A White House Comfortable with Genocide?

You cannot expect to hold a person responsible all the actions and/or beliefs of their associates, but it is certainly fair to wonder about their judgment if the actions or beliefs are both particularly heinous and part of their core character.

That was part of the reason so many people were concerned about President Barack Obama's long-running association with terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, a relationship that may have extended as far back as the 1980s, when Dohrn, Ayers, and Obama were part of the same community in Manhattan (Obama was a student at Columbia and beginning to explore political activism at the time Ayer's was at Bank Street College of Education. Bernadine Dohrn? She was sent to prison for a short time for refusing to cooperate with authorities and tell them what she knew about the 1981 Brinks armored car robbery across the Hudson River in Rockland County that left two police officers and a security guard dead).

Ayers and Obama are better known for their collaboration on multiple projects in Chicago, including the Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama's first an only executive experience prior to winning the White House (and a verified failure), and for Ayers and Dohrn hosting Obama's very first political fundraiser in their home.

Through all of their relationship, Ayers and Dohrn were minor celebrities for their terrorism within the welcoming confines of Hyde Park's liberal elite. Obama knew Ayers and Dohrn were leaders of a terrorist group. He knew they had literally declared war against the United States. And he more than likely knew that Ayers, Dohrn, and the other terrorist leaders of the Weather Underground had dreams that included the imposition of communism on the United States, and the genocide of 25 million Americans in concentration camps.

It turns out Ayers and Dohrn aren't the only associates of Barack Obama comfortable with genocide. We can also include one of his closest four advisers, Anita Dunn. Victor David Hanson is among those outraged over Dunn's admiration of the greatest ">mass killer in human history:

I am not a big fan of saying that officials should resign for stupid remarks. But interim White House communications director Anita Dunn's praise of Mao Zedong as a "political philosopher" is so unhinged and morally repugnant, that she should hang it up, pronto.

Mao killed anywhere from 50 million to 70 million innocents in the initial cleansing of Nationalists, the scouring of the countryside, the failed Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Tibet, and the internal Chinese gulag. Dunn's praise of a genocidal monster was no inadvertent slip: She was reading from a written text and went into great detail to give the full context of the remark. Moreover, her comments were not some student outburst from 30 years ago; they were delivered on June 5, 2009. Her praise of Mao's insight and courage in defeating the Nationalists was offered long after the full extent of Mao's mass-murdering had been well documented. Mao killed more people than any other single mass killer in the history of civilization.

Once again, someone close to the President is found to be an admirer of political genocide. In that context, perhaps the Oath Keepers aren't so radical after all... at least as it comes to being willing to resist unlawful orders.