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• Monday, November 17, 2008 12:07 PM

  Still liberals after all these years

  What's striking, as someone who was there and politically involved and perceptive, is that Ayers' current politics embody the same left liberalism that drove the Weatherman faction of SDS. Then it was the delusory politics of despair; now it's the "yes we can" politics of delusion. In those days, it arose from their opposition to the U.S. war in Indochina; today it's the "hope" that Obama will be successful at refurbishing the behavior of the same imperialism, even though for him this means "refocusing" the current war into Afghanistan. However heroic the Weatherfolks tried to be - they were among those who openly demonstrated for military victory for the DRV/NLF in Vietnam - and how important it was to defend them against government repression, they were still just New Leftists with a kick.

  Fact checking: interview Walter Shapiro (as well as one of the chosen letter writers) thinks Nixon was reacting to - egged on - by Weatherman and their like. Excuse me, but the Weatherman faction of SDS didn't emerge as a separate organization until the latter half of 1969, and didn't really go underground until the end of 1969 into 1970. Nixon took office in January 1969 as a Republican in the party that had nominated conservative Barry Goldwater four years earlier. His and Kissinger's war strategy, including the bombing campaign, were well under way by the time Ayers and company turned adventurist. The only help Nixon got - and needed - from (most of) the left - especially the larger Communist and Socialist Workers Parties - was keeping the anti-war movement both at home and among soldiers within Democratic Party politics.

  —romath Read romath's other letters
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