Does calling Bill Ayers a “terrorist” make me a “McCarthyite”?
Dean Millot at Edbizbuzz seems to think so.
I’m tempted to leave it at that, because, as Millot himself implies, this debate is pulling us further and further away from education policy and more and more into the realm of the bizarre. But it’s not every day that I’m likened to one of the most despicable characters of the 20th century so, alas, let me respond.
Millot argues that the term “terrorist” is “hyperbolic” because the Weather Underground did not practice “the deliberate indiscriminate use of force against innocents to strike fear in the general public.” Instead, they “just” blew up government buildings, taking care not to injure anyone.
This strikes me as semantic jujitsu (the Weathermen did use violence to forward their political aims), but I’m certainly happy to concede that what Al Qaeda perpetrates, for example, is much, much, much worse.
Still, were the Weathermen’s actions defensible? Hardly. Sometimes we at the Fordham Institute are considered “bomb throwers”–but only figuratively. We tend to disagree strongly with the teachers unions, but it would be morally reprehensible for us to call on school reformers to bomb their headquarters, even in the middle of the night when no one could be hurt. That’s not how democracies are supposed to work.
Furthermore, Millot argues that Ayers was a “fugitive from justice,” but since all charges were dropped because of “prosecutorial misconduct,” he is presumed to be “innocent until proven guilty.”
Yet in this article, Ayers is quoted as saying, “Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. Isn’t America a great country?”
So yes, I think the American Educational Research Association might want to think twice before allowing a man who partook in political violence and refuses to apologize for it to join its leadership team. (As I explained on the Education Gadfly Show last week, I’m not arguing that the AERA should strip his membership because of his wacky educational views; if that were the standard, the group would have no officers.) In fact, if a young Bill Ayers walked into an education school wanting to be a teacher, I don’t think he would even qualify for that, under the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education’s “dispositions” standard, which all ed schools are supposed to apply to teacher candidates:
Professional attitudes, values, and beliefs demonstrated through both verbal and non-verbal behaviors as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities. These positive behaviors support student learning and development.
Is using violence to promote your political beliefs a “value” that the education community wants to embrace? Is blowing up government buildings a “positive behavior”?
So yes, I think it’s less than ideal that our education system is willing to embrace Bill Ayers regardless of his past activities, for which he refuses to apologize. (And I’m hardly alone.)
And that, supposedly, makes me a McCarthyite. Millot writes:
Labeling someone who has never been found guilty of a violent crime–let alone terrorism, a “terrorist” is irresponsible. If it becomes socially acceptable for people in positions of responsibility who have the respect of a larger following to make such statements, I fear a return to the chilled atmosphere of policy discourse in the 1950’s called McCarthyism. “If you don’t agree with me, you must be a Communist–or in this case a terrorist (and I, by implication, must be a patriot).” This is truly a serious threat to a free society.
I didn’t call Bill Ayers a terrorist because I disagree with him, but because he blew stuff up to forward his political views. But fine, call him whatever you want. And while you’re at it, have the guts to say that an unrepentant bomber (is that better, Millot?) shouldn’t be welcomed with open arms by the education field.
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May 19th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Actually, that is better, because it’s accurate.
On the McCarthyist issue, I was torn between calling Mike McCarthyist outright and pointing out that this is the direction in which this rhetoric takes us. The former sentiment was refelected in my “have you no shame” line. The latter in the paragraph Mike quoted above. My intent was to steer a fine line between the two. I tried not to call him a McCarthyite, but to emphasize the direction is rhetoric could take us.
Senator McCarthy took people with left-leaning views or leftist relationships in their youths and called them Communists. Mike labeled someone a terrorist who, in his youth, planted bombs in government offices and phoned in so the buildings could be evacuated and no one harmed – and in fact no one but Weathermen were harmed. There are those who call Secretary Rumsfeld a war criminal for his role in the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques. All such statements are irresponsible because they are inaccurate and will incite others.
My “fear (of) a return to the chilled atmosphere of policy discourse in the 1950’s called McCarthyism” is reflected in the tendency of many who use the web to move from Ayers’ leftist views on k-12 education, to his leftist political philosophy, to his days as a Weatherman, to the terrorist label – and then to equate the last with the first. Readers need only Google “Bill Ayers Education AERA” to see how many partisans to the right of center in the education wars subscribe to that train of logic http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&q=Bill+Ayers+Education+AERA
It’s perfectly relevant and reasonable to argue against Ayers political philosophy as the basis of any public education policy. Throwing in “by the way, the guy’s a terrorist” is an appeal to readers’ emotions rather than rational thinking on the merits of the case. I accept that Mike’s motivation was based only on what Ayers admits to have done and his lack of repentance for it. But intentional or otherwise, it was entirely forseeable that readers would infer a nexus between terrorism and Bill Ayers’ educational ideas.
Mike is the number two in a respectable think tank. Things he says are made respectable among many of those who follow Fordham; they are picked up by others, used and even twisted. People in positions like Mike’s need to think about the consequences of what they say. What he said has had consequences. And Mike bears some responsibility for helping the debate on education policy to sink a bit more.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:55 am
P.S. regarding: “And while you’re at it, have the guts to say that an unrepentant bomber (is that better, Millot?) shouldn’t be welcomed with open arms by the education field.”
I never joined AERA – for two reasons. First, I felt it had low standards of research as reflected by it’s annual meeting agendas. Second, it struck me as left of center, and so not entirely conducive to my own research interests, which follow from a value judgment about the relative advantages of markets over central planning.
I didn’t do a detailed study of the group’s politics, but I did act consistent with my impressions. I believe the Constitution’s freedom of assembly, and that’s a group I chose not to assemble with. The fact that someone with roots in the radical left of the 1970s was elected an officer of AERA was hardly a great surprise to me.
Had I been an AERA member, as an adherent of left, center, or right politics, and had the Weatherman intended to kill innocent people, but through poor planning or otherwise managed to kill no one, I could not vote for Bill Ayers. Nor could I have voted for him if the Weatherman had accidentally killed people and Ayers remained unrepentant for his actions. Had I somehow decided to join despite with my pro-market views, I would not have voted for Ayers under any circumstances because of his leftist educational philosophy. My guess is I would have abstained from many votes – which is why I didn’t join in the first place.
October 7th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
The claim that the Weather Underground did not practice indiscriminate terror is a matter of semantics. They defined everyone they were going to bomb as a “combatant,” and they certainly cannot claim to have had no intent to injure anyone.
Bill Ayers friends died in an explosion while they were making an anti-personnel bomb to attack a dance at Fort Dix,
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-ayers-weatherman-terrorist-attack-as-it-might-have-happened/
See also this attempt to murder a family because the Weathermen didn’t like the father:
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0430jm.html
October 10th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
I’m afraid I will be forever mystified as to why, when Ayers takes actual pride in his terror activities of yesteryear, it’s incorrect to call him a terrorist. But okay fine. I’ll do as you do. I’ll call him an “unrepentant bomber”, too. (Gee, that just sounds so much less offensive, doesn’t it?) Oh, but wait a minute…I agree with you even further. I don’t think an “unrepentant bomber” should be embraced by the education community anymore than a “terrorist” should.
October 11th, 2008 at 11:52 am
“I didn’t call Bill Ayers a terrorist because I disagree with him, but because he blew stuff up to forward his political views.”
Many don’t know that the right to bear arms was placed in the constitution to protect the American people from the American government. Our forefathers knew that human beings lean toward corruption and self interest. The idea behind the right to bear arms was that the citizenry would have the same weapons as the military. So, in the event that government leaders put their own political agenda ahead of the will of the people, it would be the patriotic duty of the American citizens to rise up and, through force of arms, overtake the corrupt government and restore democracy. Our forefathers never comprehended that the military would one day have the kind of weapons that could not be put in the hands of ordinary citizens and in which the citizens could not possibly stand up against.
During the 60’s the overwhelming majority of American citizens were against U.S. military presence in Vietnam. The peaceful protests of hundreds of thousands of Americans fell on deaf ears. The U.S. government’s foreign policy had become fascist in nature since any fool can understand that promoting democracy at the point of a gun is just thinly veiled tyranny.
Therefore, I would ask you to consider that Ayers did not blow stuff up to forward his political views. Bill Ayers was trying to fulfill his patriotic duty as it is outlined in the constitution. Calling Bill Ayers a terrorist is much more than just McCarthyism, it’s unpatriotic and displays a sort of blind nationalism very much like that which rallied the German citizens behind Hitler. There were many Germans who were against the Nazi movement and the Jewish holocaust. Those German citizens were labeled anti-national, arrested, imprisoned and/or executed. The vilification of Bill Ayers is no different.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I remember the bombings as a twentysome year old wife and mother, my opinion then and now: Killer and murderer. I also remember the NEWS and the intellectuals (mostly vocal ones) not “liking” the Vietnam War. So it was crammed down our throats to the detriment of the soldiers who mostly were not volunteers, that they as the war were something bad.
Bill Ayers as a college prof scares the crap out of me. What does he teach? And how skewed is his view. I had a liberal teacher in HS that would grade unfairly because of students views different from her liberal ones. (Constant attack on The Bible and all religions.) If someone told me she had joined Bill and Bernadette I would not have been a bit surprised. So excuse me if I don’t want a President who has ANY connection to Billy and Bernie.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:58 am
This is a rather fascinating topic due to the inherent hypocrisies involved because considering your correct definition of terrorism: “he blew stuff up to forward his political views” this axiom exposes an inherent double standard because notables like Nelson Mandela ALSO blew things up to advance a political view – BUT very few people in the West would ever call him a terrorist. Apologists attempt to defend Mandela’s past actions by asserting that he was struggling to “liberate his people” when in fact he was from the Transkei which had self government from 1963 & was independent from 1976 – 1994 & the people who were suffering under the old Apartheid system were living in the townships within South Africa proper. Nonetheless no matter what the true motives for committing acts of violence are one thing is clear: violent acts can never be condoned & justified due to the inherent risks involved to the lives of innocent victims who are caught within the crossfire of the radicals.
The is another odd dimension to this topic because while most are reluctant to admit that Mandela is or was a terrorist – the press were QUICK to condemn the arrested members of the alleged Boeremag as terrorists when to date NO ONE has ever yet to be found guilty of a single crime & the leader of the alleged group was a one Tom Vorster who was exposed as a double agent for the State with ties to the American CIA. The term Boeremag was even exposed as having been coined by the State & the media causing skepticism as to whether such an alleged group ever existed. Coupled with a total lack of hard evidence against the accused: one should be hard pressed to label them as terrorists until conclusive proof can be found.
Piet Rudolph & Nelson Mandela have both bombed places to advance a political agenda of national liberation but only the former is still regarded as a terrorist while the latter is regarded as a Statesman. Rudolph’s bombs never killed anyone but the Church Street Bombing that Mandela signed off on killed 17 people & injured 197 others. This is not to say that both individuals are entirely wrong or right in their cause for liberation BUT just that the DESTRUCTIVE means in which they attempted to achieve it is often given different labels exposing a double standard. The only reason Rudolph is not a statesman is entirely due to the political circumstances which do not favour his just cause of Boer freedom coupled with the small numbers of his people while the other individual received favourable global political support & had enough numbers to cause the world to take note of the cause. Numbers & or global popularity appear to determine whether a violent freedom struggle cause is labeled a terrorist act or not.