Originally Posted by TSGracchus

My sense is that in both cases it depends on which beliefs one is talking about. There's a lot to admire in both cases. There are also some things not to admire, a vandalistic past in the case of Ayers and some over-the-top rhetoric in the case of Wright. However, if you're looking to him to repudiate everything ever said or done by either man and have nothing to do with them henceforth -- well, I sincerely HOPE you will be disappointed -- although Obama is a politician, so you never know.

You know, some of this comes out of the COINTELPRO operation from the late '60s, in which the radicals of that time were made out to be worse than they really were, and the entire antiwar movement tarred by association with them, to try to discredit the movement. What was done to the Weathermen was a magnification and mischaracterization of a core of violence that, in this case, at least existed; what was done to the Black Panthers or to Malcolm X's movement was even worse, since in that case there was no such core. Let's finally recognize that what the FBI and government agencies did to shape public opinion at that time deserves no respect. The Weathermen committed crimes -- they destroyed government property and (perhaps) recklessly endangered people. That's the core of truth underlying all the lies. Granted that it was illegal and, in my opinion, wrong -- how seriously should we take it, merely because the FBI decided that the label "terrorists" should apply?

Do you believe everything the government tells you?