Interesting Interview

Both Monday and Tuesday evenings, Megyn Kelly interviewed Bill Ayers, former member of the Weather Underground.  He has never allowed an interview before.

Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dorhn chose to oppose the war in Vietnam by setting off at least 20 bombs.  His Weather Underground also bombed a police station, killing one policeman and another blast that killed four innocent people.  Plans were being made by the group to bomb a military base dance which surely would have killed any number of servicemen and their dates.  That plan was foiled when three members of the group blew themselves up in a Georgetown townhouse, one of them Ayers' best friend and another his girlfriend at that time.

As I listened to the now 70-year-old Ayers, it occurred to me, especially as Kelly played sound bites and read from Ayers' books, that Ayers and his wife were profoundly immature.  And it would seem they remain so to this day. 

The violence that he unleashed in his plan to overthrow the U.S. government did not bring an end to the Vietnam War.  If anything, it caused a lot of people to dig their heels in.  At least that is my take on it.  What finally changed policy in regards to Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson's decision not to run for a second term,  and Richard Nixon's campaign promise to end the war.  What finally changed policy in regards to Vietnam was that the American PEOPLE were weary of this civil war that we were in the middle of and let those feelings be known.

Martin Luther King showed that progress and change comes much more easily and lastingly with nonviolence.  And so he marched and he spoke all over the South.  We don't celebrate Malcolm X's birthday; we celebrate King's.  And we certainly don't celebrate Ayers' birthday.

Destruction does not stop destruction, or deaths death.

Ayers admitted that he'd like to think that if the situation presented itself, he would still consider bombing.  Wow. 

The Weather Underground's language was one of violence and complete lack of respect.  He brushes off any blame for the violence that actually killed people as being the work of other members of the group.  But he was the leader of the group.  He denies that the coarse and violence language that both he and Dorhn spoke escalated the group's behavior.

Ayers went on to a nice life as a university professor after getting his law degree at age 43.  His wife followed behind him and also got a job as a university professor. 

So the "establishment" that they eschewed for all of those years was the very same one they joined.  They cashed their state university checks and participated in a pension program.  He doesn't see the hypocrisy of it at all.  He can coast either way in a blink of an eye.

He says he doesn't know Barack Obama well at all, that he simply had a reception for him at his house.  He says he wishes he knew him better because he'd like to give him some advice.  The advice:

• Close Gitmo
• Universal health care for all
• Stop the drone flights

These are interesting statements.  So let's take them one by one.  Close Gitmo -- and then what?  Where are the prisoners to be sent?  Or maybe he wants to see them set free?

Universal health care for all -- does he know some magic that would pay for this?  Obamacare is turning out to be a huge mess and a joke, so why would we go a step farther towards socialism?

The drone flights -- I'm not sure how I feel about them but how does he think we should fight terrorism?  So we are to believe that we bomb American buildings as a means to an end, but we just let the terrorists plan and carry out the demise of American citizens?

He doesn't make any sense.  I guess he never did.