You Are Who You Associate With: Obama Too?

As our kids grew up, we had several conversations with them about what their choice of friends said about them. We gave the "You are who you associate with" talk many times. If they associated with malcontents, troublemakers, drug users, then that's who they would probably become. We told them that people headed for trouble had a tendency to drag people down with them.

However, if they associated with positive, friendly, confident, forward-looking people, that's where they would gravitate. We told our kids that people with positive, friendly, helpful, motivated attitudes had a tendency to help others go in that direction. We asked our kids: What direction do you want your life to go? Will your friends help or hurt you get where you want to go, and who you want to be? I think every parent has had this kind of conversation with their children.

Which brings me to Barack Obama and his choice of two particular friends, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. These two were domestic terrorists in the 1960's and 1970's. These two friends of Obama are unrepentant of their violent actions to this day. Take a look at on excerpt from this article at Powerline Blog:

Last night, in The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 1 I reviewed Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who helped to kick off Obama's first political campaign and with whom Obama's campaign says he has a "friendly" relationship. Ayers and Dohrn were domestic terrorists in the 1960s and 1970s, and they are as radical now as they ever were, as evidenced by their own words. Obama emerged from the far-left fringe of Chicago politics, and his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn, like his relationship with spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright, raises important questions about Obama's own political beliefs.

Obama has defended his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn by saying that Ayers did "reprehensible" things forty years ago, when Obama was eight years old. He says that Ayers and Dohrn are now respectable, mainstream figures in Chicago. But the reality is quite different; they, like Wright, are anything but "mainstream" in their views of America. The audio clips in which Ayers and Dohrn reveal their still-radical views were uncovered by Guy Benson, a recent college graduate who works for radio station WYLL in Chicago.

Powerline has audio clips you can download. (I've linked to three of these clips below). Listen to Ayers and Dohrn themselves describe the following:

Clip 1: "In 1970, the Weather Underground's top leadership was forced to go into hiding after three fellow weathermen accidentally blew themselves up while building an explosive devise in New York City. The bomb was intended to target a military dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. While living in the shadows, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn participated in a series of short films. In this clip, Ayers explains how living underground served as a convenient "base" for his group's destructive plots."

Clip 2. William Ayers Now: - Ayers 2007 rebellion and Mao
Ayers addresses a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) reunion in November 2007. He favorably quotes Chairman Mao's right-hand man while discussing the past and future roles of revolution."

Clip 3. William Ayers Now: Ayers on leftist strategy
Addressing the SDS reunion in 2007, Ayers outlines the Left's strategy for the future, which requires them to "speak in a language that is large, and generous, and encompassing…and then we have to act." (One wonders if a certain Left-blessed presidential candidate with a nice smile and a vague mantra of "change" might fit the bill perfectly.)

There are more clips at Powerline blog. Get over there and listen to them. Make up your own minds. Is it true? Are we truly who we associate with? What does Obama's choice of friends say about who he is as a Presidential candidate? Decide for yourself, and comment here if you wish.