Just read a spate of conservative blogs and media pieces linking Obama to Ayers. One of them, "Debunking Obama's 'Fact Sheet" by Guy Benson, seems the best of the lot. At least he brings into the discussion some little known facts about their association, facts that people vulnerable to the Guilt-By-Association (GBA) tactic find compelling.

Perhaps the most enlightening thing about Benson's and others' GBA attacks is that they never alledge any misdeeds other than the association. Ironically, in his second paragraph, Benson even asserts that "Obama is not a terrorist." In the same vein, notice also that the most space by far in any of these articles is devoted to showing what creeps are the terrorists, racists, and otherwise deranged folks. No space is devoted to showing that Obama has ever done or said anything that could be construed as anti-American.

Of course, GBA attacks succeeds only because their purveyors imply that their targets might soon be revealed to be closet terrorists, racists, and so on. These writers create the impression that, although there is no proof against the defendents in this public trial, Obama and "his kind" probably in their hearts of hearts and in their most private moments are foursquare against mainstream Americans.

This is hucksterism or flim flam, and Benson is earnest and thoughtful enough to know it. But he doesn't. Why?

He's stuck in a fallacy that, because of the added impetus of ideological zeal, eludes him. He's like the legions of visitors to Las Vegas who believe that, because a coin comes up heads eight times in a row, it's almost surely going to come up tails the next time it's tossed. Math teachers tell us that this is a fallacy, that, on each toss, there is just as much likleyhood that the face of the coin staring up at us will be heads as tails. Life is peppered by these kinds of logic problems that we can't quite see through.

That's why, if I were in Obama's camp, I'd respond to the Right's GBA tactics by deconstructing them, by helping people understand how fallacious they are. Then I'd issue a challenge, such as, "You're trying to convince people  that I'm against them, that I'm a closet terrorist or racist. But in this country, unlike Nazi Germany or Saddam Hussein's Iraq, we demand proof. If I associate with someone who is anti-American, I'm no different than hundreds of thousands of people who believe that, to change these people who threatn us, we have to include them in our discussions. We have to treat them with dignity. We must model for them the qualities we want them to emulate. That's what I was doing on various boards and other venues in which I've related to people who have been anti-American.

Mr. Ayers is the anti-American flavor of the week for my opponents, McCain and Palin. They want to vilify him, to reject him and thereby terrorize him so much that he may be tempted in anger and desperation to become more radical than he every was.

I think my method of relating to anti-American people has a better track record for bringing people into the mainstream. Notice thar, while Mr. Ayers probably retains some of his youthful anti-American zeal, he also is an honored professor of education at one of our most respected universities, the University of Chicago. He has been shown respect by local people who see, that, despite his former terrorist leanings, he is a voice for hope and professional problem solving on behalf of American's students. We should be celebrating his mainstream achievements rather than dragging his troubling past through the mud. That's how many of us in professional life believe we can effectively engage people on the fringes. Of course, there are people who are unreachable by that means, but the record shows that, in this case, Mr. Ayers responded to the forces of good and righteousness in America partly because many of us saw what was good in him and encouraged it.