The company we keep

It’s and old tried and true axiom, taught to all of us by our mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, that the company we keep says a lot about us. Take the case of Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama. Stanley Kurtz has reported extensively on the relationship between Obama and William Ayers, a radical domestic terrorist while on an education board in Illinois. (Read Kurtz’s brilliant pieces on National Review:

• “Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown? A cover-up in the making?”;
• “Obama’s Challenge: The campaign speaks to ‘Radicalism’ “; and
• “Founding Brothers: What’s behind Obama’s early rise?”

There is no doubt that Ayers is a Communist. Add Frank Marshall Davis, another mentor, who just happened to be a Communist, as well, and the sundry other radical friends and “mentors,” and you begin to get an interesting, and quite disturbing and frightening, portrait of the man who may be poised to lead America.

I’d like to focus on only one of these: William Ayers. Yesterday, the New York Times published an article written by Scott Shane whitewashing Ayers’s and Obama’s relationship. I blogged about Stanley Kurtz’s response to it here. But putting that post up got me to reading a bit. I found an excellent piece by P. J. Gladnick of NewsBusters, on Ken Burns’s McCain epiphany, where he recommended the documentary that, for the next nine days, I’ll be presenting. This is a documentary series on the domestic terrorist group “The Weather Underground,” in nine parts on YouTube. Why is this relevant today? Ayers, along with his wife, was one of the founders; he remains defiantly unrepentant about his murderous terrorist activities. (As additional nails in the coffin, read this analysis of Ayers relationship with Obama and this piece in The American Thinker.)

Watch the nine-part series and decide for yourself whether a Presidential candidate should have — or should have had — a relationship, regardless of how innocent it may be painted, with someone whose avowed goal was the destruction of this country. Sarah Palin, speaking at rally on Saturday, said this about Obama:

Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country … This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America.

I couldn’t agree more. The past is prologue, ladies and gentlemen, and history can teach us many lessons, if only we want to learn them. So, without further comment, here is Part 1 of The Weather Underground: