Can We Stop Talking about Bill Ayers?

Why Bill Ayers matters in this election.

The Obama-Bill Ayers connection has recently taken center stage in the media, casting a threatening shadow on the issues Obama would prefer to address. Some are wondering how '60s radical Ayers is relevant and accuse the McCain campaign of steering off course. So why are we still talking about Bill Ayers, a man who was bombing buildings when Barack Obama was only eight years old? This is a man who is now a "respected" professor paying his dues to society. Right? Or, on the flip side, is this a man who, given a second chance at living the American dream, found another avenue to employ his radical beliefs?

Teaching them to our children (more about that here).

For those who believe there is a disconnect between Bill Ayers' past, Obama's ideology and our collective future, I ask you to read this article, which presents a clear and concise connection.

"Starting college in 1979, Obama describes how he chose his friends carefully: 'The more politically active black students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performers.'

He describes how they discussed 'neo-colonialism, Frantz Fanon (the Black Power hero and apostle of cleansing violence), Eurocentrism, and patriarchy'; and how he read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness 'to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid ... Their demons.'"

Guilt by association is not the issue at hand, and Bill Ayers is not the core issue facing Americans leading up to this election. What America needs to contemplate is Who is Barack Obama? This is a young politician with ideas for "change." But what are his core beliefs and how do they apply to his leadership?

We choose our friends and associates—they are not forced upon us. Why is it then that Obama has chosen—and even sought out—radicals as his mentors, his friends, his neighbors and his colleagues. Why is it that all of these "associations" and allies in Obama's world share a common thread: revolution, socialism, communism, radicalism. Why is it that so many of these very same people can be traced back to relationships with groups like the Black Panthers and with ideologies like that of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan?

Americans need to ask the tough questions and think about how this really affects our entire country, our children, our jobs, our lives.

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"It's hard to say when it started ... 1970 to 1980. It was underground for 11 years." —Bernardine Dohrn, Weather Underground member and wife of Bill Ayers

"There's no way to be committed to non-violence in the middle of the most violent society that history's ever created. I'm not committed to non-violence."
—Bernardine Dohrn, 1969

"During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara's picture in the bedroom; fermented Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand over a century." (New York Times, Sept. 11, 2001)

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Sal Stern, in the City Journal, Summer 2006, wrote about Bill Ayers' entry into the American educational system. Attending Columbia Unversity's Teacher's College in 1984 (incidentally, during the same years Obama attended Columbia University -- both in NY), he experienced an "epiphany" while taking a class taught by Prof. Maxine Greene.

Greene told future teachers that they could help change this bleak landscape by developing a "transformative" vision of social justice and democracy in their classrooms. Her vision, though, was a far cry from the democratic optimism of the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr., which most parents would endorse. Instead, critical pedagogy theorists nurse a rancorous view of an America in which it is always two minutes to midnight and a knock on the door by the thought police is imminent. The education professors feel themselves anointed to use the nation’s K–12 classrooms to resist this oppressive system. Thus Maxine Greene urged teachers not to mince words with children about the evils of the existing social order. They should portray "homelessness as a consequence of the private dealings of landlords, an arms buildup as a consequence of corporate decisions, racial exclusion as a consequence of a private property-holder’s choice." In other words, they should turn the little ones into young socialists and critical theorists.

And what has been the agenda of the reformed Bill Ayers of the 2000s? Sol Stern, of City Journal, reminds of us Bill Ayers' rendevous with Hugo Chavez in November 2006 in an article published Oct. 6, 2008:

Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer. (If you find the metaphor strained, consider that Walter Duranty, the infamous New York Times reporter covering the Soviet Union in the 1930s, did, in fact, depict Stalin as a great land reformer who created happy, productive collective farms.) For instance, at a November 2006 education forum in Caracas, Venezuela, with President Hugo Chávez at his side, Ayers proclaimed his support for "the profound educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chávez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. ... I look forward to seeing how you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane." Ayers concluded his speech by declaring that "Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education—a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation," and then, as in days of old, raised his fist and chanted: "Viva Presidente Chávez! Viva la Revolucion Bolivariana! Hasta la Victoria Siempre!"

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(Updated 10/14/2008)

As if underpinning education with socialism and communism (disguised as "social justice") weren't bad enough, the Bill Ayers agenda goes even further. Linda Harvey writes this about the Bill Ayers "gay agenda" for schools:

In 2007, a group from the American Educational Research Association, or AERA, including Ayers, demanded major accrediting organization for schools, colleges, and departments of education include categories of "social justice, sexual orientation and gender identity" in its standards. Ayers and colleagues called their effort "Call to Action: A RED Campaign for Social Justice and Queer Lives." Ayers, formerly vice president for curriculum of the AERA, was the spokesman on behalf of the effort, calling on the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, or NCATE, to include these categories.

What would an Obama administration do? The record shows that Obama supported Illinois Senate Bill 99 in 2003, which, despite denials by Obama and false claims by the mainstream media, was not a bill to protect children from sexual predators. It was a sweeping, comprehensive sex-education bill that lowered the age of instruction from sixth grade to kindergarten, gutted an abstinence emphasis and prohibited "bias" based on "sexual orientation." The term "sexual predator" is nowhere in the bill, with inappropriate touching by peers included in a laundry list of the many aspects of explicit sex ed.

As a member of the Weather Underground, Ayers and Dohrn took part in sexual exploration which included group sex and homosexuality. This was somehow part of the groups manifesto. Impressing sexual education on children—and more specifically, homosexuality&mdashis part of the Ayers plan for education. But what should disturb Americans even more is the face you see plastered across your TV screen, your computers, your neighborhoods: Yes, Barack Obama supported lowering the age for sexual education&mdashto include your kindergartner.

" ... we'd do it again. I wish that we'd done more. I wish we'd been more militant ..."—Bernardine Dohrn, 1998 interview with Connie Chung (and William Ayers)


(Connie Chung interview, skip to the end of the video)

View the nine-part Weather Underground series here.

Sources:
- Obama's Weatherman shows which way the wind blows (The Australian, 10/13/2008)
- The Eds' Schools Latest—And Worst—Humbug (City Journal, Summer 2006)
- No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen (New York Times, 9/11/2001)
- The Bomber as School Reformer (City Journal, 10/6/2008)
- Bill Ayers' 'gay' agenda for your kids

More information:
- Ayers Has Not Left Radicalism Behind
- Exclusive: Forget Bill Ayers - Here Are Over a Dozen More Virulently Anti-American Obama Friends
- UIC was asked not to show Ayers papers

Read more about the Barack Obama and Bill Ayers connection in original post here.