National Public Re-education

I listened to the whole “Tell me more” NPR interview with Bill Ayers and I extracted bits for direct rebuttal up until about 8:30. That’s as much as I could listen to more than once (in order to transcribe) out of 21 minutes. I only listened to it at all because a friend asked me to. The comments following are based on that specific time-slice and then more general objections to Bill Ayers worldview.

NPR starts by calling the Weather Underground Organization a “radical anti-war group” while acknowledging that the WUO conducted “bombings and protests.” That’s as weaselly a conflation as you’ll find in any revisionist history textbook. “Oh, they held some demonstrations and they bombed a dozen places. You know, radical.”

And, I’d say calling the WUO a “radical anti-war group” is praising by faint damns.

Ayers denies that the Weather Underground was a terrorist organization, instead saying it was a militant one. He says, therefore, that bombing the Capitol Building, the Pentagon, the NYC Police Headquarters, a San Francisco Police Station and a judge’s home is not terrorism. A person, then a child, living at that home begs to differ.

This is not to mention that Ayers’ friends died when the nail filled bomb they planned to set off at a dance at Fort Dix exploded while they were assembling it. In a normal criminal case Ayers would be charged with murder because his co-conspirators died in the course of attempted murder.

Ayers’ wife was almost certainly directly responsible for the death of at least one policeman, blinding another and causing severe injury to more. Here and here.

Never mind that, says NPR, let’s get to the question of Ayers keeping a low profile during the election. Everybody knows Ayers gave no interviews, for reasons as good as Jeremiah Wright’s. Ayers, however, misconstrues the question to his advantage. NPR has no objection. Ayers: “I wasn’t silent, I spoke to my students, I spoke to my classes, I spoke at Universities…” More’s the pity that he stayed underground, merely polluting young minds, instead of making clandestine radio broadcasts about the need to destroy the government as did the WUO.

Ayers: “I have a capacity to dissociate myself from the kind of cartoon character that gets periodically, uh, created around me.” This is true, depending on who you think is a cartoon character. That’s exactly how he regarded those he was willing to slaughter in his WUO days; as cartoon characters. He can dissociate himself quite easily from normal human morality if you happen to disagree with his ideas. Ayers is an avowed Marxist who calmly plotted to place 25 million Americans in extermination camps after the US had been overthrown by his efforts and occupied by the Chinese and Soviets. The fact that he was delusional about the means doesn’t change his motive – he just never got the opportunity.

“I’ve had decades of public life…it’s dishonest to turn me into this monster…as if I were some kind of a toxic agent…” Well, the 2001 picture of you wiping your feet on the flag, when added to your past words and actions, makes me willing to go there, sir.

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn advocated the violent overthrow of the government of the United States, and they have blood on their hands from the attempt. NPR is participating in their national rehabilitation and attempting our re-education. I hate that I’m paying for NPR or any part of Ayers’ salary or grant dispensations.

Bill Ayers is lying about his WUO past. When he prattles about his association with Barack Obama, “if you share a meeting or a take a bus downtown together, or have a cup of coffee together, somehow, then they are responsible for each other’s behavior and politics,” he’s lying by answering a different question than has been asked.

Hell, he once thought the ChiComs would help him occupy America, why wouldn’t he press his views on a wet-behind-the-ears community organizer? Obama knew Ayers’ thoughts well. How could Professor Ayers have avoided the lectures? “It’s a degraded part of political culture that you have to agree in order to talk.” That reminds me greatly of someone else who glossed over murderous international disagreements as if they were just talk. The good news is that that was probably just talk.

NPR throws a puffball to Ayers, “The McCain campaign suggested that you are not only a terrorist, but an unrepentant one.” Well, that’s what I take as the plain meaning of Ayers claim that he wishes he had “done more” when asked about the bombings. Ayers claims he meant “didn’t do enough to end the war,” but he must count the disaster of the failed Fort Dix bombing and the unrealized extermination camps in there somewhere, too.

Ayers calls his activities “extreme vandalism against property.” He says, “never did the Weather Underground target people, never did it hurt or harm or kill anyone” Bullshit. And bullshit. Extreme vandalism against property is flying airliners into the World Trade Center, it’s just tough cookies there were some infidels in there at the time. Not at all like an NCO club dance at Fort Dix where the soldiers and their dates were the targets, not the building.

Ayers is also wrong about the United States being a state sponsor of terrorism now or in 1968. If the US was practicing terror in 1968, it was doing so on our own soldiers. I recommend “Dereliction of Duty” by H. R. McMaster as an illustration of how evil the government was. But not in the way Ayers thought.

Many people did oppose the Vietnam War. I was eventually among them. My reasons for opposing it; that we showed no will, intent or plan to WIN it, would never have occurred to Bill Ayers. I was not alone in this view or in condemning the draft as involuntary servitude, but Ayers counts all opposition to the War as agreement with his policies and practices. That was never even vaguely true.

I’ll admit Ayers is good, especially if you accept his premises. Maybe he should be Press Secretary.

The character of anyone who would shake Bill Ayers’ hand must come into serious doubt either in the case of judgment or, to put it politely, unbridled opportunism. I’m now tending to think it’s the latter for our President-elect. That’s an improvement over what I expected was the case. We will see.

In any case, one can hope Bill Ayers never sees the inside of the Lincoln bedroom.