Michael Lerner on Armed Revolution

Plaut's Complaint writes: "Lerner… was basically proclaimed a `Rabbi' by three other people, each of whom might or might not have been Jewish himself, who put their hands on Mikey's head and said, `Domini Domini youse a rabbi.'"

Ha ha! That's funny. Tikkun has most definitely emerged as a major node in the "hippy-dippy" network of which Plaut's Complaint makes sport. However, while we're laughing, let us not forget that the good "Rabbi" Michael Lerner has a deadly serious side. In his autobiography Radical Son, David Horowitz writes (pages 176-178):

"Events in the spring of 1968 were moving in a direction that seemed to lend credence to the radical apocalypse. … [T]he new SDS president Bernardine Dohrn, announced on taking office that she was a `revolutionary Communist… Weatherman and the Panthers were the vanguards of the hour. Even [Tom] Hayden… was writing articles in the Berkeley Barb advocating guerrilla warfare and the creation of `liberated zones' in American cities through armed force… He had created a Berkeley Liberation School with his own `Minister of Defense' who trained its students in the use of weapons, including explosives. … `Fascism is coming,' he announced on a visit to the Ramparts offices. `By the end of the year they're going to put us all in jail.' About this time, Michael Lerner approached me with the idea that I should buy a gun. `Michael,' I said in disbelief, `this is no revolutionary situation. The people aren't with us. You couldn't even describe a scenario in which there was a shoot-out with the police that we could win.' Hardly pausing, he said, `Then you have to buy a handgun and give it to someone else for use in assassinations.'"

The call to arms became a fixture of New Left propaganda in 1968. In their 1989 book Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the '60s, Peter Collier and David Horowitz quote Weatherman terrorist leader Bill Ayers, prepping his followers for the violent provocations planned for the upcoming Democratic Convention in Chicago. Collier and Horowitz write (on page 88):

"`We're not going to urge anyone to bring guns to Chicago,' Billy Ayers told one group. `We're not urging anyone to shoot from a crowd. But we're also going to make it clear that when a pig gets iced, that's a good thing, and that everyone who considers himself a revolutionary should be armed, should own a gun, should have a gun in his home.'"

Professor William C. Ayers now teaches education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His wife, former Weatherman leader Bernardine Dohrn, holds a professorship at Northwestern University Law School.