A little historical context is needed here:
Bill Ayers was counter-productive and stupid and yes his daddy helped reinvent him... but he did NOT kill anybody. Compare that to what he felt he was fighting against.

Vietnam War establishment on the other hand:

Deliberately lied us into a war (Tonkin etc.).

Deliberately murdered tens of thousands of civilians (carpet bombing, free fire zones, napalm, agent orange).

...and did this with a DRAFT which in effect rounded up 18 year olds against their will and forced them to participate. Bill Ayers s very low on the list of criminals from the 1950s-1970s

If there was a draft at the time of the Iraq invasion, I wonder what sort of protests there would have been over the past few years.

I watched Bill Ayers hawking his book on Hardball last night. He is just as contrite as he thinks he needs to be. That no one was killed in the bombing attacks is a miracle, not good planning. Note that Ayers girlfriend and two other bomb makers were blown to bits incompetently assembling bombs.

I grew up during Vietnam. I have no love for the "leaders" who sent us to war, but I also have no love for silly white establishment children who think terrorism is an acceptable response. That Ayers was allowed to "rehabilitate" himself speaks volumes for the power of money in our society.

If you never heard of Ayers until this year, what makes you think you are in any way qualified to comment about him or his life? There has been plenty of thoughtful analysis from writers who actually know something about the topic--just because you have an opinion, that doesn't mean you're required to spout off.

I support neither Ayers or his actions, but comparing him to Cheney or implying he belongs in the same company as war criminals is beyond absurd. In contrast to the bushies and most of those responsible for Vietnam, Ayers faced the bar of justice. He avoided judicial penalty not because of "rich white privilege", but because the charges were dismissed due to governmental misconduct in the gathering of evidence.

This may be the dumbest article to ever appear on TPM.

"And yet he is a pillar of the Chicago establishment?" Probably says more about the Chicago establishment, than Ayers!

Ayers never did any time for what he did because he was never prosecuted. Why was he never prosecuted? Because law enforcement screwed the pooch in collecting their so-called evidence. You don't have any reasonable bitch about Ayers not serving time.

Ayers has done a great deal toward rehabilitating education in Chicago.

And as to Dick Cheney's and Ayers' careers having the same point? You must be really, really slow.

Violently protesting against violence (perpetrated by one's government) is really protesting against one's government and not against its violent acts - given that you are also committing them.

Those who staged peaceful demonstrations during the sixties and seventies - I was one of them - were against the war being waged by our government. Very few people called us terrorists.

I wonder if Ayres yet understands why he was called a terrorist. On the other hand, calling him a 'leftist' as Charles Lane does in his article implies that only 'leftists' blow things up and endanger lives. That lets 'rightests' off the hook when in truth they shouldn't be.

Bill Ayers was a terrorist. The only reason he didn't kill innocent people is because he was a bumbling terrorist.
I believe in redemption but only in cases of genuine contrition. He shows none.
Anyone who celebrates the murder of RFK,JFK or even William McKinley is a thug.

PS I'm a liberal, not a Communist, not a revolutionary and oppose violence against innocent people in any and all situations (Dresden, Hiroshima, buses in Israel, IDF attacks on Gaza, political assassinations in democratic states, genocide, etc. Sue me.

I don't know that it's quite accurate to call Ayers "a pillar of the Chicago establishment", but according to CNN, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley called Ayers "a valued member of the Chicago community" and the city of Chicago gave Ayers its "Citizen of the Year" award in 1997 for his work on the Annenberg Foundation's education reform project.

So Ayers nowadays is certainly a respected citizen, who by all accounts -- including the former Federal prosecutor who prosecuted Ayers for his Weatherman activities -- has made productive and positive contributions to society.

I was of draft age during the Vietnam War and participated in numerous peaceful protests, including those in which hundreds of thousands of peaceful protestors marched on Washington DC.

I watched nonviolent protestors being beaten and tear-gassed for peacefully opposing the war.

I rejected the violence of the Weatherman group and other similar groups then, and I reject it now. I share MJ Rosenberg's opposition to "violence against innocent people in any and all situations".

I believe that the only way to achieve a nonviolent world is through nonviolent means.

Having said that, to equate Bill Ayers with those who knowingly and deliberately murdered several million innocent Vietnamese civilians, and forcibly conscripted tens of thousands of young, working-class Americans and sent them to their deaths, in an illegal war driven by greed and based on sickening lies, is an absurdly false equivalence.

I lived during the Vietnam War draft period.
I felt powerless. I was nothing more than cannon fodder.
Hoping that my Number wasn’t going to be called up.
My Government was betraying my values and me. Like “thou shall not kill.”
I love this Country, but I fear my government. WHY?

I don’t condone violence, but when the Underground movement, did what I could not.
Did the Government awaken to find that some of the sheep being led to the slaughter Resisted?
Did it finally stir our Representatives to realize that the unpopularity of the war, was dividing our Nation.

The Kent State massacre proved that demonstrations were met with unequal force.

The threat of the Domino Theory, as the purpose of the Vietnam War, was a tool used by the War machine. A war machine that cost America.
Without resistance or protests what makes anyone believe the carnage would have stopped?

Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm

As someone posted earlier, one could only have imagined, that if a draft had been initiated, to fight the Iraq War, what the socioeconomic and political policies would have been, or the upheaval in the populace.

Had the Governments heavy handed and harshness against Vietnam protestors, had never occurred, would there have been the Jonestown Escape, or the Branch Davidians who were fearful of their Government? Gathering guns to battle whom?

The whacked out Timothy McVieghs, who loved their Country, but feared their Government, so filled with hate. Is this what is reaped from a Nation at peace with itself, or a Nation divided?

It’s easy to identify the fruits of mistrust. It’s harder to resist the designs of corrupt and despotic rulership. With it’s wiretapping.
People hanging on to their guns for security, why?

Is Ayers a product?

Let us pray
“Let your kingdom Come”

Many of the people who respond do not know what was going on in the USA during that period. There was a phony war concocted as well as a compulsary
draft. The Chaney's and & others could get educational deferments. The working class young men couldn't. Lots of young men fled to Canada.
There were constant sits ins and demonstrations. The weather people were a more extreme faction of the anti-war left. At the time they were not called terrorists. A terrorists goal is killing people randomly and not necessarily soldiers but innocent people. What they did was criminal, no doubt. But I've yet to hear anyone call the people who bombed the church in Burmingham and killed four little girls terrorists.

The only reason any of us are talking about Ayers is because of the GOP smear campaign against Obama. So while it may be legitimate to evaluate the fate of the 60's radical bomb-throwers, the fact that Ayers did not do time or get buried under the weight of his own infamy is because somebody screwed up in the investigation. So the entire thesis about rich white boys not having to answer for their crimes is badly served by starting with the example of Ayers. He would not have become an obscure professor of education in Chicago if he had spent 15 or 20 years in prison, so the logic here does not follow. And it is no fault of Ayers that he did not get convicted and serve time.

MJ, for you to publicly beat your breast with outrage and patriotic fervor about this particular actor, even after his usefulness to the right has been exhausted, shows a number of things:

First, you have no understanding at all of why Americans even hear about people like this in the first place. See above comment about "usefulness". Stipulating that he is The World's Worst Person (I don't, in fact, but what the hell), he could have gone on being that until the day he died of old age. You yourself say you never heard of him, and you never would have.

So right there, I'm thinking, he couldn't have had as much meaning as that with which you attempt to imbue him.

Second, assuming his celebrity (if not his life) was a total creation of the right... can you possibly articulate what purpose it serves, now, doing the WORK of the right, for them? Especially, when Ayers is no longer even a useful tool... to them?

Are there, perhaps, any actors on the right, who stir the outrage in your loins, enough to motivate you to write a similarly seething diatribe? To my knowledge, Ann Coulter has never apologized for making the "joke" to the drooling retards who buy her books and are influenced by them that Tim McVeigh should have driven a fertilizer bomb to The New York Times building, and killed Times employees and innocent New Yorkers; or that a few "liberals" needed to be killed, to show progressives that the right "means business".

She's probably got more gun nuts stalking liberal columnists (like YOU), and freepers working after the night shift at Wendy's to build bombs, than Bill Ayers ever destroyed mailboxes as a twentysomething. When can we expect your Righteous Indignation-Fest about that?

When you see references to Dems, liberals and progressives, in the proverbial "circular firing squad"... they're talking about YOU.Feeling the need to express public outrage at someone like Ayers, whom you think sullies the Left? Great. Keep it to your fucking self. The right always knows when it needs an "enemy". Let them do it.

MJ,
Here's something simple you can do: Rent the DVD The Weather Underground by Sam Green. It may not change your opinion of Bill Ayers but it will help you understand his life and times.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Ask General Howe about those diabolical Minutemen who hid behind trees shooting the redcoats as they marched in formation.

The Weather Underground targets were property, not humans. Given the monstrosity of the Vietnam War, I understand the motivation.

@Resistance:
one more oldie but goodie from TJ:
"The Tree of Liberty sometimes requires watering with the blood of tyrants and patriots."

Jeez, what an idiot you are Mr. Rosenberg. You drank a certain coolaid and you are, and will be unabashed in your "opinion".

You are afflicted with the dis-ease of your "thinking".

You think that your thinking is a real test of what is real and true.

You "know" everything through this one function of your mind, and know of no other ways to perceive.

It is a common affliction, it's spreading and as far as I know, there is no cure.

I am sad for your offspring.

I fully agree with your assessment of Bill Ayers. His Times article was a nice piece of revisionist self-marketing. The one thing I believe has been missing in the entire discussion about Ayers since his name surfaced in the campaign is who enabled him (and his wife) to get off scot-free for their behavior, and why they did so.

While I am by no means deeply knowledgeable about the history of Ayers, anyone who in the recent presidential campaign attempted to tar Obama with Ayers' crimes must know that those who worked the justice system on Ayers' behalf were bedrock, establishment Republicans, as were those who appointed and tenured him at the University of Illinois. While the politics of the U. of I. faculty is generally liberal (like those at most colleges and universities), the trustees and other administrators are not particularly so. Had they wished to, they would simply not have hired and tenured Ayers. The same is true of Northwestern University, employer of Ayers' wife. I have no idea why these bodies looked the other way. The political culture of Illinois is rather conservative — and in some cases, very conservative. And it is these these people who control the courts and the justice and the university systems. To say that Ayers' was simply seen as a prodigal son has been offered as the core explanation for his mere slap on the wrist, but I don't quite understand this line of reasoning. It's a mystery to me. Why exactly would this class care so little? It's quite atypical. Yet, in a way, it further exonerates Obama, who came along in Ayers' life decades after he had already been forgiven by the very forces he explicitly and violently set out to destroy. If anyone is really interested in Ayers and intent on calling people to account for associating with him, they should look not to Obama, but wonder instead about well-born, establishment, conservative leaders throughout Illinois. Their indulgence of Ayers is the real story.

What can I say? I ususally disagree with him, but here I think Mr. Rosenberg's comments are much more right than wrong. The gist is correct.
BTJ46, among some others, says it very well.

Ayers said on Hardball that he doesn't want to defend what it did but it "wasn't completely insane".

How can any of the nuts on TPM (and you know who you are) defend a guy who thinks that bombings are not insane? Please don't compare him to others (Bush, Cheney) and say it's relative. Look at what he did. I don't think he's sorry for what he did.

Ayers became an issue of convenience.
The right wing war machine, fearing their ability at war profiteering, was being threatened. If Obama and supporters were to win and bring the troops home, the party would be over.

Nothing was working to turn the election their way. It was necessary to sling more at the wall, hoping it would stick.
Ayers became the cause celeb, and it was a twofer, Obama, Illinois, Chicago democratic machine, Anti war.

BINGO, lets smear Obama, guilt by association. Hey! doesn’t Bill Ayers live in Illinois, OH MY GOD, he knows Obama. Surely this will make the people vote for our candidate.
Cynically drawing Obama, and Ayers, into the old reruns of the Love it or Leave it crowd, trying to relive the glory days.
Ex VFW'ers crying in their beers, about the lack of patriotism, Saying amongst themselves, “we fought so why aren’t you”. How dare the punks deny Bush and Cheney the hero status? McCain would not cut and run.

Resurrecting and dragging out the skeletons, reminding many of the so-called shame of Vietnam, and make this election about patriotism.
Right wing form of patriotism.

But of course many of us here, need no reminder, of the machinations of the politics of war.

The phrase "Never trust anyone over thirty" didn't become part of the language merely because the boomers felt misunderstood by the "squares". That phrase gained urgency because they were being maimed and killed by policies put together by the authorities.

Those authorities fought and won the great war and deeply resented the resistance of the young to fighting in Viet Nam. The "rank and file" Americans who recalled the necessity of that earlier war either could not or would not recognize that the Viet Nam conflict was a far more ambiguous situation. The result was a perception that the young were simply hippies shirking their duty.

By 1970, the youth of America knew that those who could not get deferments due to lack of money or influence or elite IQ, would be sent to Viet Nam. They knew they would return in caskets, wheelchairs, or with PTSD so severe that they could not reintegrate with society.

It is not at all reasonable to compare Ayers raging in his youth against the pain and fear, against Cheney who had nothing to worry about at the time. Ayers went on to work in academic near-obscurity for education reform. Cheney went on to demonstrate his near sociopathic indifference to the people of this nation when he set in motion the Iraq invasion, sending our volunteer servicemen and women into Iraq without adequate preparation, equipment or support.

The similarities shared by Ayers and Cheney are so outweighed by their differences that any comparison linking them is meaningless.

I agree you cannot compare Ayers to Cheney. But I do not agree that Ayers was guided by sincerity and frustration about the Viet Nam war, etc. I remember Kent State, the draft, etc. (BTW, Ayers didn't face the draft, as far as I can tell he missed out on the big call ups with deferment(s?).)
Sure, the Nixon government was aiming violence at the student "radicals" (and in fact anyone to the left of Dan Quayle) but it was abundantly clear to anyone who could see outside of his or her own ego that violent "protest" would only discredit the antiwar/"new left" peace movement.
Among other things, Ayers and the Weathermen made the smearing of McGovern a whole lot easier.

agand wrote: "The one thing I believe has been missing in the entire discussion about Ayers since his name surfaced in the campaign is who enabled him (and his wife) to get off scot-free for their behavior, and why they did so."

According to the former Federal prosecutor who prosecuted Ayers for his Weatherman activities, it was the FBI that "enabled him (and his wife) to get off scot-free". The FBI used illegal wiretaps to obtain evidence against Ayers and his wife, which resulted in the case being dismissed by the court.

That's why Ayers got a "free ride" -- not because he was a rich white kid with powerful friends. So the premise of Mr. Rosenberg's essay is wrong.

And everything that Ayers has today he has, in my view, earned with his work in the education field, in which capacity he has probably made at least as positive and substantive a contribution to society as Mr. Rosenberg has done through his own work.

As I have written previously in this thread, I rejected the violence of the Weatherman group and others like it back then, and I reject it today. I value nonviolence and the only way to realize nonviolence is through nonviolent means.

Having said that, there is simply no equivalence -- there is really no comparison -- between the acts of Bill Ayers and the acts of those who launched wars of unprovoked aggression, based on sickening lies, for corrupt purposes of private financial gain, which in the case of Vietnam killed several million innocent civilians and in the case of Iraq killed tens to hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.