Day in and day out I go about my business, I hang out with my kids and my grandchildren, take care of the elders, I go to work, I teach and I write, I organize and I participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful movement for peace and social justice; now and then (and unpredictably) I appear in the newspapers or on TV with a reference to my book Fugitive Days, a memoir of the revolutionary action and militant resistance to the Viet Nam War—the years of miracle and wonder—and some fantastic assertions about what I did, what I said, and what I believe. The other night, for example, I heard Sean Hannity tell Senator John McCain that I was an unrepentant terrorist who had written an article on September 11, 2001 extolling bombings against the U.S., and even advocating more terrorist bombs. Senator McCain couldn’t believe it, and neither could I.
My e-mail and my voice-mail filled up with hate, as happens, mostly men with too much time on their hands I imagined, all of them venting and sweating and breathing heavily, a few threats—“Watch out!”; “You deserve to be shot”; and from satan@hell.com, “I’m coming to get you and when I do, I’ll waterboard you”—all of it wildly uninformed. I’ve written a lot about the Viet Nam period, about politics, about schools and social justice, and I read and speak about all of it. I encourage people to argue, to agree or disagree, to discuss and struggle, to engage in conversation. I believe deeply in the pedagogical possibilities of dialogue—of listening with the possibility of being changed, and of speaking with the possibility of being heard—and I believe in revitalizing the public square, resisting the eclipse of the public and expanding the public space, searching for a more robust and participatory democracy. Talking to one another can help.
So in that spirit here is another attempt at clarity:
1. Regrets. I’m often quoted saying that I have “no regrets.” This is not true. For anyone paying attention—and I try to stay wide-awake to the world around me all/ways—life brings misgivings, doubts, uncertainty, loss, regret. I’m sometimes asked if I regret anything I did to oppose the war in Viet Nam, and I say “no, I don’t regret anything I did to try to stop the slaughter of millions of human beings by my own government.” Sometimes I add, “I don’t think I did enough.” This is then elided: he has no regrets for setting bombs and thinks there should be more bombings.
The illegal, murderous, imperial war against Viet Nam was a catastrophe for the Vietnamese, a disaster for Americans, and a world tragedy. Many of us understood this, and many tried to stop the war. Those of us who tried recognize that our efforts were inadequate: the war dragged on for a decade, thousands were slaughtered every week, and we couldn’t stop it. In the end the U.S. military was defeated and the war ended, but we surely didn’t do enough.
2. Terror. Terrorism—according to both official U.S. policy and the U.N.—is the use or threat of random violence to intimidate, frighten, or coerce a population toward some political end. This means, of course, that terrorism is not the exclusive province of a cult, a religious sect, or a group of fanatics. It can be any of these, but it can also be—and often is—executed by governments and states. A bombing in a café in Israel is terrorism, and an Israeli assault on a neighborhood in Gaza is terrorism; the September 11 attacks were acts of terrorism, and the U.S. bombings in Viet Nam for a decade were acts of terrorism. Terrorism is never justifiable, even in a just cause—the Union fight in the 1860’s was just, for example, but Shernan’s March to the Sea was indefensible terror. I’ve never advocated terrorism, never participated in it, never defended it. The U.S. government, by contrast, does it routinely and defends the use of it in its own cause consistently.
3. Imperialism. I’m against it, and if Sean Hannity and others were honest, this is the ground they would fight me on. Capitalism played its role historically and is exhausted as a force for progress: built on exploitation, theft, conquest, war, and racism, capitalism and imperialism must be defeated and a world revolution—a revolution against war and racism and materialism, a revolution based on human solidarity and love, cooperation and the common good—must win.
We begin by releasing our most hopeful dreams and our most radical imaginations: a better world is both possible and necessary. We need to bring our imaginations together and forge an unbreakable human alliance. We need to unite to transform and save ourselves as we fight to change the world and save humanity.
Bill Ayers 
Too many people view the common good with closed eyes, only perceiving those that are like themselves. To people like Sean Hannity, the world is a great place because the people that he talks to and the people that he befriends are the people in power. If we want a world that condones racism and excepts institutionalized inequality, people can continue to listen and accept his words without a single thought.
Furthermore, too many people view government to encompass the entirety of a society’s diversity and viewpoints. We see all Palestinians represented by Fatah, all Chinese by communism, and all American’s by George Bush. The reality could not be further from these representations. The Iraqi government established by the US represents only a minority of the people, who were willing to cooperate with Bush and his imperialism; and yet, we see it as encompassing all that Iraq has to offer. As human beings we are all connected in so many more ways than government can make us believe. We all live the human experience and that ties us together. All people need to move past the power structures and begin to see each other as equals, all struggling towards the same human goals.
Go get a real job…in China. Friggin communist is all you are……CAPITOLISM RULES!
What you did was commit acts of terrorism. How can you say you didn’t. You admitted it.
And you make your money here in the US and take advantage of our capitalist society. You have become everything you said you despised. You are a hypocrite and a disgrace.
Didn’t the world you want to see exist at one point in Russia, and didn’t it fail miserably because people…. are people? The politicians and the elite got all the good stuff, and the workers were ground into the dirt. You seem to think that the same thing happens in a capitalist society – but at least workers in a capitalist society can actually make money and have good lives… always assuming they get a good education, learn how to speak English, and are not afraid of becoming the middle class instead of living off government hand-outs. And always assuming the money they earned isn’t ripped out of their hands by liberals who want to give it to other people who didn’t work to earn it.
Bill Ayres is a terrorists antiamerican Pice of shit who should not be alive today because of his participation in the terrorists bombings of american government buildings!
That’s very sweet and cuddly- not realistic or practical, though.
“If you reward excellence, people will behave excellently”-
bill ayers you filthy, disgusting,socialist hippy. where do you get off pointing fingers at
great americans like sean hannity after the crap you’ve done in the past. you should
be making amends for the traiterous, leftist, communist things you’ve done not further-
ing a hippy commune agenda that will never hold up in the real world. every last thought that spews out of the left side of your mouth is nothing more than communism
with a little dose of socialism thrown in for good measure.
many of us in the real world defy your agenda and your pathetic attempt at converting
the masses to socialist ideas that will absolutely never work. you insist on throwing
around words like “peace” and “love” when you don’t have a clue what they mean.
the world is not perfect, bill, and it never will be but people like you seem to think that
they can push socialist and communist agendas that have failed in practically every
country in the world. look at russia ,china and many other countries that have incorp-
arated “capitalism” into their economies; their thriving bill; try promoting something
that works you pathetic excuse for a terrorist. you think your in the right but your far
from it my little “marxist”hippy. traditionalist’s and conservative’s alike will never
change you and your ilk’s way of thinking and really it doesn’t even matter but under-
stand this that our way of thinking will win out in the end.
Newsflash for Bill Ayers: Capitalism is what free people do, naturally, when left alone to pursue their happiness. It is not an ideology dreamt up by some malcontent intellectual sitting in a library (that would be Marxism). Capitalism doesn’t require a gun to be held to one’s head to work, like communism does. It is simply a name for FREE markets, engaged in by FREE people. This is why all the predictions of the death of capitalism remain premature and foolish.
You, Bill Ayers, are an aging hippie Che Guevera wannabe whose past actions are reprehensible. I’m not interested in your regrets or your tepid psuedo apologies, because what you did, and what you still represent, is EVIL.
Hey, Mr. Ayers, Sean Hannity has personally invited you on his radio show and Hannity/Colmes for a full hour so you can defend yourself to the American people who have many questions about your pure hatred of America. I would suggest u accept his offer.
We have just got to figure out ways where we can fight without hatred, without bombs, without killing the human spirit. I do think competition is a basic thread that breads violence. How can the competitive nature be transformed into one that is cooperative, not cooperation as a means to an end but as a genuine interest in the betterment of the human condition? Life is not only a stage, its a game where winner takes all. I think we have to understand that winners create losers. Until we find this balance between the two…the pendulum will continue to swerve.