The real Bill Ayers
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In the past few weeks the Republican presidential ticket has almost succeeded in making the name of William Ayers a synonym for terrorism. This 1960s activist against the Vietnam War, we are told, is an unrepentant bomber whose long-ago Chicago association with Barack Obama on several community committees makes the Democratic candidate unfit to be president.
This is not the Bill Ayers the two of us have cherished for 20 years as a colleague, an education reformer, a dedicated professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an advocate for vulnerable children.
Dr. William Ayers, now 63, lives a quiet life of active dedication to educational reform and peacemaking, writing books that teach others to give voice to those who have been silenced. His 2001 book "Fugitive Days" reads as a narrative of atonement for his time in the Weather Underground. We wonder what has happened to Republicans' enthusiasm for redemption?
President Bush, when asked about reports of his drug use, alcoholic binges and other 1960s behavior, routinely responds, "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible." Republicans forgave his "youthful indiscretions" just as they have shrugged off reports of John McCain's gambling habit and his callous adultery and dumping of his first wife after she was disabled in a car accident.
These conflicting reactions show how difficult it has been for the country to come to terms with the 1960s. It was, to steal a phrase, the best and worst of times.
It was the worst because a generation of Americans had to redefine what it meant to be at war. Our fathers bequeathed us heroic memories of their World War II service, equal parts honor and pride, grief and horror, in which the evil they defeated had assaulted the essence of what it meant to be human. We grew up believing that the forces of evil would always crumble in the light of our righteousness. In Vietnam, however, we learned we were not the righteous ones but the aggressors, and that the nation our fathers had taught us to revere was on the wrong side in a civil war of liberation.
But the '60s were also the best of times, because we believed we could change the course of events, stop the killing and redeem the nation we loved. We knew that true patriots stand strong in the face of injustice, like Thomas Jefferson, Sojourner Truth and Martin Luther King Jr. We believed it was a moral imperative to struggle to end the war. Most of us chose nonviolent methods. Bill Ayers was among those who succumbed to despair about the possibility that those methods would work swiftly enough to stop America's spiral into self-destructive global aggression.
In 2001, when Mr. Ayers said we did not do enough in those days, he explained in a letter to The New York Times that he meant we Americans did not do enough to stop the war. John McCain and Sarah Palin have twisted his words to insist, wrongly, that he is unrepentant. They are stirring the country's worst tendencies toward vigilante nativism and unreasoning fear.
Redemption is more than forgiving and forgetting. It is a commitment to atone for whatever personal traits keep us from becoming better than we are, through dedication to a different and more constructive path. A life without that possibility would be one of despair, for each of us is flawed.
William Ayers' life over the past 40 years has been one of leadership, creativity and service that any American would be proud to have. In discounting that life, John McCain is promoting an image of the American people as a nation that has rejected the possibility of redemption, one that says we are nothing but echoes of our pasts. His vision is of a people who cannot forgive each other and cannot forgive themselves.
Mr. McCain and his surrogates have stopped listening to us ordinary Americans. He is fundamentally a good man but he has lost his way. We would like to assure him, and those who think as he does, that if we seem cynical, it is because our leaders consistently underestimate our capacity for compassion and forgiveness and our willingness to embrace the possibility of change.
Mr. McCain can still redeem himself by denouncing these attacks on Mr. Ayers. If the choice is between the best and worst of times, the nation must choose its best.
First Published October 23, 2008 12:00 am
