Politics Can Make You Rationalize Anything
This is an actual conversation with an unidentified Obama supporter. I am paraphrasing from memory, as honestly as I can recall. I assure you that the last, critical line is a verbatim quote:
Me: So, looks like someone who attended Obama’s coming-out party at Bill Ayers’s home has decided to delete her blog post about it. Her blog post said that Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were launching Obama’s career in their living room.
Unidentified Obama supporter: So what? There’s no proof he knew the extent of Bill Ayers’s activities, and we don’t even know what he did. For all Obama knew, Ayers was just a 1960s radical who hadn’t done anything violent. Was he required to vet some guy who was throwing him a party?
Me: Somehow I think you’d still be making the same argument even if Obama knew everything Ayers had done.
Unidentified Obama supporter: Well, yeah, because Obama wasn’t really that closely associated with Ayers. Anyway, we don’t really know Ayers was a terrorist.
Me: Ayers set bombs. Members of his group were killed constructing a bomb with nails, intended to kill soldiers. The group is suspected of setting a bomb that killed a police officer in San Francisco. His wife refused to cooperate with an investigation into a robbery in New York State that left two police officers dead. She went to jail for refusing to cooperate. Bill Ayers said in September 2001 that he didn’t regret setting bombs and wished he had done more. He and his wife are unrepentant terrorists.
Unidentified Obama supporter: Ayers and Dohrn had a good intent. In the 1960s people were trying to stop the war. He might have done some things that were wrong, but they had a good intent.
Me: You’ve got to be kidding! Charles Manson had a good intent, in his own warped mind. He thought it would help the country to kill some people and start a race war. But he was a killer. And Bill Ayers was, and in spirit still is, a terrorist.
Unidentified Obama supporter: This country was founded by terrorists.
Me:
END