Why William Ayers & Other Radical Associations Matter

Brian Perry wrote a well-reasoned article for today’s Madison County Journal entitled “Enemies Foreign and Domestic.” This editorial highlights his visit to the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC and provides a historical review of domestic and foreign terrorist attacks on the United States.

For the sake of a quick review, Perry noted domestic terrorist attacks that included those from anarchists, the Ku Klux Klan, the Weather Underground, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Timothy McVeigh. Foreign terrorists attacks included the pre-9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the USS Cole, multiple American embassies in Africa, and, of course, those on 9/11.

Perry elaborates on the museum’s exhibit of one particularly violent Klan member, the

Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Sam Bowers of Laurel, Mississippi. Bowers was suspected in hundreds of bombings and attacks. He orchestrated the fire-bombing that killed Vernon Dahmer and masterminded the killings of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney in Neshoba County. Time Magazine called Bowers “the most dangerous man ever to don a white hood.”

Perry also wrote about the museum’s exhibit featuring the Weather Underground. As Perry noted, the Weather Underground was described by the FBI as “a small, violent offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), created in the turbulent ’60s to promote social change.” This organization has once again been in the news due to Barack Obama’s recent associations with Weather Underground member William Ayers. Perry continues:

The Weather Underground claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks including bombings of the U.S. Capitol Building, the Pentagon, and the US State Department. In an article appearing in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, one of the organization’s founders, Bill Ayers, said “I don’t regret setting bombs” and looking back on their actions, “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Senator Obama likes to claim that Ayers’ actions happened when he (Obama) was just eight years old. True. However, there is more to it than just Ayers’ past actions. To this day Ayers remains unrepentant and even expressed regret just a few years ago that they “didn’t do enough.” Perry writes:

Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, another leader and founder of the Weather Underground, unrepentant of their past domestic terrorism, are now engaged in peaceful social radicalism in Chicago where they formed political alliances with Barack and Michelle Obama: launching an Obama political campaign in their home, supporting him with campaign funds, and serving and working together on the Chicago nonprofit Woods Fund, as well as the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. When Obama was a community organizer, it was folks like Ayers and Dohrn in his community.

I think the following quote from Perry deserves particular attention:

Whether Obama’s association with Ayers disqualifies him from being president is a question of such serious nature it deserves more than a dismissive denial from his campaign. Imagine if Obama were a Republican from Oklahoma with ties to McVeigh; or from Mississippi with ties to Bowers.

Think about that a minute if you would. What if John McCain had an association with anybody even remotely connected to the Klan? Would we ever hear the end of it? And yet we have a known and unrepentant domestic terrorist closely associated with Senator Obama and it hardly gets a mention, let alone a headline or even a simple question from a mainstream journalist.

Perry offers this insightful look at why William Ayers and other radical individuals associated within Obama’s recent past really matter.

The President of the United States is Commander-in-Chief of more than two million men and women, active and reserve, who pledged to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Bill Ayers was one of those domestic enemies who remains unrepentant of his past crimes. Obama’s relationship with Ayers deserves a proper vetting by America’s media watchdogs. Voters can determine whether there are credible criticisms.

Will Obama defend this nation against “enemies, foreign and domestic” when he showed extremely poor judgement (at best) by not even defending his own reputation from guilt by association with so many obvious radicals? If known and unrepentant domestic terrorists are counted among Obama’s friends then how can we trust him with the security of our nation? This is a legitimate question that Americans deserve to have answered clearly and fully to their satisfaction. If you ask me, though, it sounds like an Obama Presidency would be the fox guarding the hen house.

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