Ayers, Asness: which side to support?

by Smitty (hat tips: Lucianne and Roger Kimball)

  The poor wee Ayers was unable to enter Canada on 18May. He'd asked during a similar January incident "Are we living in some kind of McCarthyist nightmare?"
  It seems we are, Bill, though not your usual Rod Serling-esque Q&A about your preferences when you Party. No, it's more a Kafka-esque running dream where the First Amendment has become notional, as Clifford Asness relates:

...a businessman who ran a manufacturing concern spent a good quarter of an hour railing against Obama's plans to nationalize health care. He had informed himself about the pending legislation in minute detail. He had devoted hours to studying the effects on hospitals and HMOs. He had become utterly convinced that Obama's plans would harm millions.
Well, then, one of his listeners asked, why had the businessman failed to say any of this in public?
The businessman paused, astonished.
"Isn't it obvious?" he replied. "I have an obligation to my shareholders. Keep your head down. Don't speak out. In this climate, that's just being responsible."

  Now, this is a context-free anecdote, and it may be that the writer is buffing up the column.
  What I do know is that the mood of the country is significantly altered. The general case of the blues is not the same as when the Internet bubble burst, post-Clinton. It's not the worry about whether the world was ending on 9/11. It's not just the certainty that the economy is going to stay parked in the toilet for the foreseeable future. No, it's the sobering realization that the worst pre-election fears about the current administration are true, and then some: BHO represents the culmination of a lengthy cultural and academic campaign fomented by the likes of Ayers to put an absolute tool in the Oval Office.
  I remain optimistic, however, that the coming Tea Parties on 04Jul and 12Sep will build momentum, and McDonnell will win the VA gubernatorial race, and the 112th Congress won't suck as much pondwater with Pelosi Galore out of the picture. This administration needs to become the Battle of the Bulge for the collectivists, the time where they threw in everything to the last union, acorn, and unicorn but couldn't quite crush the American spirit.
  If we don't support Asness in every legitimate way, then the Ayers crowd wins the day.