Bill Ayers, On Patriotism, in His Own Words, from his blog on July 4, 2006

Bill Ayers Blog ^ | July 22, 2006 | William "Bill" Ayers

[mojito]

...On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism—that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder—one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

Patriotism is perhaps the single concept in greatest need of being subjected to intense scrutiny and questioning in our country today. We live, after all, in a time of empire resurrected and unapologetic, of war without borders and seemingly without end, of greed enthroned and of a rapidly widening gulf between rich and poor, of the elusive and seemingly intractable barriers to racial justice, and of patriotism rehearsed and paraded in every corner, and yet the basic questions of who we are and where we are eludes us.

....This enforced ignorance is part of the logic of patriotism, which is of a piece with the logic of nationalism: anyone who by chance was thrust onto this small specific patch of earth is to consider himself or herself superior to all those unfortunates who were thrust onto some other patch. This beatified place is imagined to be qualitatively unparalleled, so different from all other places that it’s as if a high wall shuts it off from the rest of the world. And walls as metaphors are reinforced with barbed wire erected in East Germany, Israel, and now the US on its southern border. Here, within the wall, a chosen people, so to speak, live blessed lives that are nobler, greater, deeper and wiser and more beneficent than the lives led by any other human beings anywhere else.

This is the constant conceit of patriotism, the narcissistic and arrogant stance. The result is that we are willing to fight, kill, and die—or as is almost always the case, to at least send the children of the laboring classes as proxies to do the killing and dying—in a patriotic fever for real estate before reason.

Samuel Johnson called patriotism “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” and Bertrand Russell, “the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons”—patriotism is justification for murder. And the great Malcolm X advised that no one become “so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality…Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.” Howard Zinn describes the typically disingenuous justification for war: As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: “The American solider is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.” We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture. Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.

[Dukes Travels]

Check out his most recent post, and then read the comments:

http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/emergency-suspend-the-debates/

I have a very strong suspicion that the critical ones are made up by Ayers himself.

[mojito]

The Obama campaign releases a statement today to the effect that Obama thought Ayers was “rehabilitated.”

He sure sounds rehabilitated to me.

[floriduh voter]

Ayers’ book review page. (the long review is very informative)

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0807071242/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

[Antoninus]

This a-hole needs to be hung around Barry-O's thread like an albatross.

Bill Ayers should be a household name by election day. See how Obama's voter turnout looks by then...

[patriot08]

Send it to MSM.

FReep THE MSM! HOW LONG CAN THEY IGNORE A MILLION EMAILS?

SEND THEM DAMAGING INFO ON OBAMA. DEMAND THEY DO THEIR JOB AND INVESTIGATE.

ElRushbo@eibnet.com

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Obama connection with ACORN http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=

Obama goes to Kenya on the tax payer’s dollar to campaign for the murderous Islam-backed Odinga!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=S8QcpdUtxNQ&feature=related
SHORT VERSION:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1P_P8lBCsE

Obama talks about Ayers giving him a job:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=D-45A6I

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.

[Yardstick]

Oh lord, not the “wall” metaphor again.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

McCain LIVE in Lakeville, Minnesota-—right now!!!!!

Click here to watch-—

http://kstp.com/article/stories/s614304.shtml?cat=63

[LibertyRocks]

“This is not the William Ayers I knew”

I’ll be searching for stuff, too.

[Road Warrior ‘04]

First, when you go to the Ayers blog, note the "Red" star as the site symbol.

Second, much of what he says in this blog, I believe, has been repeated by Barama.

[HammerOfTheDogs]

Geez. One thing about Marxists...they sure love long-winded messages.

[Khepri]

...On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols

Already lost me....for the record...I hate...HATE....Marxists

[onemiddleamerican]

Watch this Weather Underground documentary.

Can America survive an Obama presidency, with his role models and mentors being these kind of people?

Share the link far and wide.

[HammerOfTheDogs]

The only difference between Bombin’ Rapin’ Billy Ayers and Timothy McVeigh- Ayers is still alive.

[dfwgator]

I hate Illinois Marxists.

[floriduh voter]

From Fugitive Days reviewer comments.

The Weathermen in general and Mr. Ayers in particular recognized the strategic value of striking at the heart of the country's institutions and cultural symbols. Thus they placed bombs in the Pentagon ,the U.S. Capitol, and numerous other government and quasi-government buildings. Mr. Ayers seems particularly proud that he blew up a statue in Chicago that memorialized police officers killed in the line of duty. When the Chicago police union (one union that Mr. Ayers apparently doesn't support) replaced the statue, Mr. Ayers blew it up again. The union replaced it again, but this time had it moved indoors and placed in the lobby of the Chicago Police Academy. Mr. Ayers' writing here gets downright chilling. In a post September 11th world, this self-confessed bomber who "...can't imagine entirely dismissing the possibility..." of bombing more buildings, blithely points out that the statue is still vulnerable "...from the air". Mr. Ayers is also capable of defiling monuments in a less explosive fashion, as when he makes a trip to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., the Wall that honors U.S. military personnel killed in Vietnam, an absolutely holy place to veterans and their families, and there scrawls the name of the woman who died in the New York townhouse exoplosion. The bomb she helped make, remember, was destined to kill American soldiers. Mr. Ayers is indeed, as he brags, "guilty as hell and free as a bird".

Doublespeak abounds and evasions and omissions proliferate. Cop killers are called "freedom fighters" and bombs were placed for "peace". Mr. Ayers writes of something called the "white skin privilege", and if by this he means that it is better to be rich and white in America than it is to be poor and black then he'll get no argument. However, he misses an opportunity to show the reader exactly what this means by omitting entirely the saga of fellow Weather alum fugitive Kathy Boudin (she is acknowledged on the very last page of the book; Mr. Ayers and his wife adopted and raised her son), a "freedom fighter" imprisoned for her part in the "expropriation" , i.e., armed robbery, of a Brinks truck that left two police officers and a security guard dead.

The black men who took part in this were convicted and sentenced to 75 years to life; they will never get out. Ms. Boudin, the very white daughter of the very rich lawyer, negotiated a plea bargain of 20 years to life. She is now eligible and clamoring for parole.

FV imo: (Ayers was a allegedly a racist if you see the black members are all in jail for a very long time and his references to blacks.

Pls ck w/the PUMAs if you're in touch w/them. Now THIS would really be bad for Obama. Why didn't Barack Obama know about or read Ayers' book??? It took me 3 seconds to find it at amazon.

My friends, (I hate that), please do your research on Ayers' book and pass it on. Seriesly, this might help McCain-Palin.

[dfwgator]

Hey, I just got my new tagline.

[mylife]

We cant chance this guy.

But a large percentage of Americans are completely brain dead.

[onemiddleamerican]

We each need to wake up as many as we can; that's the best we can do.

Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.

And prayers won't hurt, either.

[floriduh voter]

Obama and Ayers are “comrades”.

[Brad’s Gramma]

bttt