"It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows..."

In support of be being a friend to Bill Ayres-

All things, people, ideas and actions are only truly known "in context". If we were to go back in a time machine to the late 1960s and take a look around, we'd see very strange things. We'd see a divided America, one hopelessly clinging to the past in a reactionary way, one that saw the domino-like spread of Communism in southeast Asia and had to act against it. Act against it despite the costs in blood and treasure. That plain vanilla America listened to Lawrence Welk and wouldn't think twice about going down the American Legion hall for a beer and to listen to tall tales of fishing and hunting trips and worse. Then there was that 'other' America, they grew their hair long because they wanted to, had freedom to, and it pissed off the 'squares' that they felt were repressing them. They avoided the draft and the war and the trappings of a stagnant soulless middle class existence with a Cadillac, a good stable job and 2.5 children. The Days of Rage and the Summer of Love and Woodstock Nation and all the cliches and bromides live on and the evidence is in all the freedom we have personally, kids with mohawk haircuts, tattoos and piercings... the Sixties happened and that genie will never be put back into the bottle of history. The invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State Massacre and the Hard Hat Riots in NYC were all real. Leftist underground groups did make explosives and shout "Off the pigs!" Dissent was patriotic and so was supporting the ground soldiers in the struggle. The very language of revolution assumes a sophisticated mind and an enlightened soul as it makes little sense to the simple-minded and the brain-washed. The war crimes we committed as a nation 'over there' have been well documented, what was less well documented were the war crimes committed here against our own people. When Black Panthers were shot dead in their homes by police in Detroit, when protestors were clubbed in Chicago in `68, when Peter Fonda as Captain America was killed in 'Easy Rider', when blacks were bitten by police dogs because they wanted to be treated like human beings, when... OK, the war was here too and there were political prisoners and real dead victims. People like Bill Ayres have become a cartoon character during this election season. The Culture War rages on and a new generation is being influenced by the rhetoric and emotional arguments for their hearts and minds... some of us have the courage and moral compass to know Right from Wrong and the rest play video games where there is a skewed sense of justice and who the 'hero' is. (to be continued)