Monday, April 21, 2008

Obama and Ayers

At first, I found it hard to get worked up about the Obama-Ayers so-called connection. Unlike Obama's relationship with the Rev. Wright, the Obama-Ayers relationship looks like the kind Ronald Reagan described when he accepted support from Orange County John Birchers: They are accepting my agenda, I am not accepting theirs. 

What does astonish me however are the defenses we are beginning to hear from Obama's fellow Chicago academics. Listen to this from Cass Sunstein (a former professor of mine, I should mention):

Ayers is one of numerous people, in the Chicago area, whom Barack Obama has run across. Obama has much closer relationships with numerous conservatives on the University of Chicago faculty, many of whom have given money to Obama's campaign, and many of whom have talked to him at length and been at social occasions with him.

I know for a fact that Obama has actually played basketball with Richard Epstein, a libertarian on the law school faculty who has written some pretty controversial things on property rights and government regulation. I also know that Obama has had a number of conversations with former law school dean Daniel Fischel, a Reagan Republican who has written some pretty controversial things on corporations and government regulation.

Obama himself has equated Ayers' record of treason and violence to the intemperate talk of Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. Now Cass Sunstein goes further still - and compares unrepentant domestic terrorism  to libertarian theorizing! This is the milieu from which Obama comes, and the more the members of that milieu insist on its basic harmlessness and fundamental compatibility with American life, the more worried I get .... 

04/21 11:12 AM