Friday, April 18, 2008

Corrupting the Youth

A blast from the past. A 2006 article from the City Journal describes Bill Ayers, who served with Barack Obama on the board of the Woods Fund For Chicago from 1999 to 2002.

Ayers has acknowledged committing crimes during his underground days—crimes that arguably amounted to treason. Yet thanks to procedural complications and a lack of witnesses, he never went to trial or to jail. A few years after stepping out of the shadows, Ayers reflected on his odyssey in a conversation with journalists Peter Collier and David Horowitz: “Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country,” he exulted.

Ayers has devoted his post-Weatherman life to 'educating' the American youth.

These days, Ayers carries the joint titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. One of his several books on the moral imperative of teaching for social justice is a bestseller in ed-school courses. Like many other tenured and well-heeled radicals, Ayers keeps hoping for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism. But now, instead of planting bombs in bathrooms, he has been planting the seeds of resistance and rebellion in America’s future teachers, who will then pass on the lessons to the students in their classrooms.

Those ideas are arguably more potent than a few potent than a few pounds of explosive. It would be interesting to find out what Senator Obama thought, not of Ayers the Weatherman, but of Ayers the educator. Ayers apparently thinks very highly of Obama, going so far as to sponsor an event for Obama in his own home, which Obama attended.

Education is a subset of the process of learning. It provides the educated with a framework though which to view the world, gives the child the algorithms to interpret what his senses discern. It is the forge of the next generation, one of the main ways in which culture is passed. The Huffington Post characterizes Obama's relationship to Ayers as "scant". Less scant, perhaps than his relationship with Tony Rezko but more scant than his acquaintance with Nahdmi Auchi, who now it turns out, he really did meet.




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21 Comments:

Blogger someone said...

Cut it out. The stupid personal feuds are making all participants look ridiculous.

If somebody is a troll, ignore the troll.

4/18/2008 04:57:00 PM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

The attitude of the troll above is interesting. For one, it guarantees that Muslims will be seen in the West, and particularly in America, as enemies of all free peoples. And America's enemy in particular.

America is not Europe. It is not post-Christian, it is conservative culturally, and it is filled with among other indicators, home owners and gun owners (both rare in Europe).

Below national politics, the more Muslims posture as world conquerors who will "destroy" America or "raise the green flag of Islam over the White House," the more all Muslims, without exception are seen as Nazis from Dec 11, 1941 onward, and so forth.

One thing Ed Driscoll notes over and over again. The fake rebellion of the 1960's is 40 years old. Ayers is an old man. How can he be an influential svengali if he's both old and establishment?

The real "cool" rebels are the conservatives. They are the risk-takers in consensus driven culture, the cool and marginal outsiders, the ones who demonstrate uniqueness rather than the same old poser attitudes.

4/18/2008 05:22:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

saw Ayers on tv last night -- some Foxnews reporter cornered him at an airport, begged to ask a few questions. Ayers said "I won't talk to Fox" and walked away.

I wonder why he couldn't talk to Fox?

Given that he is in the persuasion business, you'd think he'd leap at the chance. Why is it that these folks won't ever "talk to Fox"? It's endemic among the far lefties -- they won't talk to Fox.

Is it that their positions are so fragile that even a brief Q&A with anyone who isn't a fellow radical is too dangerous, too threatening to their politics? Or is is just pique?

4/18/2008 05:35:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

i mean, it must be a real bitch to have spent your entire life in furious dedication to a cause that can't even hold up to a question or two, on the fly in an airport.

4/18/2008 05:39:00 PM  
Blogger Habu said...

Assalamu Alilkum Wa Rahmatulah Wa Barakatuh. This means peace, mercy, and blessings be upon from Allah.

Buddy and Whiskey we are a peaceful people who the Zionist pigs and monkeys have forced us from our lands. They will pay for this Allah willing.

We have ordained death among you and We are not to be overcome, that We may change your state and make you grow into what you know not ." Qur'an 56 : 60 - 61 .

4/18/2008 05:52:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Listening to the uproar over the "outrageous" performance of George and Brian, and the refusal of the Dems to debate on Fox, it occurred to me that the fair thing to do would be to give McCain several opportunities to get out his message, with the option for his opponent to either appear, or be represented by an empty chair.

4/18/2008 05:53:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Doug: ...it occurred to me that the fair thing to do would be to give McCain several opportunities to get out his message, with the option for his opponent to either appear, or be represented by an empty chair.

Maybe Ted Kennedy could sit in that chair, but there wouldn't be much opposition. Here is what the McCain-Kennedy bill almost did:

Establishes: (1) an H-5A essential worker visa program for low-skilled workers; (2) a mechanism for subsequent adjustment of status; and (3) an Essential Worker Visa Program Task Force.

Amends the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to address the collection of arrival and departure information.

Authorizes the Secretary of State to enter into an agreement with foreign governments whose citizens participate in the H-5A program to establish a labor migration facilitation program.

Exempts immediate relatives of U.S. citizens from the annual cap on family-sponsored immigrant visas.

Increases numerical limits for specified visas.

Authorizes H-5B nonimmigrant status for undocumented aliens present in the United States on the date of this Act's introduction who meet specified requirements and pay a fine. Provides a mechanism for subsequent adjustment of status.

Makes alien victims of fraud perpetrated by unauthorized representatives eligible for U (victims of certain crimes) nonimmigrant status.

Amends the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 to extend authorization of Federal reimbursement for hospitals that provide emergency care to undocumented immigrants.

4/18/2008 06:18:00 PM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

As bad as McCain is, Obama and Hillary are even worse. Open Borders completely. With each new Alien eligible from the start for Affirmative Action.

For clarification, the champion of H1-B visas are Dems. Bill Gates is a heavy Dem donor on that front.

4/18/2008 06:27:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

4/18/2008 05:53:00 PM
"Brian"=Charlie

4/18/2008 06:35:00 PM  
Blogger What is "Occupation" said...

oh i love the jihadists...


they are honest!

please keep all your ammo oil with lard...

4/18/2008 07:24:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

'60s Radical Bill Ayers Now Mainstream
(Washingtonpost.com)

In the 1960s, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn saw themselves as urban guerrillas who just might be able to overthrow the U.S. government and force an end to the Vietnam War. They were members of the Weather Underground, a radical offshoot of the antiwar movement, who went into hiding for a decade after a bomb accidentally exploded, killing three members of the group.

Nearly 30 years after surrendering to police, Ayers and Dohrn, both in their 60s, are tenured university professors whose work on school reform and juvenile justice have won them bipartisan respect.

Ayers is an informal adviser to Mayor Richard M. Daley and has been awarded more than $50 million in charitable grants for his promotion of small schools as a solution to a crisis in education. Dohrn lectures widely on children's law and serves on a variety of boards and committees. Together, they have raised three boys in the intellectual haven of Hyde Park, where Sen. Barack Obama is a neighbor.

4/18/2008 07:46:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

only in America --

4/18/2008 08:05:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

(snip from the link)

Ayers has acknowledged committing crimes during his underground days—crimes that arguably amounted to treason. Yet thanks to procedural complications and a lack of witnesses, he never went to trial or to jail. A few years after stepping out of the shadows, Ayers reflected on his odyssey in a conversation with journalists Peter Collier and David Horowitz: “Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country,” he exulted.

But that was just half the wonder of it. Ayers would soon go on to disprove thoroughly F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous though mistaken aphorism that “there are no second acts in American lives.” Ayers’s spectacular second act began when he enrolled at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1984.

4/18/2008 08:22:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Hey,
He's got *bipartisan respect* in Chi-Town, don't knock it!

4/18/2008 09:06:00 PM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

the link tells how wonderful a job the Ayers bunch is doing equipping disadvantaged kids for success in the modern world -- so long as the modern world will hurry up and turn into left-wing Hell. Unless and until it does, though, the kids are being (*cough*) "abused", posits the essay, in that their radical program is anything but preparing them for any world they will ever inhabit. No wonder he won't talk to Fox.

4/18/2008 09:16:00 PM  
Blogger Mad Fiddler said...

I've done a numeralogical analysis of the id "621317251521."
This has required several manipulations through a number of systems including the numerology of the Assyrians, which was thousands of years old when Mohammed was making pee in his mother's lap, if in fact he had one.

Rather than insulting your intelligence with the raw data, which would merely lead to useless debate by those who assume the reduction must be in base ten --- "mechanistic, disturbingly fascist, but possibly interesting to pretentious high-schoolers" --- I will address only the deeper meaning of the more important patterns.

(1) The initial number represents the value of the planets known to Ashurbanipal and his counselors (Merkur, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon.) This means the poster is a wanderer in darkness, pouring out energy in the void, hiding from the light of day, and like Mars, reversing course without reason.

(2) The first and last numbers produce a value indicating the poster repeatedly violates the dietary laws which prevail in the poster's culture. Adding the middlemost number points ineluctibly to the conclusion that the poster suffers persistent incontinence and anal leakage from those dietary choices, which is demonstrated by the writing style.

(3) Comparing the alternating even numbers with the alternating odds, we find a result which correlates to the capacity for intimacy and mature loving relations in the subject. In this instance, we see a pathetic loser who posts from a borrowed computer without the knowledge or approval of a feared authority figure. The creep is blogging from a parent's basement.

(4) Assessing the summation of the first half to that of the latter half, a resultant is obtained which points to hydrophobic tendencies. It is safe to conclude that bathing and personal hygeine are at best, unfamiliar concepts to the person posting as 621317251521.

(5) Finally, the totality of all the numbers reduces to 9, the gestational number, which suggests the poster is still fermenting in the womb, but with the umbilical chord cutting wrapped around the neck, cutting off the flow of oxygen to the brain.

No wonder the posts are all contemptible gibberish.

4/18/2008 10:51:00 PM  
Blogger Kirk Parker said...

Whiskey,

"The real 'cool' rebels are the conservatives."

Indeed; patriotism is the highest form of dissent these days.

4/19/2008 12:18:00 AM  
Blogger buddy larsen said...

...patriotism is the highest form of dissent these days

that's goood -- very good. i'll have to steal it.

Fiddler, re your numerology, it occurs that it you were to marry Bette Midler, her name would be Bette Midler Fiddler.

4/19/2008 04:54:00 AM  
Blogger Insufficiently Sensitive said...

Ayers said "I won't talk to Fox" and walked away.


Nor will certain 'Democratic' candidates debate on Fox.

We are looking at leftists extreme enough that their politics are now a religion. The leftist claims to 'tolerance' (if any - it appears to be mandatory for R, but optional for crusading D) are exposed as complete horse puckey.

Were the rules mirrored equally, few Republicans would appear on MSM TV networks nor grant interviews to NYT accolytes. But the R side is actually more liberal (in the original sense of the word) than the D.

One recalls that the Communists hated liberals worse than conservatives.

4/19/2008 09:17:00 AM  
Blogger Mad Fiddler said...

Buddy,

Would Bette then Have Midler-Fiddler Crabs?

4/20/2008 11:55:00 AM  
Blogger Mad Fiddler said...

Seriously...

(I quote myself from a post I blogged a couple of years back.)

"God help the student that reveals conservative political leanings to a Leftist professor.

There have been plenty of documented cases of Leftist professors publicly humiliating and insulting students for expressing conservative views or sympathies. And there are a few cases of professors punishing students by docking their grades specifically for expressing contrary views. These behaviors mark the line beyond which no professor or instructor should be allowed, any more than a teacher should be allowed to bully any student. Considering human nature, there is surely a similar weakness among people of many political or philosophical orientations to give in to a desire to coerce youngsters in their care to parrot their politics. But surveys of American and European colleges and universities indicate that the overwhelming majority of instructors and faculty identify themselves as leftist, liberal, progressive, Marxist, or communist, NOT right-wing conservative. Simply, the left are in a desperate struggle to maintain their dominance of university faculties.

Yet, however pervasive this phenomenon has become, it is even more significant that University administrators go far beyond tolerating it. They repeatedly invert the logic of free speech and enforce rules that selectively discriminate AGAINST identifiably conservative students and faculty. There is some comfort to be gleaned from the sure sense that many students are smart enough to instantly grasp the hypocrisy of such administrative misdemeanor. But the effects are far-reaching. American universities are still reverberating from the cave-in to the shot-gun brandishing radicals of the celebrated occupations of the 1960’s.

Many institutions at that time yielded to the radicals’ overt, contemptuous intimidation by abandoning (for a time) traditional grading systems and instituting “feel-good” ethnic/gender studies degree programs, hastily cobbled together for the purpose of deflecting violence, or to retain minority students that might otherwise bail and undermine the school's adherence to unacknowledged or explicit racial quotas. Some of those programs have since been refined with a view to making them as rigorous and intellectually challenging as other degree programs, but the legacy of gutlessness and sheer cowardice persists. There is a deep and ineradicable shame from the time when universities cried “Uncle” to student thugs, and I can't help feeling that it will not dissipate until all those who acquiesced have passed from the scene."

4/20/2008 12:06:00 PM  

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