A new example of Obama’s weird inversions
In the last couple of major posts I’ve done about Obama, I’ve tried to focus on the fact that Obama lives in a weirdly inverse world, where he tries desperately to hide what he really is, which is someone who believes that traditional values are evil. This same bizarre inversion, where Obama takes ordinary values and stands them on their heads, all the while trying to present himself as just a friendly guy, as opposed to the far Leftist weirdo behind the curtain, popped up again in yesterday’s debate.
The trigger for Obama’s exposure of his true self was the fact that George Stephanopoolus asked him about his association with William Ayers. In case that name doesn’t ring a bell, let me give you a little refresher. William Ayers was a home-grown, extremely brutal, American terrorist. Here’s Andrew McCarthy’s pithy rundown of Ayers’ history:
The mainstream media, in their zeal to elect a Democrat, are assiduously airbrushing Ayers: “an aging lefty with a foolish past,” as the Chicago Sun-Times has so delicately put it. In fact, it is the press that is rife with foolish, aging lefties. Ayers, by contrast, is an unapologetic terrorist with a savage past — one who beat the system he so reviles when, after his years of fugitivity, terrorism charges were dropped due to government surveillance violations. He’s “guilty as sin,” by his own concession, but “free as a bird.”
Ayers didn’t just carry a sign outside the Pentagon on May 19, 1972. He bombed it. As his memoir gleefully recalled, “Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.”
Whether Pentagon bombing day was more or less ideal than other days, when he, Dohrn and their Weathermen comrades bombed the U.S. Capitol, the State Department, and sundry banks, police stations and courthouses, Ayers does not say. But on each occasion, there was surely optimism that the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.
There were lots of bombs. There is no remorse. “I don’t regret setting bombs,” he told the New York Times in 2001, sorry only that he and the others “didn’t do enough.” Like what? We can’t be sure, though National Review Online’s Jonah Goldberg recounts Ayers’s sentiments back in the day: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.”
Ayers and Dohrn have done the actual dirty work of terror, while Jeremiah Wright draws the line at waving pom-poms. But the prism through which they assay the dirty work is precisely the same: America has it coming.
For them, that makes all the difference. It’s not terror, just chickens coming home to roost. “Terrorists destroy randomly,” Ayers rationalizes with nauseating arrogance, “while our actions bore … the precise stamp of a cut diamond. Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate.” Right.
Stephanopoulos obviously didn’t go into that whole history in his question to Obama, but he did provide enough verbs and nouns for anyone, even someone unfamiliar with Ayers’ history to understand that the man’s goal was to kill Americans. Obama’s answer is telling. Here’s the whole colloquy:
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, if you get the nomination, you’ll have to — (applause) — (inaudible).
I want to give Senator Clinton a chance to respond, but first a follow-up on this issue, the general theme of patriotism in your relationships. A gentleman named William Ayers, he was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that. And in fact, on 9/11 he was quoted in The New York Times saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough.”
An early organizing meeting for your state senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are friendly. Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won’t be a problem?
SEN. OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I’m talking about.
This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.
The fact is, is that I’m also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who during his campaign once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions.
Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn’s statements? Because I certainly don’t agree with those either.
So this kind of game, in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, is somehow — somehow their ideas could be attributed to me — I think the American people are smarter than that. They’re not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn’t.
Did you follow that carefully? Obama said that it’s okay for him to be friends with people whose views differ from his. So far so good, although one might wish that a future president would choose his friends a bit more carefully. (Of course, with Jimmy Carter providing the role model for liberal presidents, perhaps he can be excused for not knowing better or trying harder.)
But what Obama also said is that, to the extent anyone’s views differ from his, those differing views have no moral weight whatsoever — they’re just, well, different. That’s why he could liken his friendship to a terrorist and attempted murderer to his friendship with someone who tries to stop the abortion of unborn children. Now, you may disagree with the Right to Life movement, but only someone who lives in a moral vacuum could imply that someone who is pro-choice pro-Life, who is trying to save lives, is on precisely the same moral plane as someone who tries to murder people, thereby making it appropriate to call either one your friend.
Obama is a piece of work. I truly hope that the masses of American people, the ones who don’t watch politics with a close eye before October, start to wise up to the fact that this is a man without any moral compass other than his own ego and ambition.