The Internet Monk 

"the power of opinion, the phenomenon of speech, the impact of truth"

A Webjournal edited by Michael Spencer

Ghosts of the Left

by Michael Spencer

Conservatives value memory, particularly accurate memories of the events that shaped our cultural landscape. The Left prefers to rewrite history into its own ever evolving mythology underlying the quest to build a government vast and bullish enough to impose Utopia on the rest of us. It is particularly rewarding to see the Left forced to occaisonally confront its true history, pedigree and forgotten offspring.

California prosecutors are finally bringing to justice the fugitive members of the ultra-Leftist domestic terrorist gang, the Symbionese Liberation Army. If you weren't born yet, or just can't remember, the SLA was made famous for the kidnapping, torture and brainwashing of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. (Who will testify against them in the new trials.) That episode made the SLA national news, but in California they were known for more mundane criminality: bank robbery, murder, attempted murder, assassination of the Oakland school superintendent and attempted bombings of police. A fun group.

If all this sounds like street gangs or the usual suspects, please be corrected. The SLA was made up of upper class, white, college educated, thoroughly revolutionary, leftist zealots, fresh from enlightenment in the inequities and oppression of American society, courtesy of what passed for education in the sixties. They declared war on America and referred to the ordinary citizen as "pigs." Led by an insane ex-con, the SLA kept residents of California on the edge of their seats in the mid-seventies as they sought to bring about violent revolution. Their media coup was the kidnapping and brainwashing of Hearst, and the finale for most of them was a fiery shoot out on national television.

Several SLA crimes were left unsolved, and now, 27 years later, prosecutors are using new technology to tie known former SLA members to crimes that seemed impossible to resolve. Three former SLA members were recently charged with the murder of Myrna Opsahl, a customer shot in a bank where she was bringing in the offering from church- a bank the SLA picked for a robbery. Someone didn't like the way Myrna looked at them, and they shot her. Now, more than two decades later, SLA fugitives in their mid-fifties are paying up for their youthful adventures as Robin Hoods.

Prominent in this recent round-up is Kathleen Soliah, now known as Sara Jane Olsen. Olsen was arrested in 1999 when she was discovered living the life of an NPR liberal, frequenting Starbucks, taking the kids to soccer in the SUV, reading to the blind, acting in theater productions and teaching English to immigrants. She seemed to have forgotten those two bombs she helped plant under police cars. Convicted and sentenced for that crime, with a full soundtrack of weeping soccer mom buddies for a chorus, Olsen is now going to be charged with a role in the murder of Opsahl. ``I can't believe this,'' friend Kathy Cima said. ``I just hope that (the judge) considers her good work and the fact that she was a very good citizen and a member of the community for so long.'' Whaaa.

Olsen entertained the court with the announcement that though her husband was a physician, she could not afford a lawyer. The public footed the bill to the tune of $200,000. She later posted a million in bail, raised by neighborhood bake sales, and maintained that she was a victim of a court attempting to "try an entire generation for its political beliefs." After initially pleading innocent, Olsen reversed and pleaded guilty after the events of 9-11, saying a fair trial was now impossible because she would be the victim of the nation's reaction to the attacks and the prosecution would label her a domestic terrorist. She wanted all of us to know that she wasn't a full member of the SLA, but only a close friend. Something tells me that such an organization didn't have a membership card. Forensic evidence has made it clear, "member" or not, Soliah was in the middle of the SLA's crimes.

The conviction, and further prosecution, of this domestic terrorist turned soccer mom and suburban Minnesota do-gooder, is a vivid reminder that the extreme Left in American political life has more than a few ghosts in its closets that it would like us to forget. Criminals like Olsen believe that growing up and becoming a tax-payer is absolution for their idealism run amuck. Olsen's claim that the trial is political is a pitiful attempt to excuse murder and violence as just part of that crazy trip called being a sixties idealist. She deserves hard time, all the more for enjoying the years of freedom her group took away from Myrna Opsahl and Marcus Foster; freedom she would have taken from several policemen if her bombs had worked.

This is the bizarre worldview of the Left. Radicalism is excusable if it is for a good cause. Does Olsen really think we have all traveled this road with her and are ready to let by-gones be by-gones? How many tenured radicals and Leftist political activists look sadly at Olsen's plight and wish we would all let her years of community service outweigh her misspent youth as a domestic terrorist? What would Hillary Clinton say?

As it has become clear that the sixties were not the cultural paradise the left always portrayed, radicals like Olsen/Soliah have taken up residence in good old yuppie Republican upper middle class American society, where they want forgiveness because they have become like the rest of us. Hey- they may have even lost a fortune on Enron! But our radical friends will probably soon find that a jury of their peers doesn't see it that way. The sins of a wayward and violent youth still have to be paid for, and no conversion can make up for murder. (Hey Sara, we can get that Martha Stewart subscription sent to prison, no problem. And those neighborly cookies will still taste good behind bars.)

The Left needs to remember that not so long ago, it was their idealistic zealots who were bringing terror into their own country. It was their radicals who were bombing and killing in the name of reshaping society into their vision. Olsen deserves no better treatment than John Walker Lindh, who at least had the good taste to leave the country before shooting at his fellow Americans. And perhaps the Left could recall Sara Jane Olsen the next time a frustrated Democrat wants to call conservatives the American Taliban.

Michael@internetmonk.com                                                                             Post a Comment