Political Comment

I've been wondering about something related to the whole William Ayers business associated with the current presidential campaign. As you know, Ayers is a former leader of the Weather Underground, a radical offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society that, in the aftermath of the notorious 1968 Democratic Convention (amongst other things), vowed to bring the violence of the Vietnam conflict home to America. They were involved (and Ayers has admitted complicity) in a number of bombings of university and government offices in the late sixties/early seventies. The Weathermen were big contributors to an era of political violence that included everything from assassinations (John & Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Ngo Dinh Diem, Salvador Allende, etc.) to campus uprisings (culminating in the deaths at Jackson State and Kent State) to official crackdowns on supposed "troublemakers" (the Chicago convention, the clash over People's Park in Berkeley, FBI provocations of the Black Panthers). This was a period where virtually every stripe of political activist found themselves confronted with the prospect of violent retribution from those they opposed, and it did not matter if one's initial methods were non-violent in nature (see Dr. King).

I don't happen to think that even that justifies the adoption of violence as a tactic, but one can at least understand how some might come to that conclusion, given the temper of the times, and what was likely a high level of frustration on the part of many who initially tried to make their points in a more reasonable way. Evidently, Ayers was, in part, a product of those times.

But here's what I've been wondering, especially after going back to find the New York Times article from September 11, 2001 from which he is widely quoted as saying "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." First, it's not entirely clear to me that he meant they should have planted more bombs, though I can understand that reading. Second, don't let the date of the article throw you, he was obviously not responding in any way to the attacks that would occur that day in New York and Washington-- the paper had gone to press long before the planes hit the World Trade Center, and his interview had clearly been conducted some time earlier. Third, and my main point, regardless of his comment about what he did and might have done forty years earlier, why doesn't what we know of his life since then, and especially over the past twenty years, count in our evaluation of him and his purported relationship with Barack Obama?

It seems like those most hotly on the attack against Ayers are also those who count themselves among (or at least allies to) groups like the Christian Coalition, and proclaim themselves as concerned about "values." Isn't it a cornerstone concept of Christianity that one can redeem him or herself, atone for sins, and achieve salvation? I don't know enough about Ayers to say with any certainty that he has truly atoned for his sins, but given his seeming commitment to public education and service to his community in a variety of charitable causes (earning an award as Chicago's Citizen of the Year), earns him at least some benefit of the doubt. Heck, even the attorney who prosecuted Ayers and the Weathermen forty years ago acknowledged in a recent letter to the New York Times that Ayers had become a respectable citizen (letter published October 10, 2008). Or is that those sounding this spurious alarm about the Obama/Ayers connection don't actually believe that people can change, can redeem themselves? If that's the case, then they better realize that that calls into question the foundation of their professed "most cherished" beliefs.

Okay, I know that the Sarah Palins of the world are really only interested in doing whatever it takes to score political points, and don't really give any thought to the stupid things they utter on the campaign trail. But that doesn't mean the rest of us have to follow that lead, does it?