Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright... Poor Judgment or Poor Politicking?

I want you to go to this website and watch the video, Call to Teach. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQIEcXS5uQw
First note which University this video was made at and where he was lecturing. I found that humorous. Good old USC, cluck, cluck (a little rivalry humor there). I thought the video was tremendously interesting and I thought it would be inspiring to teachers. Bill Ayers is 63 years old and I have to say that although he did the terrible things he did in the 60's, he is a very intelligent man that is very different from the young punk that he was in the 60's.

Then he had a mindless passion that was without reason in the way he pursued the means to resist and end the war in Vietnam. While he and other anti-war activists (and in his case terrorists) ranted and raved about the millions of North Vietnamese that were killed (over 3 million) by our carpet bombing of their country, they ignored the deaths of millions of South Vietnamese and the thousands of young Americans in their teens and early twenties who died there. They didn't seem to be able to adequately organize and express their anti-war sentiments in a cohesive and coherent package that was all inclusive in its condemnation of the death and destruction of all the lives and countries destroyed by that war. Rather they were more shoot from the hip (or lip in their case), hit and miss in selecting the subjects of their verbal diatribes and thus were more misunderstood and could not gain either public support or sympathy. An activist group that cannot get a large portion of public support is worthless in my view and in the end becomes judged as you would some devil child having a tantrum and blowing up a cereal box with a firecracker. Blowing up statues in parks, placing a small bomb against the outside of the Capitol building's walls amounted to mosquito bites in their effectiveness and appeared ludicrous to many of us in the 60's but it was and is what earned them the infamous title of "domestic terrorists". Then when we listened to their totally disorganized and mis-targeted rants that managed to be published or aired and they seemed so stupid, silly and intellectually embarrassing to the rest of us young people entering adulthood at that time.

Bill Ayers today though, seems to have finally matured in his thinking and is now able to be a contributor to society of some value. The extent of that value though is to be measured in whether he can also grasp the fact that his actions in The Weather Underground, although they may have had a higher purpose, were maniacally despicable and he needs to express a full regret and apology for them. It is unacceptable for him, matured and rehabilitated or not, to expound learning to the youth of today without first telling them that he condemns his past actions, regrets the violence he contributed to and in no way would ever want any student to think that his methods would be proper ones to emulate or reproduce in their youthful idealism and activism in today's political arena.

Barack Obama, during his life in Illinois has had an acquaintance and has had some brief encounters with Bill Ayers. Barack Obama is a highly intelligent man with an intellect that many times finds him probing the different facets of meaning and interpretation of the events, actions and emotions of society. His scholastic pursuits that brought him to graduate from Harvard University and be the first black editor of The Harvard Law Review also can be viewed as a flaw when seen in the eye of media image making. He has been called distant, professorial etc. He is constantly a victim to having statements taken out of context from speeches where he lapses into brief academic postulating. The statement where he described Americans 'clinging to their guns..." was a case in point. He seeks as any man or woman of intelligence would, to understand society and to be able to explain and legitimize society so that it can retain some semblance of logical progression in its evolvement in history. That is not pompous or presumptuous, it is what any person with intelligence and education would and should do. Unfortunately a person of higher intelligence many times finds their intellectual curiosity leading them to probe areas and people to learn and understand the past and explanations of it as to where we came from in our history. Barack Obama's brief encounters with Bill Ayers could be classified in this area of intellectual curiosity. Does that make him a terrorist? No. His affiliation with Reverend Wright was a similar one and in his book, "Dreams From My Father", he actually describes his initial encounters with the Reverend Wright as such.

The question is constantly put forth by Republicans and some of the media, "do his associations with these types of people during his life mean that he has poor judgment and is a risky choice for President?" Absolutely not! They exhibit a refreshing political naïveté, in that they are surely going to avail a political opponent of the opportunity to distort and misrepresent these encounters and smear Obama as a result. As we all know, McCain has taken full advantage of that, as we can hear in his campaign's latest technological political attack innovation, "Robo Calls". Fellow Republicans are asking him to stop them, but they still are going on at this very minute. Some Democrats would love it if Obama would stop looking into these intellectual searches for understanding and learning and just be a political hack like them. However if we really want change and we want to understand our enemies as well as our friends, our intellects should pursue any subject and we should be willing to meet with any person in person or via representative that might be pertinent to the furthering of our common National interests both as a nation and as a society. Obama as a man of intelligence exhibits fearlessness in this respect and will be a great leader and an example for the leaders of our future.

18 days to go! Vote Obama 2008!