From Keith Pavlischek at First Things:
Imagine, for a moment, that the violence of a hypothetical “unrepentant terrorist” were directed at African-American churches or ATF agents or perhaps abortion clinics rather than, per the non-hypothetical William Ayers, at the Pentagon or the Capitol. Imagine that a hypothetical Republican presidential candidate had close connections with an unrepentant leader of the KKK as the current Democratic presidential candidate has to an unrepentant leader of the Weatherman. Would this be dismissed “as maybe a small brushstroke,” one “hardly disqualifying to his candidacy”?
I doubt it.
Ah, but unrepentant leftists are de rigueur for the best Democratic cocktail parties. They know where to get the best Che bric-a-brac.
Really he doesn’t:
But Bill Ayers? Does anybody really seriously believe that Barack Obama is a secret left-wing radical?
O.K., fine, I don’t think Obama is a secret left-wing radical. I think he is an out-in-the-open left-wing radical.
Where I come from heading up an effort to excise the 2nd Amendment from the Constitution by judicial fiat is radical. Where I come from advocating “education reform” that has more in common with Stalin than Jefferson and Hamilton is radical.
As Sol Stern notes:
President Hugo Chávez at his side, Ayers proclaimed his support for “the profound educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chávez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.” Ayers concluded his speech by declaring that “Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education—a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation,” and then, as in days of old, raised his fist and chanted: “Viva Presidente Chávez! Viva la Revolucion Bolivariana! Hasta la Victoria Siempre!”
Obama worked specifically to implement Ayers’ vision of education in Chicago, despite its manifest stupidity. The object of such reforms is not to educate children at all. The object is to produce little Chavenistas, or Ayerians, who are to be taught to attack everything this country stands for.
Frum doesn’t think that’s radical.
Frum needs to get out more.
Updated to add missing link to Stern piece.
You remember Barack Obama, proud defender of the 2nd Amendment? Unsurprisingly, that Barack Obama turns out to be a crock: Obama and the Attempt to Destroy the Second Amendment
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama must demonstrate executive experience, but he remains strangely silent about his eight years (1994-2002) as a director of the Joyce Foundation, a billion dollar tax-exempt organization. He has one obvious reason: during his time as director, Joyce Foundation spent millions creating and supporting anti-gun organizations.
There is another, less known, reason.
During Obama’s tenure, the Joyce Foundation board planned and implemented a program targeting the Supreme Court. The work began five years into Obama’s directorship, when the Foundation had experience in turning its millions into anti-gun “grassroots” organizations, but none at converting cash into legal scholarship.
The plan’s objective was bold: the judicial obliteration of the Second Amendment.
Go over and read the whole thing.
This is the reason why the words and rhetoric of some political candidates are fundamentally unimportant. I don’t care about what supposed “principles” Obama announces on his campaign website because he has shown time and again they are meaningless.
Obama’s real principles won’t sell to the majority of Americans, so he has to lie.
It appears that the change you can believe in is pretty much the same, old Chicago politics of Illinois politicians doling out taxpayer money to the well connected. Especially if there is a family connection.
As a state senator, Democrat Barack Obama awarded $75,000 in government grants to a Chicago social service organization led by a rabbi who is also his wife’s cousin, records show.
In 1999, Obama arranged for $50,000 for adult literacy and counseling services offered on Chicago’s South Side by a group called Blue Gargoyle. A $25,000 grant for the group’s youth services followed the next year.
The group’s executive director when the grants were awarded was Capers Funnye, a South Side rabbi and Michelle Obama’s first cousin once removed.
Funnye (pronounced fun-NAY) said Monday there was nothing improper about the way Blue Gargoyle obtained the grants. Obama did not encourage him to apply for the money, he said, and Funnye denied using family connections to pressure Obama to approve the application.
The story points out that there were essentially no rules broken - because there were no rules. In other words, glad-handing Chicago politics as usual. (I lived in Illinois for some years and am familiar with how politics operates in that state.)
This is change?
Politics, Uncategorized | Rich Horton Tuesday, 7 October , 2008 | 
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