Hmmm: Bill Ayers Speaks (part 2)

I in no way condone violence but I also believe in redemption and hearing both sides of a story.

Until this election I had no freaking idea who Bill Ayers was or is. In fact, I still don't know much about him or the Weathermen. The only fact that I know about him is that he is now a distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois.

What I am quite confident of, without even reading one iota about Ayers, is that the way he was characterized by the right-wing was misleading and dishonest. The right-wing's intent was to smear Obama and scare people into thinking that he has "terrorist ties" or worse by implication that he may even be a terrorist himself. This, of course, was 100% fear-mongering BS.

In that vein, here is an excerpt from an In These Times article penned by Bill Ayers about his thoughts on this election...

McCain and Palin demanded to “know the full extent” of the Obama-Ayers “relationship” so that they can know if Obama, as Palin put it, “is telling the truth to the American people or not.”

This is just plain stupid.

Obama has continually been asked to defend something that ought to be at democracy’s heart: the importance of talking to as many people as possible in this complicated and wildly diverse society, of listening with the possibility of learning something new, and of speaking with the possibility of persuading or influencing others.

The McCain-Palin attacks not only involved guilt by association, they also assumed that one must apply a political litmus test to begin a conversation...

...In a robust and sophisticated democracy, political leaders—and all of us—ought to seek ways to talk with many people who hold dissenting, or even radical, ideas. Lacking that simple and yet essential capacity to question authority, we might still be burning witches and enslaving our fellow human beings today.

For the entire article, which is definitely worth a read click here.