Experience and Judgement

Building on yesterday's post about experience, here's an interesting one about judgement.

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0430jm.html

It's about the night some current friends of Obama tried to kill a nine-year old boy.


In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.



This was back in the 70's, so I guess it doesn't matter now. Even though the main perp, Bill Ayers, said this about his activities then:

But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”


Barack Obama has consistently downplayed the influence such people have had on his life. As the writer (the nine-year old boy who managed not be be killed by Ayers and his fellow terrorists) points out, what does it say about Obama's judgement, and his world view, that he sought out such people as friends, supporters, and mentors?

That may be Change He Can Believe In, but is it Change That We Need?