Since Bill Ayres has become an issue in the Presidential election, I suppose it is time for poeple of my age and background to speak up. I don't think I ever met the man, although our time as students at the University of Michigan may have overlapped.
He and I came to Ann Arbor from different worlds. We probably shared a certain kind of idealistic anger in the '60s, given our government's contradictory policies and interventions in that era.
The guiding document of that period was the "Port Huron Statement," which was the founding manifesto of Students for a Democratic Society. As far as I know, Tom Hayden was the primary author of that document.
Ayres and his colleagues departed from the blueprint for creating a better society laid out in the Port Huron Statement. They embraced violence that very few of the rest of us ever could have supported.
I accept the fact that he later renounced his error, and became a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago. After all, there is nothing like making mistakes to learn how to move forward and become a positive force for change.
Barack Obama, alas, is far too young to know anything about this ancient history. He is just the latest victim of youthful idealism, as a community organizer in Chicago, serving on a board and utterly clueless as to the pasts of his fellow board members, like Ayers.
You know, when life is long, everything that goes around comes around again. To blame a magnificent candidate for President for falling victim to the cycles of life is despicable. And that is what the McCain campaign has sunk to -- down there in the gutter of gutters.
But beware of this tactic. McCain's past associations are so frightening that not even Sarah Palin could support him. Stay tuned.
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