On Saturday, I wrote that Obama's ties to Ayers and Wright, and his apparent lack of self-consciousness about these ties and how they might affect his political career, "suggest to me NOT that Obama agrees with their views, but that he is the product of a particular intellectual culture that finds the likes of Wright and Ayers to be no more objectionable, and likely less so, than the likes of Tom Coburn, or, perhaps, a Rush Limbaugh."
Some readers might be a bit mystified as to what I was getting at. Well, consider Obama's years at Harvard Law. I attended Yale Law School the same years that Obama attended Harvard, and I had friends at Harvard, so I have some idea about the general intellectual culture that the institution (which was not dissimilar to Yale's culture).
That culture considered extreme leftists (known as "progressives") to be within mainstream political discourse, but run-of-the-mill conservatives (known as "reactionaries") to be, at best, on the fringe. Consider that conservative lawyer and Obama Harvard Law classmate Brad Berenson praised Obama as president of the Harvard Law Review because "Whatever his politics, we felt he would give us a fair shake". Are there many places in America where mainstream conservatives like Berenson have had to worry about being treated fairly because of their politics, and where a "boss" will get praise simply for not treating them like pariahs? But Obama won support and praise simply for giving conservatives a "fair shake," with no question that people on the extreme left were entitled to such treatment.
Now consider Obama's answer when asked at a debate about Ayers:
"George, but this is an example of what I'm talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George. The fact is that I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who, during his campaign, once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions."
So, it seems that in Obama's mind, he's an open-minded guy because he's as willing to be friends with a law-abiding conservative Republican senator as with an extreme leftist unrepentant former domestic terrorist--just as he was considered open-minded at Harvard for treating a mainstream conservative Berenson as a non-pariah. It is this attitude that is a reflection of the political culture of elite liberal east coast schools, and liberal univeristy ghettos such as Hyde Park, and is also reflected in Obama's infamous "clinging to guns and religion" remark.
Being in the academy myself, I know many people who share Obama's outlook, or who are even more left-wing. Many of them are fine individuals, write thoughtful and interesting scholarship, are a pleasure to engage with in conversation, and respect my work and my ideas, even if they think some of my views are rather loony. Like them, Obama may very well be a fine, thoughtful, individual, willing to engage with people and ideas despite his natural instinct to recoil. But that doesn't mean I'd want to be governed by them, or him, and Obama's 100% liberal voting record in the Senate is likely a far better indication of his underlying ideology than his willingness to be polite to Berenson and Coburn.
UPDATE: For another take, see this piece by Jennifer Rubin. H/T--Instapundit.
FURTHER UPDATE: No, commenters, I haven't enjoyed being governed by Bush, the Republican Congress, or the Democratic Congress, and I'm not looking forward to a McCain Administration, either. But there's a good reason that liberals are especially excited by the prospect of Obama winning--he will be the first president to come out of the post-1970s elite liberal university culture that dominates modern liberalism, for better or for worse. Since this culture is antithetical in many (though not all) ways to my own views, I don't see any reason to share this enthusiasm.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Which One of These Is Not Like the Other:
- One More Reply to Orin:
- A Reply to David:
- Response to Orin:
- Obama and Liberal Culture -- A Response to David B:
- More on Obama as a Product of a Particular Liberal Culture:
- What is the Significance of Obama's Ties to Ayers (and Wright?):
Do you consider yourself a "run-of-the-mill" conservative? Just asking.
You could have just posted these three sentences. You don't agree with Obama's policies and so won't vote for him. I'm not sure why you had to write hundreds of words over two days about Ayers, other than to just write about it and say the words, "liberal","left-wing" over and over.
How about you define liberal? Why is it bad? What is "left-wing"? Aren't Libertarians leftwing on social issues and civil rights? If Liberal and Leftwing is the opposite of Conservative and Rightwing, then the opposite of the last 8 years is what most Americans are looking for.
Please define liberal and then compare that to George Bush, and what McCain is running on. These labels just don't fit anymore, which is why writing posts with liberal, liberal, leftwing, liberal, leftwing is just silly.
As for the Coburn remark, it certainly wasn't the best comparison that could have been made, but I think it makes the valid point that Obama can't be held responsible for every thought or action of every person he has ever been associated with in any way, especially when, as I'm glad he pointed out here, he was 8 years old when those actions occurred.
Of course they were, they dont attempt to impose their personal views on others. Something that is unfortunately not so for either Conservatives or Liberals.
Now, if you would define Tom Coburn as just a "law-abiding conservative Republican Senator" that's fine. He, as far as I know, has never been convicted of killing any abortionists.
Could you please inform the readers of Volokh Conspiracy what William Ayers has been convicted of?
--Cobra
And I don't think Obama would want to be governed by you, either.
The ideal form of government seems to me to be self-government. Where each of us governs ourselves. This is impossible, because we face too many threats, both natural and man-made to live in such a state.
Anyway, the issue is not who you want governing you. If you are self-respecting man, the answer is, no one.
The bottom-line is this. To the extent that you are not voting for Obama but are instead voting for McCain because you think McCain is the lesser of two evils or the positively better candidate, I respect that. (I hope and pray that you don't vote for any candidate, ever, because you want to be governed by them.) But, I think Ayers is largely irrelevant, except from a purely emotional standpoint. I think that you largely realize that, despite some rather emotional guilt by association posts in the past that have been much less clear thinking than the present post.
During my life I have also spent some time with characters some might question, and have had a number of challenging conversations with them (as I do with the unsavory characters on this forum :), but I have not supported their improper activities, unless they gain some status from being seen with me, which no one should confer on them.
When the preacher was criticized for spending time in dens of iniquity, he appropriately answered, "That's where the sinners are." But being there was not condoning sin.
We need to know more about where that money went and what it was used to accomplish.
Back when we were at Yale, most of the conservatives I knew thought your ideas were a little loony. Why limit it to libs? And no, if there is any such thing as a mainstream conservative, David isn't it.
On the Ayers thing, I wonder why people have so successfully labeled him a terrorist. Back in the 60s, that wasn't what the Weathermen, the Panthers, the SDS or other violent groups were called. Its an anachronism to apply the word to them now, unless you also want to call the Boston Tea Party an act of terrorism as well. I tend to think that people like to call Ayers a terrorist because it associates him with the Islamic terrorists at some level, which creates another veiled slur against Obama.
Is there any doubt in Cobra's mind, or in Obama's, that he conspired to wage war against the United States? That Obama (like Cobra) cannot (apparently) distinguish between a peaceful, innocent Coburn and an unrepentant if unconvicted Ayers calls his judgment into question.
I take your argument to be that he isn't a pragmatist, he's an ideologue. Then why doesn't he support universal health care, gay marriage, criminal sanctions for pollution, immediate withdrawal from Iraq, open borders and gun registration?
Do you think he believes in all those things, but has just been hiding them throughout his 12-year political career?
It really seems that you are conflating all the things you don't like about many different issues and people, calling that conflation "liberal", and then using it to paint anyone that exhibits signs of any of these ideas as supporting all of them.
Believe it or not, there are such a thing as conservative Democrats, who will be voting for Obama in this election, but who are not at all disinterested in economics and political freedom. If it makes you feel any better, I will immediately start voting Republican again when Obama starts forcing people into "public service" or imposing a Marxist state. You seem to suggest that Obama's open-mindedness is of the mindless "all ideas are equal" sort (which I would agree is rather repugnant). I just don't see it that way; however, we are now in the realm of impression, so I wouldn't try to debate you on it.
I am curious, you write a lot about Obama, what do you think about McCain (and Schmidt)? Seriously?
(I must say, I do sometimes wonder if you guys are now using these threads to boost traffic, while reserving serious discussion for the legal threads.)
If this is the case, I don't understand how your discussion of the anti-conservative politics of liberal institutions plays into your argument. Indeed, Obama's relationships with people who exist on the other side of the ideological spectrum suggest that he does not fall into the category of "extreme leftists" that you have described. Perhaps Obama is a product of a liberal institution, but you concede that he seems willing to consider the values of other intellectual cultures. This should make him a more appealing candidate to you, as far as liberals go, since it distinguishes him from the "extreme leftists" that you disapprove of.
Please correct me if I have misunderstood your argument.
So what you're saying is that because McCain can be described as "liberal," the label "liberal" has lost its meaning? Well... you're half right.
Duffy Pratt
That or because they used incendiary devices, like nail bombs, to destroy property and whoever was inside. But yeah, those Tea Party guys were out to terrorize, um, leaves of tea! (What about all the people who stowed away inside the tea crates!!?)
Donny: Actually, when I search for evidence of that, I find this: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was the most liberal senator in 2007, according to National Journal's 27th annual vote ratings. The insurgent presidential candidate shifted further to the left last year in the run-up to the primaries, after ranking as the 16th- and 10th-most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate. Let's hear competing evidence.
Mr Ayers remains a committed Communist, although he has moved away from the Stalinist model. He was never convicted in any bombings, mainly because the FBI obtained evidence from illegal wiretaps which tainted the entire case. He wrote a book, taking credit for many (non-fatal) bombings, but unsurprisingly, not mentioning those unattributed fatal bombings.
I don't think there is much factual debate about what he did. People seem to confuse his opposition to the Viet Nam war with his desire to completely remake the U. S. as a communist state. He was not just protesting what he saw as an unjust war by blowing up stuff - and the occasional human being - he was attempting the overthrow of the democratically elected government of this country.
He still describes the U S as a fascist state which should be remade in the image of, say, Venezuela, which is one of his national models.
I don't think Sen Obama's age at the time of the bombings is as relevant as Ayers' present-day philosophy, contemporaneous with his apparent friendship with Obama.
The actual nature of the Obama-Ayers connection seems to have been sufficiently described in some detail, so that the nature is not really a factual issue, only the significance.
Prof. Bernstein, who would you like to be governed by?
How exactly did Obama's statement indicate that he finds Ayer's views as respectable as Coburn's?
And, more specifically, the Weathermen were commonly referred to as "terrorists," see, e.g, NY times, 3/13/1970, "Garelik Says Terrorists are Growing Threat Here."
And, more specifically, the Weathermen were commonly referred to as "terrorists," see, e.g, NY times, 3/13/1970, "Garelik Says Terrorists are Growing Threat Here."
I agree. So we should call Ayers a "domestic terrorist." He's sort of a poor man's Timothy McVeigh, bombing government buildings to further his anti-government ideology.
I wonder if Ayers will still be anti-government when Obama is President. I wonder what a President Obama would say if people tried blowing up government buildings because they don't like his policies: "I strongly condemn these bombings, but in 40 years feel free to serve on some non-profit boards with me and host fundraisers for me."
Barack Obama, thematically enough, is the offspring of establishmentarian leftism. He's grown up to believe that socialism, anti-Americanism, and revisionist history are not only normal but morally correct. To a point, Obama is innocent of his environment. He would be as reluctant to condemn Bill Ayers as we would Curtis LeMay. Now, you shouldn't draw a moral equivalent, but Obama's world is burgeoning -- so you sort of have to.
- "You're an acquaintance of Bank Robber, so you must support his crimes."
- "No I dont - Im also friends with Pot Head, even though everyone knows I how much I oppose marijuana."
- "I cant believe you find use of marijuana worse than armed robbery!!!"
Ayers will be the Sec. of Education. The multi-generational conspiracy will be complete.
Yeah, I had to look it up. And BTW, well said.
Of course, people who don't see a problem with such a connection keep making the quaint argument about "guilt by association," but they fail to realize that the associations are voluntary, long-term, and instrumental in building a career.
Yes indeed, this is a sign of high elitism and arrogance, this strange and untoward willingness to work with those with whom you disagree to solve important problems of the day. It's a good thing this strange trait of his is being aired out, so the American people can get a look at what kind of man we're really being asked to vote upon.
The relevance of Ayers, IMO, is the tolerance of violence -- especially unrepentant violence -- to promote political views. This is something which, IMO, the left is far more tolerant of its own than the political right in this country. The ubiquitous pictures of Che Guevara on T-shirts, the coddling of Fidel Castro, all indicate a willingness to overlook violence and brutal repression in those who share one's ideology.
Same thing for Ayers. What bothers me is not that Obama considers his views mainstream, it is that an unrepentant terrorist is given a free ride from any moral indignation.
Imagine a former member of the KKK who later went on to teaching and other endeavors. He then gives an interview to a newspaper in which he said the only thing he regrets about church bombings was that he and his friends did not commit enough of them. That person would be treated us utter anathema by the vast majority of Americans -- and rightly so.
If a Republican candidate had half the connections to such a person as Obama does to Ayers, we would never hear the end of it.
Because, as this entire thread demonstrates, Obama's association with Ayers exists only to further his political career.
I dont think being associated with anyone necessarily implies an ideological connection.
I dont know the extent of their relationship, but I think it could potentially be a big problem. Im just saying that Obama's analogy involving Coburn does not necessarily demonstrate that he finds Ayers's views less offensive than Coburn's.
Ayres is different than KKK domestic terrorists because the war in Viet Nam was wrong and so were the policies of the U.S. government during that time and any time a Republican is President.
Domestic terrorism will be unspeakable when Obama is President because the U.S. policies will be right.
Don't you understand?
Why does Bernstein hate America?
At the time of the bombing campaign, his intent was the classic "create terror, leading to over-reaction by the security apparatus, causing an uprising of the proletariat." Unfortunately, the proles were apparently too stupid to get it, and they failed to burn it all down. Ayers has never expressed regret for the terror campaign, only for its ineffectiveness due to the ignorance of the oppressed.
Thus, mayhaps PC has it right, and Mr Ayers is part of the struggle to re-educate the American underclasses.
Indeed, that is the crux of the problem...that people like us, who have never spent more than one moment thinking about Ayers (that is, if we knew who he was before this year) were not around to lecture Chicagoans of all stripes, conservative and liberal, on who they may or may not associate with to solve specific problems in their area.
Explain.
David Bernstein, everyone's best guide to Obama's mind. Because liberals, they all have the same mindset, a mindset you can best understand by interpreting their words in the worst light possible.
First, Obama isn't friends with either Ayers or Coburn. He's polite and willing to work alongside them on select issues.
Prof. Bernstein draws an inference, based on his experiences in law school, that Obama must think that radical lefties and law abiding but extreme but not quite radical conservatives are equally unobjectionable. This is silly season redux. Even if this were true, it is utterly unremarkable.
The point of mentioning Coburn isn't to show that Obama is open-minded but to show that Obama (like any halfway intelligent person) can work with someone without that saying much or anything about them or their values. Since it seems that no one on the right is willing to concede that Obama isn't a super far left socialist pacifist, perhaps they could concede that Obama has little to admire in Coburn's politics? Bernstein has twisted a reference to two people that Obama can be civil with and work with in a limited capacity into a comparison of his own construction.
Say what????
Be nice.
Does the name G. Gordon Liddy ring any bells?
For F's sake why doesn't somebody stop the madness! The horse is dead, my ears are bleeding - why isn't that enough for you?!?
AHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Don't be a turd, David.
If it is fair to wonder whether Obama's failure to denounce Ayers says something about him, why isn't it fair to ask why you have not yet denounced a convicted traitor?
Why do you hate America?
It's hardly a new take on Mr Ayers' philosophy about education. Start here if you like LINK
or, from the same author LINK
Or, just Google Ayers for his own books and writings. A sample:
Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiques of the Weather Underground 1970-1974, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, and Jeff Jones, Seven Stories Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1583227268
Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom, William Ayers, Beacon Press, 2004, ISBN 978-080703269-5
Handbook of Social Justice in Education, William C. Ayers, Routledge, June 2008, ISBN 978-0805859270
Daley isn't running for president.
Exactly. Being friendly is a far cry from being a friend. A friend is someone you look forward to spending discretionary social time with. A friend is someone you spot $ for. A friend is someone you call just to say hey, not because you want or need something.
A good pol will be friendly with anyone. I'm friendly with all sorts of people I want nothing to do with off the job. Obama didn't hate Ayers and in fact accepted his help in a minor way, so I won't claim that he was only being superficially friendly because they worked together, but I don't really know, and neither do the people parroting this attack line.
Prof Bernstein has no basis to say that the two were friends, yet asserting that they were friends, and not merely friendly, serves his political purpose. Hmmm. I expect law professors to be more careful with their language, especially when they are giving a close reading analysis to someone else's words.
So, you graduated from Yale in 1991? I thought your CV says 1995.
I hold Obama's associations with Mayor Daley against Obama, as well as his association with Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger and State Senate President Emil Jones.
Chicago's a corrupt town with the highest murder rate in the country, a huge budget deficit, and an idiotic crook as mayor. (People think W. is a poor speaker but Daley makes W. look like Churchill. He is incomprehensible). Daley wants to bring the Olympics to Chicago even though he's laying off cops because he gave all the city's money to his crooked friends.
Illinois government is also corrupt, with another idiot at the helm. The Illinois pension plan is underfunded by almost $40 billion, the largest in the nation. That underfunding was well-known while Barack Obama was a state senator and he did nothing about it, as was typical of him. State senate is a part time job, but he took it to a whole new level of part time.
Bill Ayers is a professor at UIC, so his state pension is at risk, too. This could be dangerous as he might bomb the state capitol because they're going to have to stiff him.
Everyone who has been reading your Ayers posts ( and the posts at Instapundit, NRO, etc ) knew where this was going and the McCain campaign didn't disappoint.
Watch some of the clips of Palin's and McCain's latest speeches and listen for the crowd yelling "terrorist" and "kill him". You must be positively giddy that it's getting such a great response.
I don't see how your religion is relevant her.
You support AIPAC and AIPAC has lobbyed to have the traitor Pollard released. Just connect the dots.
You've had two opportunities to denounce Pollard and you have declined to do so. Why do you continue to remain silent about a felonious treaitor?
Obama is NOT comparing the politics of Ayers and Coburn; he is clearly comparing the quality of his relationship with these people.
I am, personally, much more likely to doubt your sincerity than your ability to understand this very simple point.
is that numerous policies and ideas of "run-of-the-mill conservatives" were (and continue to be), by any stretch of the imagination to a rational, open-minded graduate student, wrong-headed and dangerous. Take gay rights. Run-of-the-mill conservatives have wasted thousands of hours of "liberal" lawyers' and thinkers' and writers' time defending and making the affirmative case for, say, anything and everything under the sun that would recognize gays and same-sex couples on equal legal footing with with straight people. Take civil rights. How many hours were wasted in the 1960s even arguing with someone like William F. Buckley? To us "liberals", conservatives were (and continue to be) so morally repugnant on some issues that it is impossible to do anything else than to see them as outcasts on those issues, which then colors our view of them on everything else. And fortunately for us "liberals", history overwhelmingly vindicates and will continue to vindicate our beliefs and actions.
The allegorical quote was Pauline Kael, the film critic for the New Yorker, who supposedly said in 1972, "I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don't know anybody who voted for him."
However, there is a doubt that she ever actually did say it, though one of her biographers indicated the real story was something like, "Apparently a reporter, or somebody, asked her to comment on Nixon's election, and she replied that she couldn't because she didn't even know anyone who had voted for Nixon. And the story got garbled."
On the other hand, she hated Michael Moore--and vice versa, so she couldn't have been completely clueless.
You can go on a real vendetta, making sure that Ayers pays as high a price as now possible for his evil deeds and evil thoughts. And you could really turn the screws on those who persist in associating with Ayers and/or fail to denounce him harshly enough--really punish them.
Once you're finished with Ayers, you can move on to Rev. Jeremiah Wright and then to all the others who in your view hate America. Perhaps you could stir up enough interest to have legislative committees, on both state and federal levels, look into all these suspect hate America associations. An are you now or have you ever been friendly with _______________ (fill in the blank) sort of thing. The Volokh Conspiracy would be a good base for operations to begin with. Your fans could gather names for you. Some of them hate the America-haters almost as much as you do.
Go on, Bernstein, I know you can do it. In fact, I think this sort of job would suit you, and you're tailor-made for it. You've repeatedly shown you have the temperament and mindset for it in your writings here.
But for the rest of us, the question is, who is the real Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.? Who are we likely to be getting as our next president? Is is the guy who sat in the pews at Rev. Wright's church for 20 years, or the guy who worked closely with Ayers at the CAC? What is his character?
This close to the election, I really don't know, and suspect that most who think they do, are wrong.
What I suspect is that he is comfortable around people whom most Americans outside the bi-coastal, Chicago, and academic elites would find radical leftists. But that really doesn't say much beyond just that. Does that mean that he is an unreconstructed leftest terrorist and communist like Ayers, or a black supremest like Wright? Probably not. On the other hand, he seems unlikely to reject proposals along those lines out of hand, like most Americans likely would.
Mostly, I see an extremely ambitious politician who is willing to say or do most anything to be elected to ever higher office (and that is true for most of the politicians in Wash., D.C.) He seems somewhat sympathetic to leftist economic solutions, but that could be because that is what he has grown up mostly hearing. And I see him as a compromiser instead of a fighter in international relations. But I could be wrong on all of this.
I just don't know, and that is what scares me. We know what we would get with John McCain, Sarah Palin, and probably even Joe Biden. Ditto for Hillary Clinton. But we are less than a month away from likely electing Obama president, and I still don't know what his core values are, and I suspect that most Americans are in the same position (even if they don't think so).
I agree with your point that the culture at Yale, and other places, skews people's idea of what is normal.
And yes, the word "terrorism" is not new. But its meaning, or at least its connotations, has changed. I didn't say that no-one ever called any of these groups terrorists. But it wasn't common parlance, at least not in my memory, and yes I'm old enough to actually remember what was happening with those groups. There are lots of ways to describe Ayers. I think certain people have chosen to call him a terrorist because it makes him like Bin Laden, and they think this hurts Obama more.
Ayers, like Bin Laden, is a spoiled rich kid who had (and has) a lot of time on his hands. In someone with above-average intelligence, this lifestlye provides the type of enviroment in which cult thinking can form and lead to a violent ideology. It can also lead to following around the Grateful Dead. Unfortunately, neither Bin Laden or Ayres became dead heads.
Unlike the tenuous association between Obama and Ayers, Asher was convicted and did hard time much more recently than Ayer's violent past, and this association is on-going. Or is the top of the Republican ticket more forgiving when it comes to public corruption?
So much for Mr. Maverick and Mr. Reformer.
Okay, I'll play this game.
What if the Republican candidate in question had ties to a man who spent more than four years in prison for activities that attempted to subvert the Constitution? What if this ex-con proposed kidnapping Americans to stop them from exercising their right of free speech? What if he planned (although didn't follow through) to murder a newspaper columnist he didn't like? What if he openly advocated killing federal law enforcement officers? What if this ex-con said he had no regrets?
What if the Republican candidate said in public to the ex-con, "I'm proud of you"?
And what if the ex-con had contributed some $5,000 to this Republican candidate over the years?
Steve Chapman (hardly a Venezuelan communist) thinks that McCain's association with G. Gordon Liddy is just as bad as Obama's Ayers problem. I think it's fair to say that we haven't even heard the beginning of this story in the mainstream media, save for Chapman, let alone hear about it endlessly.
In no way was Liddy ever a danger to me personally. I can't say the same for Ayers.
There is always tomorrow...
As opposed to what we've had for the last 8 years?
I suggest dark sunglasses and earplugs or a live-in nurse.
Pay no attention to the "Our Leader" billboard.
Also, pay no attention to kids being encouraged to worship (literally) him.
Also, pay no attention to a book called "The Messiah: The Chosen One; Republican; Hon. George W. Bush, President of the United States of America."
And thank goodness Bush never encouraged that sort of thing. After all, he never said anything like this:
Nope, no signs of "a cult of personality around George W."