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Originally Posted by Munchkin03
I'm sure he knew everything about Bill Ayers. Hell, I'm 27, never been to Chicago in my life, and yet I'm quite familiar with Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. While he and his wife may not be in the "mainstream," if you're involved in any left-wing politics at all, let alone in Chicago, you've definitely heard of them. If you're active in community organization as far as education goes, you've heard of Bill Ayers. The man has written several books, so it's not as if he's in a bunker biting his toenails and planning the New World Order. In fact, he and his wife were featured in that bastion of the Radical Left, the AARP Quarterly, in November 2001.
Obama, as long as I can remember, has separated himself from association with Bill Ayers's activities in the Weather Underground. If I'm not mistaken, wasn't David Horowitz an "associate" of Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers during those days? Is it okay to listen to and associate with him now that he's a conservative?
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I suppose what would matter most to me in associating with people in the present is how earnestly they seems to have repudiated their violent pasts.
And that's what makes Ayers and Dohrn, maybe especially, so complicated.
ETA: It looks like Horowitz's connections were Black Panther, just glancing at Wikipedia.
One a different note, if we wanted a really excellent study in "white privilege" maybe contrasting what happened to most figures involved with the Black Panthers and MOVE with the current status of the former Weathermen would prove illustrative. (Or maybe it would just show the benefits of privilege generally.) I wonder why we don't hear more about that.