Academia

Teach-Ins of Sorts

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A lifetime ago, I took a couple of courses in American Civ from William Goetzman; Amazon nudged that memory by noting his Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism had come out. Although not getting much read lately, I ordered it. Yesterday, A&L linked to a discussion in The Chronicle of Higher Education (which supports A&L). Carlin Romano’s “Obama, Philosopher in Chief” uses Goetzmann as foil.

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Another Obama/Ayers Connection

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Here’s another example of Obama and Ayers running in the same political circles.

I’ll say it again:

…, the real troubling aspect of the Obama-Ayers relationship is that Obama comes from a political subculture in which Ayers is an accepted and unremarkable individual. Looking at Ayers, one is forced to ask exactly what kind of leftist extremism would be considered unacceptable by Obama and his cohorts.

Ayers  clearly wasn’t an outsider in leftist circles in Chicago. In this case, no one found it odd that an  Illinois  state senator was sharing a forum with an unrepentant, stalinist terrorist. One has to wonder how an political culture so  accepting  of Ayers shaped Obama’s world view.

Clearly, Obama has to have had some sympathy with Ayers or he would not have shared a forum with him or endorsed his work.  In any other context, everyone would find this a highly questionable decision. I don’t think that Obama would let off the hook a Republican that shared a forum with someone who tried to kill abortion doctors and never expressed any regret for doing so. I doubt it would matter to Obama whether or not the anti-abortion terrorist went on to do humane work in another field. Obama would view a political culture that embraced an  unrepentant  anti-abortion terrorist as immoral and any politician that came out of that culture as strongly suspect.  

We should hold Obama to the same standard.