One word: devastating.
Intellectual honesty compels me to make one point in Ayers’s defense: his behavior this year – staying out of the limelight until after the election was over – was exactly as it should have been. At least, unlike the Rev. Mr. Wright, Ayers was willing to forgo the limelight when taking it might have had bad political consequences.
But everything Hilzoy says is still true. The Weather Geeks were no more “non-violent” than the abortion–clinic bombers; what they did was stupidly narcissistic even when it wasn’t shockingly immoral; and the rehabilitation of Ayers and Dohrn just proves that they were right the first time about “class privilege,” the way the failures of the Bush Maladministration prove that they were right the first time about the risks of shoddy public management.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman