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Ayers and Obama: Different Men, The Same Ideas

“Education is the motor-force of revolution.” - William Ayers

The entire internet is ablaze with articles illustrating the relationship between Bill Ayers and Obama. No matter what Obama says Bill Ayers is more than just a neighbor down the street. Anyone who has any ounce of integrity is able to do their own research and probably come to the same conclusion - at least- that most sane people come to: Bill and Obama are closely related in some way.

Now the purpose of this post is not to offer you proof of their relationship - there is already plenty of that out there. What ought to be even more important than whether or not they shared an office, a home or a cabinet, is whether or not they share ideas.

First thing you have to know about the progressive radical movement in the United States of America is that they know that their agenda would not be acceptable to the American people. They know that, if they show their true colors, their true associations, they will be found out.  For example, in 2006 Bill Ayers was not invited by colleagues with whom he worked for years, to a progressive conference on education. They let Ayers know about this by leaving a letter on his desktop:

They said in the body of the letter: we want to position progressive education not as radical, but as familiar and good. Now that just steamed up my ears because if you’re saying you’re a progressive educator… That’s one of the things that’s actually annoyed me for about 40 years of being a progressive educator: the separation of the concept of progressive education from the concept of politics and political change. You can’t separate them…and this is a contradiction, incidentally, that goes all the way back to the beginning of progressive education and really the beginning of the conversations about the relationship between school and society. But John Dewey was one of the brilliant, brilliant writers about what democratic education would look like and was himself an independent socialist. But he never resolved a central contradiction in our work, the contradiction between trying to change the school and being embedded in society that has the exact opposite values culturally and politically and socially from the values you’re trying to build in a classroom. This contradiction is something progressive educators should address, not dodge. So this is what got me going. That’s a short version. - Revolution, Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, 2006

The one thing that actually annoys him, may not annoy him any longer. Perhaps the solution to that annoyance is Barack Hussein Obama. Just perhaps. In any case, Obama also knows, like a good progressive, to keep his progressive ties in the closet.

 

Ayers the Poet

So much of what’s wrong in our schools today is simply the ho-hum of common sense and the hum-drum of tradition tooling along mindlessly like a wind-up toy off its leash” - Ayers

If you read Ayers’ writings, they read like poetry. Not great poetry. Just poetry.  Don’t expect to find much reason in his thought. What he stands for is anti-reason. Anything that will thwart, undermine and destroy “common sense”, which is the basis of civilized life, is fair game to him. He has absolutely no respect for it,which is why he has no regrets about the violence he engaged in back in the 1960s. Of course now he has changed, but he has changed only in that he no longer as of yet plans on detonating bombs. No, he has found something much much worse to destroy, namely, YOUR children.

Ayers’s spectacular second act began when he enrolled at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1984. Then 40, he planned to stay just to get a teaching credential. (He had taught in a “Freedom School” during his pre-underground student radical days.) But he experienced an epiphany in a course taught by Maxine Greene, a leading light of the “critical pedagogy” movement. As Ayers wrote later, he took fire from Greene’s lectures on how the “oppressive hegemony” of the capitalist social order “reproduces” itself through the traditional practice of public schooling—critical pedagogy’s fancy way of saying that the evil corporations exercise thought control through the schools. - Sol Stern

The principles of politics and political life are not the same as those of art and the imagination. Ayers consistently, like a high school teenager, confounds the two because he is, at bottom a megalomaniac who cannot distinguish between his own inner emotional desires and public justice. The entire progressive movement is based on this childish self-centered vision of a world without moral, ethical or national boundaries. His ideas, which often take huge leaps into the ozone layer with no footing or foundation, always appeal to those who are emotionally vulnerable enough and uneducated even more to not comprehend the difference between the possible and the impossible, or between pure rhetoric and truth:

Future teachers signing up for Ayers’s course “On Urban Education” can read these exhortations from the course description on the professor’s website:

“Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression—we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things.”

“We need to look beyond our isolated situations, to define our problems globally. We cannot be child advocates . . . in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine.”

“In a truly just society there would be a greater sharing of the burden, a fairer distribution of material and human resources.”

For another course, titled “Improving Learning Environments,” Ayers proposes that teachers “be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation.” - Sol Stern

Just as much style as the man of hope and struggle himself,  Barack Hussein Obama. Just as much lacking in substance. Even more than enough venom to poison an entire generation. Just for Truth’s sake, I will include something a little more honest from Mr. Ayers:

“Anyone who salutes your ‘youthful idealism’ is a patronizing reactionary. Resist! Don’t grow up! I went to Camp Casey [Cindy Sheehan’s vigil at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas] in August precisely because I’m an agnostic about how and where the rebellion will break out, but I know I want to be there and I know it will break out.” - Bill Ayers, The Ed Schools’ Latest—and Worst—Humbug

ACORN

Progressives pick up all sorts of causes. They feign to speak up for the downtrodden, the poor, the sick, the abandoned. This is mostly because these groups of people are vulnerable and weak enough to easily be taken in by those who pretend to reach out to them. For example, ACORN, a progressively operated community organization encourages their workers to break the law, ignore the rules and engage in bribery and lies for the sake of meeting their quotas. ACORN does not help anyone. It does not help people to go out and get an honest job and provide for the families in this country. It only ensures people that they will continue to be enslaved by the progressive movement
s exaggerated bogey-man, namely, America itself:

Pushed to meet daily quotas and bullied by bosses if they didn’t, Ohio ACORN workers faked voter registrations, signed up people more than once, and even paid off registrants to keep from being fired, its canvassers told The Post.

“Every day, there was pressure on us. Every single day,” said Teshika Elder, a Cleveland single mom of three who worked for ACORN this summer.

“We had meetings every morning where they’d go over your quota; they’d yell at you if you were low,” said Elder, 21. “They’d sit us down and say if you didn’t do better, they’d suspend you. They’d say, ‘Try harder next time,’ [and] if you didn’t get it, you’d be fired.”

Desperate canvassers sometimes resorted to trading cigarettes, cash and food in exchange for registrations, according to Elder and two other former ACORN workers, Jaymes Sanford, 18, and Selvin Cunningham, 23.

Some voters were signed up more than once, and said that worried - or lazy - canvassers sometimes filled out bogus cards.

The three workers were all fired after they and a dozen other canvassers were identified in a Cuyahoga County Election Board probe as having turned in multiple registrations for the same voters.

The board, which estimates it got more than 8,700 suspect cards - with multiple registrations, bad addresses or phony information - from ACORN has turned the matter over to local prosecutors.

“It was just little stuff - a dollar, a cigarette - given to people so that they’d register,” said Sanford, a former team leader.

“People are scared of not making their quotas,” he said. “I didn’t do it, but it’s the way it worked.”

Elder added, “I’ve got no money to give out. I don’t smoke, so I had no cigarettes to offer. But other people did, and the pressure you were under forced you to.”  - New York Post

Community organizing among the urban poor has been an honorable American tradition since Jane Addams’s famous Hull House dramatically uplifted the late-nineteenth-century Chicago slums, but ACORN and Addams are on different planets philosophically. Hull House and its many successors emphasized self-empowerment: the poor, they thought, could take control of their lives and communities through education, hard work, and personal responsibility. Not ACORN. It promotes a 1960s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism, central planning, victimology, and government handouts to the poor. As a result, not only does it harm the poor it claims to serve; it is also a serious threat to the urban future. - Acorn’s Nutty Regime For Cities

And Obama, like Ayers, hides his ties to ACORN because progressives know they must hide.

What if Barack Obama’s most important radical connection has been hiding in plain sight all along? Obama has had an intimate and long-term association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), the largest radical group in America. If I told you Obama had close ties with MoveOn.org or Code Pink, you’d know what I was talking about. Acorn is at least as radical as these better-known groups, arguably more so. Yet because Acorn works locally, in carefully selected urban areas, its national profile is lower. Acorn likes it that way. And so, I’d wager, does Barack Obama. - Stanley Kurtz

I bring up ACORN here to make a point - the rhetoric of victimhood, or victimology is something that Obama employs regularly in his speeches. One hears it in the voices of his supporters.  From the days of Caesar through the days of Hitler to today this very day, victimology has been a prescribed way to mobilize the people against the current establishment. Most progressives, like Ayers, view themselves as being forces of history fighting the good fight against the repressive monsters of the status quo.  This is why Ayers’ wife and accomplice, Bernadine Dohrn, could easily say the following about the Manson murders without any sign of regret either then or now:

“Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!”

 

Ayers the Politician

Ayers is not a politician, but he desperately wants to impact politics and society. Obama is the man who can do this for him or with him, to be more exact.  Ayers’ own history is just too toxic to allow him to, at the moment, seize a government post. This could, however, change under an Obama administration.  In any case, it is no wonder that Obama launched his political career in the home of Mr. Ayers. They are, in fact, one and the same idea, in the form of two men with very different applications.

Let’s look at Barack’s education plan, a plan which will give the government even more power over our lives and our children’s future. Don’t think for a second that the progressive principles and motives for education are not brewing beneath covers of this plan.  Consider just how comprehensive this plan is - consider how much power Obama and his minions will have over the future of this country. Consider if you want America to become a full-fledged socialist -progressive country.

1. Zero-Five Plan
   1. Early Learning Challenge: Early care and educational programs for pregnant women and children from birth to age five to address gaps in services and enhance quality programs that serve all young children.
   2. Early Head Start: Quadruple funding and improve quality; $250 million dedicated funds to create or expand regional training centers.
   3. Voluntary, Universal Pre-School:  Provide funding to accelerate the trend toward voluntary, universal pre-school for all.
   4. Child Care Development Block Grant Program: Increase funding that remained unchanged under the Bush administration.
   5. Child Care Quality: Double resources within the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program to develop quality-rating systems for child care that reflect higher standards and supports for teacher training and professional development, improving student/teacher ratios, providing family support in child care settings, and increasing professional development and teacher training.
   6. Evidence-Based Home Visiting Programs:  Expand programs to all low-income, first-time mothers, assisting approximately 570,000 first time mothers each year.
   7. Presidential Early Learning Council:  Encourage dialogue among programs at federal and state levels, and within the private and nonprofit sectors, to collect and disseminate the most valid and up-to-date research on early learning.

1. Transform the Teaching Profession
   1. Teacher Service Scholarships: Pays for four years of undergraduate teacher education or two years of post-graduate in return for four years of teaching service.
   2. All Schools Accredited: [What will be the impact on home schoolers and charter schools?]
   3. Teacher Residency Program: Obama will supply 30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to what eduspeak calls high-need schools. 
   4. Career Ladder Initiatives:  Expanded teacher mentoring programs will pair experienced teachers with new recruits and provide incentives to give teachers paid common planning time so they can collaborate to share best practic
      es.  These initiatives will provide federal resources to states and districts to help create mentoring programs.  Obama will provide $1 billion in funding to create mentoring programs and reward veteran teachers for becoming mentors.
   5. Reward Teachers: Obama will promote new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay. To be developed with teachers, not imposed on them.
   6. Middle School Intervention Strategies: Provide funding to school districts to invest in interventional strategies in middle schools such as personal academic plans, teaching teams, parent involvement, mentoring, intensive reading and math instruction, and extended learning time.
   7. STEP UP Plan: Addresses achievement gap by supporting summer learning opportunities for disadvantaged children.
   8. Professional Development Schools: Obama will provide $100 million to stimulate teacher education reforms built on school university partnerships.  
   9. State Leadership Academies: Obama will provide funding for academies to enable principals to develop the sophisticated skills they need and provide ongoing financial support.  Obama’s plan will also support research about the effectiveness of various approaches to principal training.

1. Helping At-Risk Children Succeed in School
   1. Additional Learning Time: Obama will create a $200 million grant program for states and district that want to provide additional learning time for students in need.
   2. The Success in the Middle Act: This legislation, sponsored by Obama, would provide federal support to improve the education of middle grades students in low-performing schools.  It requires states to develop a detailed plan to improve student improvement.

1. Redesigned Schools
   1. Reorganization: Obama will support federal efforts to continue to encourage schools to organize themselves for greater success by developing stronger relationships among adults and students, a more engaging curriculum, more adaptive teaching, and more opportunities for teachers to plan and learn together.
   2. Competitive Grants to Help Students Graduate:  Offers grants to existing or proposed public/private partnerships entities that are partnerships or entitles pursuing evidence-based models that work.
   3. Positive Behavior Support:  Obama will promote a more effective and just method of addressing behavioral problems in school.
   4. R&D Programs for Improving Science Education: Obama will double our investment in early education and educational R&D by the end of his first term.  Part of this funding will go toward improving science education.

1. Expanding After-school Opportunities
   1. Expanding 21^st Century Learning Centers Program: Obama will double funding for this main federal support for after-school programs to serve one million more children each year.
   2. [For more, read the Blueprint and linked documents.]  -American Thinker

On Obama’s website, he states that he will create an “army” of teachers. That militant metaphor does not escape me. Nor does it escape Bill Ayers who is still “waiting” for that big revolution to come…