Ayers Speaks: An Exercise In Evasion

By Joseph Kellard


Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground terrorist who was turned into a central figure in Obama’s bid for the presidency, decide to keep quite, that is, to speak no evil, during the campaign. Now that Obama, who once wrote a positive blurb for one of his books, is headed to the White House, Ayers has spoken: he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, published on Friday, Dec. 5. I’m posting the link to it here because it’s a good example of an exercise in evasion. As an example, I give you this paragraph:

"The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war."

http://tinyurl.com/5svp2s

Mind you, the Times once wrote a profile piece on Ayers entitled “No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives.” Here’s the opening paragraph from that article:

“‘I don't regret setting bombs,’ Bill Ayers said. ‘I feel we didn't do enough.’ Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago. The long curly locks in his Wanted poster are shorn, though he wears earrings. He still has tattooed on his neck the rainbow-and-lightning Weathermen logo that appeared on letters taking responsibility for bombings. And he still has the ebullient, ingratiating manner, the apparently intense interest in other people, that made him a charismatic figure in the radical student movement.”

I find it eerie that this article was published on September 11, 2001. It’s quite possible that on that morning some soon-to-be murder victims -- who boarded a few airplanes that radical Muslims would hijack and crash into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon -- had that edition of the Times in hand and read Ayers’ words: “I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.”

http://tinyurl.com/5jhnl2

No doubt, the likes of Ayers and his America-hating leftist-anarchist comrades, indirectly, helped pave the way for their horrific deaths on 9/11.

Consider Obama's Pending Cynics

By Joseph Kellard


Over at the Harry Binswanger List, a subscriber wrote the following about the presidential election:

“What's really depressing is that 70% of newly registered voters (if I heard Fox News correctly) voted for Obama. Welcome to the future.”

While this is discouraging news, we must project where these new, mostly younger voters will be after Obama's four-year term. When the reality of the president-elect's policies smack them across the face -- whether it's when his spinelessness toward our enemies emboldens them to slaughter more Americans, or when his socialist policies further sickens our ill economy, or when he starts inviting Rev. Jeremiah Wright-types to the White House to talk slave reparations, or when he's unable to deliver on his vague and impossible promises on a host of issues from the environment to health care --I'm sure many of them will, eventually, become disillusioned by and cynical of their political Messiah.

These teen and 20-something voters may come to realize, even if not explicitly, that what Obama originally offered was not actual "change," but rather the same tired, failed Leftist policies that their teachers and professors never taught them about in their economics and history classes. The worst among them, of course, will stick by Obama, evading reality to defend and rationalize even his most obvious disasters -- encouraged, in part, by a still worshiping mainstream media.

But this time around, as against the Carter and Clinton years, these cynics will have a new, potent force to reckon with: an increasing number of Objectivist activists. Following the lead of the Ayn Rand Institute and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, we will offer them a realistic alternative before they give up and start attending Sunday Mass, as Obama did and found Rev. Wright instead of Ayn Rand.

After writing the above, I read this New York Times article that seems to buttress this post: "With Victory in Hand, Obama Aides Say Task Now Is to Temper High Expectations”:

http://tinyurl.com/59sahu

"President-elect Barack Obama has begun an effort to tamp down what his aides fear are unusually high expectations among his supporters, and will remind Americans regularly throughout the transition that the nation's challenges are substantial and will take time to address."


Joseph Kellard is a journalist and commentator living in New York. Contact him at Theainet1@optonline.net.

Greenspan Abandoned Objectivism Long Ago

Of course, the financial mess is largely being blamed on capitalism, and given that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted that his ideology was wrong, Ayn Rand’s detractors are falling all over themselves to point fingers at her philosophy of Objectivism. Greenspan once, long ago, adhered to that philosophy, but abandoned it for sure once he became the head of the Fed. These facts are what Miss Rand’s detractors want to ignore so that they can smear her ideas. So whenever I see their evasions pop up in some article or opinion piece, I’ve been answering them with this stock comment:



To Whom It Concerns:

The economic meltdown in the U.S. was essentially caused by government intervention and regulations, not their lack thereof. For many years now, banking, housing and insurance have been the most regulated areas of the economy.

As to Mr. Greenspan, the philosophy he put into practice is the opposite of capitalism. Back in the 1960s, Ayn Rand taught him why capitalism requires that there be a wall of separation between economics and state, and why the Federal Reserve, as the state’s central economic planner, must be abolished. Yet Greenspan went on to become the Fed's leader and champion -- keeping interest rates artificially low and manipulating the money supply. So he long ago rejected Miss Rand's philosophy of Objectivism -- and now he and all of us are paying the price for it.

JOSEPH KELLARD
East Meadow, NY

Peikoff On The Election

By Joseph Kellard

Dr. Leonard Peikoff offers his brief thoughts on the presidential race on his Oct. 20 podcast:

http://tinyurl.com/5ekg6x

Here's how Dr. Peikoff starts:

"I have this podcast to discuss ideas, not to choose among the lowest subhumans. I wouldn't dream of voting in this election, not for either side."

Here's how he sums up:

"Personally, I think McCain comes across as a tired moron, Obama as a lying phony, Bidden as an enjoyably hilarious windbag, and Sarah Palin as an opportunist struggling to learn how to become a moron, a phony and a windbag."

McCain's War Policy is a Dud

McCain’s War Policy is a Dud

By Joseph Kellard


So John McCain may "bomb" Iran. The important questions are
what should he bomb and to what extent.

A committed altruist-pragmatist Republican, McCain would likely
just compromisingly target Iran's nuclear facilities, thus leaving the
ruling theocrats unscathed to rebuild or import their nukes and
capabilities to strike us another day.

But even if McCain wiped out that whole lot of theocrats, they'd be
replaced by their ideological peers. The theocrats pull the strings on
everything in Iran, from how women must dress in public to the
thugs that have taken hostage, terrorized and murdered Americans
for nearly three decades. Supposedly most young Iranians are more
secular, pro-American and want "democracy," but how long must
we wait for them to overthrow their Islamic regime? They've done
little to even weaken it, and I'm suspicious about just how
committed they are to freedom. That the theocrats remain in power
tells me that they still have a lot of support.

So an effective bombing campaign would not only wipe out Iran's
theocrats, but also all their major mosques--especially those where
congregants chant "Death to America"--and any major religious
schools, as well as their nuclear facilities and military complexes.

If the Iranians dared to rebuild another Koran-based government,
our leaders must tell them they will suffer similar consequences.

I can dream, can't I?

Meanwhile, Obama wants to have a "dialogue" with the Iranian
theocrats. So, right now, about the best we can expect is that the
theocrats' own irrationality will do them in. But the timetable for
such a collapse is really impossible to predict, particularly when
you consider the endless propping up Iran receives from the
American Left, our appeasing, so-called European allies and our
enemies in Russia, China and North Korea.

Ultimately, McCain's limited bombing campaign would amount to
little if anything, just as Bush's "surge" is nothing more than a push
for "representative government" so that Iraqis can vote themselves
into some form of statism, as the Taliban-Al Qaeda regroup again in
Afghanistan-Pakistan and Iran contracts out to have others do its
dirty terrorist work.

Our terrible political choices are part of the suffering we continue to
endure due to years of pragmatic foreign policy, and we're assured
to suffer further deadly consequences under Obama or McCain.
This won't change much until our leaders start acting on what the
Yaron Brook- and John Lewis-influenced policy makers in America
propose: all out war!


Joseph Kellard is a journalist and commentator living in New York. Contact him at Theainet1@optonline.net.

Conspiracy Theorists: The "9/11 Truthers"

By Joseph Kellard


The City Journal has an article on its website, “A Conspiracy of Crackpots,” by John Avlon, regarding the so-called “9/11 Truthers.”


http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0910ja.html


I sent the following post in response to the article:

Conspiracy theorists like the so-called 9/11 Truthers are fundamentally akin to the radical Islamics who, yes, actually attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Islamic 9/11 terrorists held radically to the essence of Islam (and religion as such): faith, that is, the suspension of reason to believe in something that otherwise has no evidence to tie it to reality. The Islamics have faith in the dogmas of their religion, which commands them to go slay non-believers, simply because they reject their particular faith.

Faith, too, explains the essence of the “Truthers.” The “Truthers” enemy is the actual truth, since it doesn’t conform to their particular faith: that America is an evil nation that deserved what it got (from the Islamics) on 9/11. But they try to mask this hatred by, figuratively speaking, faithfully flying planes into the facts, that is, by dreaming up conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact, that is, America itself perpetrated 9/11, so that it’s war-mongering leaders could go to war in the Middle East. The reality they evade is that the Islamics in the Mid-East, most particularly the Iranian theocrats, have been waging war on America for decades before 9/11.

Conspiracy theorists such as the “Truthers” are fundamentally at war with reality.

They Deserve Every Penny

By Joseph Kellard

Fellow Objectivist Sylvia Bokor and I had letters published in the Boston Globe in response to another letter-writer who challenged Ayn Rand fans to justify CEO pay. Here's the relevant part of his letter:

"The average chief executive makes 344 times as much as the average worker in major US corporations … I challenge any 'free'-market apologists, clutching their Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman books, to come up with a reasonable explanation for this execrable distribution of wealth."

http://tinyurl.com/5mheoc


Here's how our letters appeared:

They deserve every penny

September 2, 2008

RE BRYAN Tucker's challenge to Ayn Rand fans ("Too little outrage over pay inequity," Letters, Aug. 28): There's no need to apologize for free markets. But because of considerable miseducation, there is a need to explain them. Tucker's use of the phrase "execrable distribution of wealth" indicates his mistaken Marxist-Keynesian views. Properly, wealth should not be "distributed." It should be earned. Chief executives do that. They earn a lot of money because they have a great deal more responsibility than other employees do. Most important, they create jobs, expand production, and thereby raise the standard of living.

Politicians' promises to "create" jobs are self-aggrandizement. Politicians don't create jobs. CEOs do. That's why they're highly paid.

SYLVIA BOKOR, Albuquerque


CEOS MAKE much more money than the "average" worker because they are exceptional. In short, they are the brains behind a corporation, that is, the Atlases on whose shoulders the entire operation of the corporation fundamentally depends.

JOSEPH KELLARD, East Meadow, N.Y.

http://tinyurl.com/5mheocc