April 20, 2008

Not Just Youthful Indiscretions

Liberty Pundit points to this outrageous quote regarding Obama buddies William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

During the 1996 Democratic convention in Chicago, Ayers and his wife, Weather Underground alumna Bernardine Dohrn, hosted a fundraiser at their Chicago home for Democrats Online.

Lytel said Friday that no one from the Clinton White House showed up for the 1996 event.

He added, “I’m a Clinton supporter, but I think it’s the absolute height of stupidity” and “preposterous” for her to try to use the Ayers connection as a weapon against Obama. “This is an insane way for her to try to define her opponent.”

“I have no reason to think that Ayers is anything other than smart, skeptical American,” Lytel said. “He’s like anyone else who has activities in his past that might be embarrassing to them as a middle-aged person.”

Now hold on here one moment -- "activities in his past that might be embarrassing to them as a middle-aged person"?

We are talking about setting off bombs in the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, and New York City Police Headquarters. In other words, acts of terrorism, not youthful hijinks that cause one to blush and shake one's head in dismay over having been so foolish.

Am I willing to excuse Ayers and Dohrn for their advocacy of the oppressive Marxist-Leninist ideology that has killed more people than Nazism? Sure -- just as I hope folks are willing to forgive me for my youthful flirtation with the notion that we should adopt a socialized medical system like the ones that deliver substandard medical care in Canada and the UK. Young people sometimes adopt crazy ideas which they later recognize to be flawed.

But let's draw a distinction about activities. I had a string of relationships -- some meaningful, some not -- in which I rather callously broke hearts. I'm embarrassed by those. I have several nights when I had way too much to drink -- and which would be fodder for YouTube if they were to have happened today. There are things I said then which I would take back in a heartbeat if I could, because time has taught me lessons that I needed in my youth.

But for all my youthful follies, I didn't commit acts of violence in the furtherance of political goals. I may have picketed outside of abortion clinics, but I didn't blow them up. I may have objected to the methods of the police chief in our college town and appealed to the city council to fire him, but I didn't plant a bomb in the offices of the police department. I may have objected to Jimmy Carter's restoration of draft registration, but I did not attempt to destroy the building where the registration forms were processed -- even though it was around the corner from my place of employment.

Why didn't I do any of those things? Was it fear of embarrassment? No -- it was recognition that such actions would not have merely been criminal, they also would have been fundamentally immoral.

And to this day, Ayers and Dohrn remain unrepentant.

And are embraced by the political and social elite of Chicago, and by presidential candidate.

And let's be clear -- William Ayers is not embarrassed by his terrorist activities. If anything, he only repents his failure to commit more and bigger acts of terrorism.

“I don’t regret setting bombs,” Ayers told the Times. “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

'Nuff said.

UPDATE: Bravo, Senator McCain!

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