I ♣ Moral Equivalence

I was listening to the morning AM talk show today, and the topic (of course) was Ayers, since Sara Palin brought the subject up again in her speech in Clearwater, FL this morning.

The show takes a lot of calls from the audience. The Call came in, just about the way I expected it to. "David" proclaimed that Ayers wasn't a terrorist, he was a Vietnam war protester, and the McCain/Palin campaign were just trying to make him look like an Islamic terrorist.

If Ayers was a terrorist, "David" proclaimed, then so was George Washington!

RCOB™

I got on the phone and got in queue. There were about six respondents in total, and I was the last before the show ended, but I got my $6.95 in (my 2¢ with inflation, value added tax, sales tax, excise tax, luxury tax, FICA witholding and fuel surcharge).

"David" is the successful end result of the de-moralization, the "ideological subversion" Yuri Bezmenov described in such detail. He's a "useful idiot," and he's not alone. As I explained to the host, "David" is the product of decades of our "education" system, and what better way to illustrate that than through Barack Obama himself?

When questioned by George Stephanopoulos about his relationship with Ayers during the primary debates, Obama's response was

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, uh, who I know, and who I have not received some official endorsement from - he's not somebody I exchange ideas from(sic) on a regular basis. The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts forty years ago when I was eight years old, ah, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George.

No. Ayers is a professor of EDUCATION. In other words, he teaches future teachers.

And that ought to frighten the almighty PISS out of you.

Ayers doesn't just live in Obama's neighborhood, they've worked together - ON AN EDUCATION PROJECT.

And THAT ought to frighten the almighty piss out of you.

Mr. Ayers' agenda is open for anyone to see. He's written 15 books, most on the topic of teaching, and in particular the teaching of that wonderful all-encompassing "progressive" phrase, "Social Justice."

Ayers is so enamored with the idea of using the schools to promote "social justice" (rather than, you know, teaching kids how to read, write, and do math) he even recently traveled to Argentina where he stood next to Hugo Chávez and proclaimed:

This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I've come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle—I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.

I have to ask, if Bill Ayers is so certain that "capitalist education" is failing, just what is he teaching our future teachers?

As Sol Stern says in his City Journal piece today, "Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer."

Obama pulled the "moral equivalence" bit himself in that same debate:

The fact is 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. Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements because I certainly don't agree with those either.

That's moral equivalence. Coburn thinks that the power of law perhaps ought to be applied against an act he believes to be the murder of innocents. Coburn works within the system to try to implement his beliefs. Coburn makes statements.

Ayers was involved in a group that detonated bombs.

Obama works in the Senate with Coburn. He doesn't have a choice. He worked with Ayers voluntarily, in both the Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund. Ayers is far more than just "a Professor of English in Chicago" who just happens to live in the same neighborhood as Obama. Ayers has described himself as a communist ("small 'c' "), and by his appearance in support of Chávez, he still is. From the same speech quoted above:

I began teaching when I was 20 years old in a small freedom school affiliated with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The year was 1965, and I’d been arrested in a demonstration. Jailed for ten days, I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: “We can't have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”

I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position — and from that day until this I've thought of myself as a teacher, but I've also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice.

Ayers too is a "useful idiot," fitting perfectly into the description Yuri Bezmenov gave. Sol Stern warns us in his City Journal piece:

Ayers’s school reform agenda focuses almost exclusively on the idea of teaching for “social justice” in the classroom. This has nothing to do with the social-justice ideals of the Sermon on the Mount or Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Rather, Ayers and his education school comrades are explicit about the need to indoctrinate public school children with the belief that America is a racist, militarist country and that the capitalist system is inherently unfair and oppressive. As a leader of this growing "reform" movement, Ayers was recently elected vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation’s largest organization of ed school professors and researchers.

William Ayers is one of those responsible for our George Orwell Daycare Centers. And Obama works within and is comfortable within groups that think Ayers is a fine and wonderful human being.

Because he's the moral equivalent of George Washington!

Where's my club?