::::::::
Congratulations to president-elect Barack Obama and the Democratic Party for a stunning set of victories. I, for one, hope this means a return to Constitutional government and the rule of law. Whether impeachment can be achieved in these next few weeks, or war crime investigations brought against the Bush Administration, remains to be seen.
Over the past few months, the Republican smear machine has bombarded us with slander against Obama -- he's a Muslim, a socialist, unpatriotic -- what balderdash!
One association that was truly off the mark were his "ties to terrorist" William Ayers of the Weathermen Underground because they were on a board together. Unfortunately, the media failed to explain the truth of the Weathermen and put their story into historical context. Did the Weathermen, as a group, decide that all their peaceful protesting against the Vietnam War and for the civil rights of African-Americans had been for naught and that the only recourse they had left was violence, Yes.
But it must be understood that this was during a very violent period of our history, the murder of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, JFK, Bobby Kennedy and the imprisonment of hundreds of black men on trumped charges for their affiliation with the Black Panthers. Not to mention the brutality against blacks across the South which, thanks to television, was watched in living rooms across the country by a nation largely stunned that those things were happening here.
There was a revolutionary fever across the world with countries seeking self-determination and to keep Western imperialists out. Attempts in Chile and Guatemala were destroyed by the CIA who ousted their freely elected left-leaning presidents. The Weathermen, young, white kids of conscience, saw themselves as part of that larger revolution.
But a very interesting thing happened, almost deus ex machina. After the Chicago Police murdered Fred Hampton, a charismatic Black Panther, the Weathermen Underground decided retaliation had to be meted out. They built a bomb they planned to explode at a NCO's party at Fort Dix. Accidentally, the bomb went off and killed three of their fellow members.
At that point, the group had a majority epiphany: If they killed innocent people, they would be no better than our government which had killed American dissidents and millions of Vietnamese. In their spree of bombing over the next few years, not a single person was killed. They executed their plans with precision.
Moral dilemmas, deciding the greater good or evil, are often difficult to decide. But in this case, it was the Weathermen who were fighting a worse evil and their actions were more just and patriotic than those of our government.
Over these past eight years, many Americans have worried that we were returning to a similar period of government repression. Two years ago, a student at the University of Southern Mississippi asked me if it was time to turn to violence. I said, "No, let's get Democrats in control of Congress first." That initial success put a check on the Bush Administration and led to Tuesday's historic elections. We've weathered the storm and peacefully, through earnest dissent, this time without violence, brought about the end of an error.
