignore the radical professors at college, ignore …essentially the whole of his life and the whole of his foreign policy team. And Lugar and Jones do not give me greater comfort as a staunch supporter of Israel, they give me less. If he had added James Baker or Pat Buchanan, I would have felt precisely the same.
These associations don’t provide “guilt” by and through them alone, but they do provide a worldview with which he appears to be quite comfortable. I am not.
He admits to being “inspired and guided” by some names on this list. I am not.
What is probably most telling, most revealing…is the manner in which he responds to the particulars of these associations. He spends a minute condemning the pre-meditated attempted murder of innocent men in uniform at Ft. Dix…and several weeks whitewashing the past of the would be murderer.
He divorces himself from the ACTS (when he was a child, or that he didn’t know about, or that he didn’t approve)…but he has never even requested a trial separation, or even separate beds…from the belief system that produced them. Not once. Ever. In his entire life.
Oct 21, 2008 - 6:49 am 7. pez:Trouble is , i havnt seen anything resembling a serious smoking gun after trawling the neocon and GOP supporting blogoshere. hints and rumours maybe, but nothing to seriously damage Obama
Its a serious distraction from McCains campaign, lets face it, unless something concrete is revealed, its going to be discounted by the electorate.
you are flogging a dead horse
Oct 21, 2008 - 7:09 am 8. jean:Welcome. Question I would like an answer to: THE REAL REASON OBAMA IS LEAVING CAPAGIN TRAIL. I received several e-mails this morning, I checked some of them out that there is a Lawsuit filed in Hawaii Court to open Obama’s Birth Records by Andy Martin. The lawsuit is posted online.
Oct 21, 2008 - 7:24 am 9. BMoon:First saw this on Gretawire.com
I heard reference from a neice that lives in Hawaii. It states in the lawsuit that Mr. Martin wants the court to render a decision no later than Nov. 3, 2008, because Mr. Martin wants to write a story about the case.
Would you check it and let the American People know the real reason why Obama left the trail and not because of his grandmother. Has been out of the hospital for about a week now.
“.. hints and rumours maybe..” (pez)
WTF??? This guy has drunk deep drafts of the koolaid. His speech is already slurring Newspeak.
Oct 21, 2008 - 7:34 am 10. dan:pez, let’s face it: your attachment to obama isn’t analytical, it’s emotional – the flipside of the same bizarre emotional rejection of Bush that, if you watch Fahrenheit 9/11, was visible on Day 1 of his presidency.
Obama promises “nothing” for this economic downturn; his reaction has been “it’s all Bush’s fault.” this sounds like an analysis to you? he benefits from this bizarre media lust for bill clinton’s presidency – the very president of the tech bubble, the housing bubble’s beginning, and the failure to address osama bin laden in a meaningful way for EIGHT YEARS. i used to like Clinton too, but it was because i was blinded by the media’s reluctance to criticize him, as i later discovered.
just like Clinton, obama would be nothing if the media didn’t immediately frame every one of his propositions and announcements as though the burden were on everyone else to disprove this obvious wisdom. it is a travesty. the man was raised by a loopy socialist, idealized his communist kenyan kleptocrat father, was supported all through his political career, from day 1 in Chicago, by unreconstructed Maoist radicals. if you really prefer this, then let the revolution come: then we can find out exactly who is right and who is wrong about all this.
O we’ll talk to tyrants – and then when that fails? we’ll be right back to “bush’s policies,” you vicious little idiots. do you even know what the word “ideology” connotes?
O we’ll prosecute the CEO’s and raise taxes on the wealthy and close corporate tax loopholes and punish corporations who “send jobs overseas”? oh really – and then when we’ve forced corporations to pay more of their profits to the government and to workers with globally high union-mandated incomes along with generous pensions benefits and higher health care insurance payments to make up for those 48 million uninsured, do you think that combination of policies will result in a growing or a shrinkage of all that “wealth” obama wants to “spread around”?
Face it Prez, you’re an ignorant infantilized little stereotype. Vote for your petty little Messiah, but stop throwing your vomit around the public square.
Oct 21, 2008 - 8:00 am 11. Kathy Shaidle:The guys at Nose On Your Face and I a 1:48 min. anti-Ayers video that references the failed Fort Dix Dance plot which, again, I can’t believe is being ignored, even by
conservatives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfF15cUc9AM
Oct 21, 2008 - 8:05 am 12. Harry Truman:Mr. Radosh, Thank you and welcome! There is also another well- researched angle: Ayers is likely the real author of BHO book: Why it matters; 3 part article; Jack Cashill, WorldNetDaily:
Oct 21, 2008 - 8:20 am 13. David Thomson:http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=75611
It is amazing how people fail to consider that “Dreams from my Father” as some other book, might well be ghostwritten. General presumptions of authenticity are incredibly naive or willfully blind.
Thank you for your clear exposition!
Persevere
Ron Radosh has yet to realize that he has been excommunicated by the left-wing establishment. I find it interesting that he refers to his friendship to Marty Peretz. The reality is that his buddy and he, as a practical matter, are no longer on the same side. Peretz is a guilt tripped white guy who refuses to fact unpleasant facts concerning Obama because of his skin color. It will only get worse in the future. Also, TNR is now far too similar to the Nation magazine. It’s only saving grace is that
Oct 21, 2008 - 9:01 am 14. dan:officially it remains pro-Zionist—although I suspect most of its contributors disagree with its editorial policy. Please note that Ron Radosh apparently did not receive an invitation to blog at TNR. Sadly, that because the decision makers most assuredly perceive him to be too reactionary for their taste.
yeah, peretz is just a fat, fatuous old hippy who married money. he and wiesletier are self-parodies. they took the same tac that the NYTimes did when Bush was elected; apres-ca, le deluge de puke.
and can i ask, since we’re talking about peretz, what’s up with liberal jews who crowd all their natural – familial – national sentiment into their perspective on israel, all their reasonable skepticism with regard to their enemies and loving deference to their own country’s foibles and errors and stupidities, but when it comes to all the passive-aggressive social-democratic nonsense in their own country they’re more German than the Germans? my probable father-in-law doctor is yammering this incoherent crap at me constantly and out of filial piety i say nothing but internally wonder: damn, are you stupid or something? or is it a babyboomer thing, related to the same pervasive, patent but unacknowledgable ultimately moral confusion that leads 60 year old moms to dress like their 17 year old daughters & whatnot?
i mean, just what is this major malfunction about, anyway? at least if we elect mccain we can put off another experiment with babyboomers in the white house for another period. i don’t want these materialistic spiritual incompetents anywhere near the throne in times like these, thanks.
Oct 21, 2008 - 9:42 am 15. pez:I’ll ignore the ad-hominems from bmoon and dan. i’l rise above them
but specifically gentlemen, you do not address my point
Dan, nowhere in your sputum-flecked rant, do you offer the smoking gun that McCain can take, with conviction, to the electorate. McCain has had plenty of chances to present this damning evidence, but has always answered with words like;
‘Its time for Obama to say what the nature of his relationship with Ayes is or was, we dont know’
Never has he he made a direct accusation, so you must conclude, its an accusation that cant be backed up sufficiently with hard fact, a real smoking gun
meanwhile, Obama moves serenly on, addressing economic matters and suchlike, that have put him on the verge of winning
Oct 21, 2008 - 9:55 am 16. dan:well mccain is hampered by his own honorable graciousness. he’s apparently made the decision not to push either jeremiah wright – a 20 year association including baptisms and very large donations – or bill ayers & co., in whose living room he began his political career, apparently.
frankly, i respect the decision on the level of public comity, but i think it’s misplaced in the current environment – not least because i *know,* as a rational human being, that these associations indicate without contradiction what obama *is* and *intends to do.*
and you’re right: while mccain puts out half-denunciations, in deference to his own standards, obama coasts serenly to the finish line while offering economic propositions that do nothing but gratify those who like their politicians to promise them shit, never mind if they can’t deliver it, and who flatter their bizarre self-image concerning their own metapartisan perspective – by saying that, basically, everything, including mccain, is george bush’s fault.
not even one synapse could be devoted to critiquing a political claim that amounts to: “I’m rising above politics! I hate George Bush at least as much as you!”
but apparently that’s the magic formula when there are 50+ million political prostitutes like yourself just waiting for such a message, your panties wringing-wet with vengeance.
Oct 21, 2008 - 10:03 am 17. pez:LOL Dan, theres no need for the insults! why can we just respect we differ, and remain polite, apart from that, ranting does you argument no good at all
And also, nowhere have i said I will be voting for Obama, that is one of many conclusions you have leapt to.
The electorate are not stupid, and will not fall for the ‘theres no smoke without fire; line that you advocate, they want evidence
here is a an article from the Conservative Mayor of London, UK, Boris Johnson, if conservatives think this , what hope have you got?
Oct 21, 2008 - 10:15 am 18. BMoon:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/10/21/do2101.xml
Whether the relationships with Wright, Rezko, Ayers, Marshall, ETC. ETC., are emphasized by the McCain campiagn or not, it is utterly irrelevant in the face of the massive, documented, and unrefuted evidence about their shared associations and ideologies. To attribute this evidence to “rumors and hints” is at least disingenuous, at most outright lieing.
Oct 21, 2008 - 10:17 am 19. pez:bmoon
If there was , as you say, ‘ massive, documented, and unrefuted evidence’ I am sure McCain and the GOP would make more of it.
So why haven’t they?
perhaps the evidence isnt quite as ‘ massive, documented, and unrefuted’ as you think?
Still no smoking gun
Oct 21, 2008 - 10:28 am 20. ex-democrat:pez – if a smoking gun was the only way for a jury to find a defendant guilty there would be a lot of convicted killers running around free.
Oct 21, 2008 - 10:38 am 21. Ditto:Not on the same side… as much as I agree with you David, isn’t that sad? We’re all Americans, presumably. Shouldn’t we all be on the same side? Or is it just that special interest groups have learned there is no reason to accept a “No” answer? Keep accusing people of being racist or a neocon and eventually you will get your way, consequences be damned.
Oct 21, 2008 - 10:41 am 22. John Spiller:The Real threat of Bill Ayers is the Republican Party and their Media buddies. You forget Vietman War – a huge American mistake. The attitudes and actions of many Americans was volatile and justified. Forcing humans to fight in a part of the world where we have zero change of winning unless we nuke them and Japan experience says no.
But instead of focusing on the citizen who can’t afford gas for his car, food for his table, health insurance due to such (greedy Ins Co costs), and American soldiers losing their lives in ANOTHER war we have no business sending them to. The middle east has done things their way for thousands of years. Bushanoics is not going to be accepted by any of these people. As soon as we get out, they will work out their own solutions. That is their business not ours.
So except for padding the pockets of the rich and privatizing everything, the Republican party as nothing to attract the middle class voter except to attack Obama with their slanted attacks implying he is a terrorist and socialist. Can’t win without a real platform so scare the population to not vote for him.
Now it is Joe the Plummer. Again, no real issues and someone who is not a plummer and, by the way, when is he going to pay his taxes?
McCain brought him up – Joe should thank McCain for getting the IRS on his back
And what about selecting a VP who has connections to organizations that want to ceceed from the USA? What ia American about that?
So while people struggle with their daily financial issues, the Republicans want you to believe that Obama is a terrorist and socialist. And you actually want THEM in the white house? World War III in the making. McCain’s and Palin’s way or the highway – fight first and maybe negotiate later……
Give me a break – Ayers is 40 years old. Give it up….. Joe the Plummer will never make over 250K – another Republican platform
Calling the Middle class welfare receivers – while giving all the tax breaks to people who have more money than they will ever spend.
Why would the middle class cast a vote for a president or his puppet (Sarah Palin) that calls them socialist.
Oct 21, 2008 - 10:44 am 23. Stu:Mr. Radosh was co-author of the seminal work on the Rosenbergs. He, as a then committed leftist, but also a truth seeking academic, initiated his research in the hopes of proving the Rosenbergs’ innocence. His research produced the most telling indictment of the Rosenbergs and their “organized” supporters, later buttressed by the Venona tapes. For his act of scholarship he was thereafter shunned by the leftist intelligentsia. We are greatful for your prior contributions to our nation and look forward to receiving the benefit of your ongoing efforts.
Oct 21, 2008 - 10:50 am 24. dan:well, it’s funny – mccain actually addressed that question in a town hall meeting where that guy asked him what the hell he was doing why aren’t you fighting harder against these socialists taking over our country?
and mccain said “because people have to trust the president of the united states.”
there’s only one candidate here with a non-ideological sensibility and with a record of working against his own party and with the opposing party.
that’s really just a fact. no matter how much you like obama, he cannot be the “postpartisan” candidate in an election where john mccain is his actual political opponent.
but with respect to ayers, your reluctance to make obvious inferences is more eloquent than the rest of your comment. i will not rehearse the public information demonstrating that obama relied on ayers’ political celebrity, at least, in order to gain entree into an infamously closed political arena, to thrive there, and even to benefit from quite interesting machinations deposing his political opponents in some cases even before the elections were held. you can look them up.
the great irony with the media’s treatment of obama’s entire pre-senatorial career (that is, his whole life minus one year), is that most of the media’s actual case against Bush has basically been circumstantial. well, O great skeptics and great piercers of the veil of political dissimulation: what do you think about Obama’s association with and self-evident reliance on leninists and crypto-leninists like jeremiah wright?
or are you so demoralized you just parrot back anti-conservative vitriol like a bunch of brainwashed high school dropouts?
Oct 21, 2008 - 10:59 am 25. heather:that “smoking gun” reference reminds me of the demand of the jury for proof that Simpson murdered Nicole and Ron. Without an actual ’smoking gun’ that jury maintained that OJ could not be guilty. So, he wasn’t, according to the legal system of California.
It is true, however, that common sense and timeless pragmatism tells all sane people that you can judge a person by the people he pals around with. I myself ‘hung around with’ some semi- radicals back in the day (I shunned the characters with the Trotsky glasses and the long boring papers on the “workers”), but then, I ‘grew up’. I became an adult. I put off childish things (which were, thank God, not illegal or murderous.) I have found the decency in myself to feel shame for what I did and did not do back in the day. That too, is called ‘growing up.’
Obama, on the other hand, ‘palled around with’ Ayers well into his late 30’s. And then there are the many thieves and conmen in his entourage, as he rose through the Chicago machine.
If all of that is not a ’smoking gun’, it is certainly a vast pall of smoke around the man.
Oct 21, 2008 - 11:00 am 26. heather:by the way, congratulations to PajamasMedia for talking Mr. Radosh into contributing to this publication. He is a ‘catch’ indeed.
As to TNR, etc… have you seen the declining value of the NYT?? I think that Mr Radosh has bet on the future by joining Pajamas!
Oct 21, 2008 - 11:03 am 27. P. Ami:dan,
Please, if I read paragraphs like your last again I’ll have to visit one of the other sites the Internet makes easy access for, just so I can move on from my arousal.
Leftist Jews are not particularly concerned about Israel or her security. They view Israel in much the same way they view the US, safe and sound but for the few weeks after a fallen tower or two has slapped them awake or when an election has limited their power. They too have managed to redirect their aggression from those who attacked them and choose to blame those who defend them. To their mind, it is the defense that begs aggression. All we need is a well respected therapist, we’ll all swing our defenses wide open, and when the hour has passed and the bill paid the human family’s group therapy session will have settled the petty divorces of our interests into what is the common cause of the March Left.
pez,
That you can conclude to such positive degrees that McCain won’t accuse Obama because there is nothing to accuse him of is simply wishful thinking on your part. There is far too much evidence of Obama’s political inclinations embedded in his life-story. If an Iraqi politician was seen to visit Israel regularly, to have prayed in a Synagogue (a hareidi one, not even a safe little Reformed Churchogogue but a full blown black hat place of worship), were he was seen to be reading The Jewish State, donating funds to the Zionist Union and training the Rabbis of Leftist Jewish centers in pro-Zionism (rather then the current curriculum of Jewish-Arab equivalency) would the voters in Iraq view this politician as a man with their interests at heart? The man would be an IED waiting to happen. So please, McCain’s Senatorial fraternalism is a more likely explanation for his tactics then what you suggest.
Welcome Mr. Radosh. Fine writing and analysis.
Oct 21, 2008 - 11:12 am 28. pez:‘obvious inferences’
inferences none the less, and therefore shaky ground.
McCain has to tread a (fine) line between discrediting Obama with his associations, and being called to clearly state what his evidence is, inferences will not do when you are directing them at a canditate for the presidency, there is a vast rebuttal machine waiting
I beleive McCain has gone as far as he can go when asking for Obama to explain his associations, I’m sure he would like to make a more pointed attack, but lacking the smoking gun, the chances of not being able to make it stick are too high, and he has drawn back.
But as I said in my first post, its now become a distraction to the issues that concern the electorate more.
Oct 21, 2008 - 11:13 am 29. jp:Obama’s exact words in the debate were that
“he [Ayers] won’t be advising me in the White House”.
He did not say Ayers would not be advising him. Split the words up and the assurance he gave us is meanigless.
Oct 21, 2008 - 11:24 am 30. Ron Radosh:I would like to comment on post no. 12 by David Thomson. Marty Peretz in fact did ask me to blog for the academic blog on TNR.com, and has asked meto write articles for the website as well. I have already written a few that appeared last year.
Oct 21, 2008 - 11:27 am 31. David Thomson:“Marty Peretz in fact did ask me to blog for the academic blog on TNR.com, and has asked meto write articles for the website as well. I have already written a few that appeared last year.”
Fair enough. But that leaves the the unavoidable question that cannot be ignored: why are you here on Pajamas Media? Is it perhaps due to the high likelihood that you have more in common with the majority of its articles and readership? Was your experience with TNR a frustrating and hopeless one? Were you usually treated minimally as a marginalized individual—if not an outright enemy?
Oct 21, 2008 - 12:01 pm 32. Robert Hurley:If Ron Radosh came her expecting any radional discourse, he came to the wrong place. This is a place for invective and insults. If you disagree your opponent must be a communist, socialist, fascist, prostitute or at least and American hater. It is all very edifying
Oct 21, 2008 - 12:10 pm 33. dan:Prez. Think about this in a naturalistic way. Say you saw this guy at a party, for example, and someone was describing him to you. Say instead of Communists and whatnot this guy (white guy) had a mother who was some kind of civil war re-enactment nut and pretended she was in a movement to re-install the grand ol’ South or whatever. And his dad, who’s gone, was a White Power theorist who left the USA to help make domestic race policy in apartheid-era South Africa. Say he was raised by black folks – why not. Say during college years he helped with anti-immigration policy, he was associated with the Minute Men. He went to Bob Jones University. Then whatever the comparable law school is, if there is one. Imagine there is one. Then, he launches his political career in Georgia in the old plantation home of David Duke. Actually someone worse than David Duke. A Grand Wizard of the KKK.
You get the picture. You know what? I’d think he was a white-power type. See what I mean?
Oct 21, 2008 - 2:15 pm 34. pez:Dan.
If McCain went out and said what you just posted, he would be commiting electorial suicide, he would be rightly jumped upon by ALL media outlets apart from the far right nutcase fringe. He would be toast.
McCain has pushed this one as far as he dares, given what can be substantiated.
I notice the McCain camp has largely abandoned the Obama association ploy in recent campaigning, and rightly , in my view, focused on what Obama has said, and what he says he will do if elected.
Whatever your allegiance, if you want to be elected, you have to deal with reality, and what the electorate want to hear, I sense that the McCain camp has seen that trying to make Ayers Obama’s running mate has not flown, and are quietly dropping it.
Of course , if you find a smoking gun, I’m sure that john would love to take possession of it
Oct 21, 2008 - 3:33 pm 35. Javelin:I realize Mr. Radosh is a good historian of the left, too bad he has to make his debut here in order to continue the pointless and worn out attack on Obama via Ayers, which even McCain has abandoned more out of tactics than principal.
Oct 21, 2008 - 5:36 pm 36. Bleepless:Uh, Javelin, how do you know that McCain did what you say he did out of tactics, not principal[sic]? If you can read minds, you have a great future. You need not even learn to spell.
Oct 21, 2008 - 6:35 pm 37. bobc:hmm, cant fault too much, dont see overt lies, problably true statements for the most part, but no real conclusion
Oct 21, 2008 - 11:15 pm 38. terry:ron–I’ve long been an admirer of your highly knowledgeable writings on the history of the left, and delighted to see they’ll be available on a site I check regularly. I think you will be an intellectual ornament to PJM and the first one was a great example of what I look for from you.
Oct 21, 2008 - 11:48 pm 39. TBird:and I hope you enjoyed the Canned Heat book.
Mr Radosh {
You write,”Obama promised that in his administration, he would not be taking advice from or consulting with Bill Ayers. Without this publicity, for all one knows, he might have considered appointing Ayers Secretary of Education.”
Considering the promises that Obama has already broken and the changes of mind he’s had over the past year or so, don’t you think that assuming that he wouldn’t make Ayers Sect’y of Education, is a bit naive?
Oct 22, 2008 - 5:24 am 40. tanstaafl:Rather than see public schools as a way of assimilating children, especially immigrants, into a common civic and democratic culture, Ayers sees education as the mechanism to destroy “capitalist hegemony.”
Absolutely. Whatever funds made it into schools under the Ayers/Obama dispensation of cash through the “Annenberg Challenge” (in other words, that money that didn’t make it into the pockets of ideological cronies) would have been in the name of effecting this agenda.
Whatever Bill Ayers does and says these days as a professor of education in Chicago should be seen as promoting the same agenda he held in the 60’s and 70’s with a more insidious slant than outright bombing.
To hell with academic discipline, “the three R’s” and so forth, we’re here to brainwash the kiddies.
While the dropout rate in Chicago schools, the 3rd largest district in the nation, remains around 50%.
Oct 22, 2008 - 8:21 am 41. pxfagonard:If Obama didn’t know about Ayers’ past, why did he say that, by the time he knew Ayers, he assumed he had “rehabilitated” himself? Rehabilitated from what?
Oct 22, 2008 - 8:39 am 42. RightWingBob.com » Why you don’t need (or want) a weatherman:[...] Radosh writes on The Real Threat Posed by Bill Ayers. It is not that 40 years ago he was a terrorist, and that Barack Obama still associates with him. [...]
Oct 22, 2008 - 10:31 am 43. Bart:cfbleachers wrote:
“Yet, still…Senator Obama is held aloft, …there is no “evidence” that he orchestrated or even participated …certainly none that he embraced this bubbling cauldron of leftist agitprop. That is, if you ignore the influence of “Frank”, ignore Ayers and his wife of no soul, ignore 20 years with Wright and Cone’s hatefest, ignore Pfleger, ignore Klonsky, ignore Odinga, ignore Rashid Khalidi, ignore Khalid al Mansour, ignore his father’s writings, ignore Edward Said, ignore Sam Graham-Felsen, ignore “discomfort” with the “wrong kind of patriotism”, ignore the “spread the wealth”, ignore Robert Malley, ignore Samantha Power, ignore Brzezinsky, ignore McPeak, ignore the radical professors at college, ignore …essentially the whole of his life and the whole of his foreign policy team. And Lugar and Jones do not give me greater comfort as a staunch supporter of Israel, they give me less. If he had added James Baker or Pat Buchanan, I would have felt precisely the same.
These associations don’t provide “guilt” by and through them alone, but they do provide a worldview with which he appears to be quite comfortable. I am not.
He admits to being “inspired and guided” by some names on this list. I am not.”
We seek the company of, comfort with, and camaraderie among those we identify with the most. Barack Obama is most comfortable among those on the list provided by cfbleachers. While there may be no single source “smoking gun”, when does an amalgamation of his preferred associates become a smoking gun on its own merits? One, two, maybe three of his past associations may be explained away with a reasonable argument that it was a time of self discovery in his youth. But, when the list grows exponentially longer and longer with admitted influences on his life, what else can one deduce? He is most certainly not an anthropologist, dedicated to the study of man. He purposely chose to be a community organizer well before embarking on a journey to Kenya to discover his familial connections on his father’s side. The sum of the parts make up the whole and how the whole operates depends on the way the parts have been assembled.
The “smoking gun” is Barack Obama himself, not one particular association with a Bill Ayers. Bill Ayers is only one of the indentifiers of who Obama really is.
Obama may indeed govern from the middle much like Clinton but I have serious reservations about it. Maybe for the first two years until he can consolidate his power base but then, I believe he will ultimately surrender himself to follow his natural path, a path instilled in him by the nurturing of his chosen influences in his life. We will see an America leaning further left than any other time in our history and ultimately, if the electorate does not wake up and correct the situation, the dye will be cast and a return to any similance of conservative ideals will be lost forever.
Oct 22, 2008 - 11:47 am 44. Mark:Great piece. I have a lot of the background on the Obama-Ayers relationship, going back to 1988, here. Every fact links you directly to the source. I have been getting good feedback on it so far, I would like to know what you think. I have a lot of details about Obama’s and Ayers’ shared “educational philosophy” among other subjects that aren’t discussed often. Keep up the good work, Ron!
Oct 22, 2008 - 12:16 pm 45. misanthropicus:Welcome to Radosh! As a rabid “Good night & good luck!” hater I’ll sure appreciated his comments on things.
Oct 22, 2008 - 2:26 pm 46. Papertiger:Is it wise to consolidate the few voices of desent on one forum? This makes it easier in the event that Obama becomes the President for the new order to silence all critics in one fell swoop.
Witness current events at http://www.patterico.com – offline and sitename co-opted by parties unknown.
This is the start of a very dangerous period in America.
Oct 22, 2008 - 2:32 pm 47. vivo:I’ve been censored twice for not welcoming Radosh. Free speech, where are you?
Oct 22, 2008 - 3:59 pm 48. mnotaro:Obama can not be trusted and I keep wondering how long it’s going to take for the lefty illuminati democrats to figure this out. He is not honest about his past and his links to these radicals, but no one is calling him out on it because the MSM is as liberal and lefty as he is!
Oct 24, 2008 - 10:23 am 49. Peggy McGilligan:Good writing. I’ll attest to that “culture of mendacity.” Political Correctness, plus Outcome Based Education ensures that those individuals who are targeted to graduate from college, can actually graduate. Its called “social justice.” Take William Ayers. Besides drugs, he knows domestic terrorism. It’s more than a way to stay stoned, firmly ensconced in the 70s. Just look at Ayer’s bourgeois neighborhood. Professor Ayers also decides education policy. The faculty sets the tone at any university. Ayers does much more damage to America than he ever could with mere explosives. “Education is the motor-force of revolution,” says Ayers. Ayers, a self-professed “communist street fighter” decides who will graduate. Ditto Ward Churchill. That’s where our tuition & tax dollar goes before winding up in the pocket of the US Department of Education, and community organizers, un-American activities all. This is our investment in America. We don’t need no stinking core curriculum. We don’t need no accountability, say educators. It’s part and parcel of the “culture of mendacity” manifested by the Left. And, these people are dead serious. In 1995 Barack Obama and Bill Ayers got together to focus on education; Bill Clinton proclaimed himself the education president. It was a paradigm shift. Yet Clinton never boasts his role, not a single time: never: http://theseedsof9-11.com
Oct 25, 2008 - 3:13 pm