Bill Ayers should avoid “drinking the Kool-aid”

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I just stumbled upon an old American Spectator column of mine that I thought had been lost in the sands of time.

Someone at San Diego State University posted it in an article titled “Drinking the Kool-Aid: A (Partial) 2009 Directory.”

It’s not bad, so I’ve reposted it below:

Bill Ayers Should Avoid “Drinking the Kool-Aid”
by Matthew Vadum, American Spectator, 19 May 2009

Retired terrorist Bill Ayers, a kind of folk hero among today’s left, had a run-in with Washington Times editorial staffer Kerry Picket.

Picket’s encounter with the would-be mass murderer who plotted to bomb a crowded dance hall at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1970, was capturted on video.

The newspaper reported this about the brief interview with the former associate of President Obama:

When questioned by The Washington Times during a lecture on racism, Mr. Ayers went ballistic. “Did you drink the kool-aid over at The Times or are you okay?” he asked. “What I’m saying is … do you actually have a mind of your own?”

Drinking the kool-aid.

That’s an odd choice of words for Ayers. The expression came from the mass murder-suicide carried out by Jim Jones at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978 when Jones forced his congregation to drink poisoned flavored liquid.

Like Ayers, Jones was an America-hating revolutionary Communist. Jones left the U.S. and created what he hoped would be a socialist paradise in the Guyanese jungle. When things went awry, Jones decided it would be better to slaughter his followers than allow them to leave. More than 900 people died.

Jones remained a revolutionary Communist to the end. On an audio recording of the mass murder in progress, he can be heard attempting to reassure his followers: “We didn’t commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.”

Jones used religion to advance Marxism; Ayers uses the academy to advance Marxism.

Two different homicidal activists sharing a common ideal.

Maybe Ayers’s choice of words wasn’t so odd after all.