Marathon Pundit: Sunday's Trib and Bill Ayers

Sunday's Chicago Tribune carried two op-eds about the Bill Ayers--Barack Obama flare up. First up at the plate is the good one.

Free registration may be required for the links.

When William F. Buckley Jr. died in February, one of the things widely praised, by liberals and others, was his stalwart insistence on moral hygiene. Even when his conservative movement was small and embattled, he rejected the temptation to join forces with anti-Semites, the John Birch Society and other extremists. Later, he disavowed longtime confederates Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran for the sin of bigotry.

Buckley knew the importance of choosing allies carefully. But some people who expect such care from conservatives don't practice it themselves.

Among many liberals, extremism in the defense of "social justice" is no vice. When the folk singer Pete Seeger got a medal from President Clinton, no one cared that he was a veteran apologist for Stalin and that he still regarded himself as a communist. That indifference betrayed a double standard that conscientious liberals should reject.

By that standard, Barack Obama is a liberal, but not a conscientious one. I don't much care if he declines to wear a flag pin; I can overlook his wife's limited capacity for patriotic pride; and I defended his relationship with his former pastor. But his comfortable association with an unrepentant former terrorist should induce queasiness in anyone who shares the humane values that Obama extols.

Exactly. Yes, the Democrats had a good 2006, but for the last decade and a half, they've been losing more than winning. Part of their problem is their "big tent" philosophy. For instance, the Dems want to make the unions and environmentalists feel welcome in that tent, but by pleasing the latter with restrictions on logging or mining, they upset the former.

Something else is pulling down their big tent: It includes a freak show. Alleged fighters for "social justice" like Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, get dispensations for their sins by liberals, because they were "fighting the good fight." The same goes for Louis Farrakhan.

None of the three have any formal role within the Democratic Party. But if the Democrats wonder why they lose more often than they win, one reason is that the freak show scares off independents and sway-able Republicans. As for Farrakhan, a virulent anti-Semite, he needs to be tossed out of the tent. Obama, during the Cleveland debate last month, took seemingly forever in denouncing him, but not after showed the Nation of Islam leader undeserved respect by referring to him as Minister Farrakhan, twice.

Clarence Page is a fine writer, but he let loose a stink bomb yesterday.

Obama seemed prepared to answer a new question on the character theme. How well did he know his Chicago neighbor and former fellow foundation board member William Ayers, the former member of the Weather Underground organization, a violently radical 1960s and early 1970s group? Ayers, now a college professor and education consultant, has been a model citizen for more than 20 years. Yet, conservatives like Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity have been accusing Obama of an Ayers "relationship" for weeks as if Obama was a fellow bomber.

Obama noted that Ayers' bombmaking days occurred "when I was 8" and, for good measure, pointed out that President Bill Clinton had pardoned two members of the Weather Underground. Score two for Obama.

As I've noted several times before, Obama and I are the same age, and I think it's almost a certainty, given his one-time fixation with the 1960s, that he knew all about Ayers and his bombings years before he dropped by his Hyde Park townhome for "a coffee gathering" in 1995 as the future senator began his political career. Obama was 34 then. A few years later, Obama joined Ayers on the board of The Woods Fund, leaving in 2002--when he was 41.

As for the claims of Page that Ayers "has been a model citizen for more than 20 years," I have to remind the Tribune editorial board member that, ironically enough, on September 11, 2001, Ayers mused to New York Times reporter Dinitia Smith about his legacy with explosives, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

When asked if he would do it all again, Ayers replied, "I don't want to discount the possibility."

Not exactly "a model citizen."

Some people will never figure it out.

H/T to Cal Skinner of the McHenry County Blog for the Chapman article.

Technorati tags: