Ayers: Constitution needs to be replaced

HANOVER, N.H. – President Obama's longtime buddy, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, Thursday night told debate opponent Dinesh D'Souza and an audience at Dartmouth College that the Constitution is an outmoded document and it ought to be changed.

Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, were the main founders of the domestic terror group the Weather Underground, which was assigned responsibility for dozens of bombings aimed at destroying the defense and security infrastructure of the U.S.

D'Souza is the maker of the movie "2016: Obama's America," which is the second-highest grossing political documentary of all time.

It blasts Obama's policies and actions, and warns America about what the nation would be under Obama's vision for the United States.

See Dinesh D’Souza’s “2016: Obama’s America” and his books in the WNS Superstore.

The topic of the debate was "What's so Great About America?"

Ayers previously called the Weather Underground "an American Red Army" and said the ideology was to: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents."

In his memoir, he wrote, "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them."

In a 2001 interview with the New York Times, Ayers said, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Accompanying the article was a photograph of him stepping on an American flag.

Ayers also questioned ramifications for behavior Americans long have considered expected.

"If you are a felon, why do you get disqualified as a citizen and get denied your right to vote? Just because you've committed a crime?" he asked D'Souza.

D'Souza focused on another subject.

"What is happening to the American dream?" he asked.

"We [in the U.S.] are losing the secret of the American dream, but it is coming alive in countries like China, India and Brazil where the people have learned the secrets of wealth creation – making stuff other people really want to buy, and in the process [they are] taking over the global market. Global capitalism has been the greatest gift of America to the world. Social agitation has failed to deliver the goods," he said.

D'Souza said, "What America has shown the world is the importance of wealth creation, not conquest. Our foreign policy can be summed up, 'Trade with us, don't bomb us.'"

Ayers asked the audience if members opposed slavery.

Getting an anticipated, "Yes," Ayers argued a Howard Zinn theory of U.S. history insisting the Dartmouth audience would have been forced to oppose the Founding Fathers on the question of slavery – ignoring the history of the United States righting racial injustice since Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.

D'Souza countered Ayers on slavery by referring to Lincoln and arguing that starting with the Civil War, the history of the United States is a history of fighting to end slavery and establish racial equality.

In the cross-examination section of the loosely formatted debate, D'Souza asked, "You started your career in the bin Laden mode, but now you sound like a professor. What happened to the revolutionary? Did you lose your revolutionary zeal?"

The two then argued over the Holocaust, the question of the Gulf War and why no weapons of mass destruction were found when George H.W. Bush invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein.

"The U.S. always lies us into war," Ayers insisted. "We fight wars in the Middle East for democracy, but we're an empire, grabbing for resources, and the wars in the Middle East were about oil."

On the subject of that Constitution, D'Souza said, "We act like there is a presumption in favor of the First Amendment and a heavy burden to be met defending the Second Amendment. I'm just saying, we should give the same respect to the Second Amendment as we give to the First Amendment."

In questions and answers, Ayers pressed D'Souza to give a "full-throated support for queer rights."

"I believe in the United States we are all a minority of one and we are each entitled to the full rights made available to us in the Bill of Rights," D'Souza said.

Then he asked Ayers if he would support fully the rights of evangelical Christians to be recognized, to be protected from "derogatory comments from other citizens.”

D'Souza got strong applause countering Ayers.

"I submit that if you were a professor here before the tenure committee, the defender of queer theory would have every reason to expect to be promoted, while the evangelical Christian would have to hide his true views," D'Souza challenged.

The focus on religion was one of the points that had staying power.

"I'm allowed to have my religious beliefs in private, but I'm not allowed to have them in the public square?" D'Souza asked.

"My point is that you can't put a statue of Moses or Jesus in the public arena, that would be the government endorsing [religion]," Ayers said.

"But you have no problem with government removing all religious symbols from the public square and you don't see that as government endorsing atheism or secularism?" D'Souza said. "I want the public square open to both Moses and the 10 Commandments and to Voltaire."

"I think libertarians get it right in that they oppose government," Ayers said.

D'Souza agreed. "I think whatever the government does, it does badly. But libertarians are inconsistent on the issue of foreign policy. Jefferson asked why should we be the only people who are free? I don't believe in fighting wars to free other people, but I celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall."

Ayers attacked Obamacare not because of the lies that have surrounded it, its cancellation of coverage for millions, its high prices, deductibles and co-pays, or the fact consumers no longer will have their policies, their doctors, their medicines or their hospitals.

He called it "a very poor law" that amounts to corporate welfare, "giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the insurance industry."

D'Souza supports Israel as a "little outpost of Western civilization," and said that Iran is the legacy of Jimmy Carter who trashed U.S. support of the shah and left the world with the radical revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

"We didn't take Nelson Mandela off the terrorist list until 2006," Ayers argued. "We didn't support Nelson Mandela in the years when he was a freedom fighter."

Ayers went from supporting Mandela as a radical terrorist in his early years to attacking Israel.

"Israel is an apartheid state and it is ridiculous the United States gives Israel the money the United States gives," Ayers said. "Israel is a colonial power that has systematically pushed out the indigenous people."

"American exceptionalism leaves us with a sense that we are the best and everybody should be like us?," Ayers asked in his concluding statement. "Why would we argue we are the most important and that everybody else should fall down? It's an arrogance that is not only foolish but also dangerous. We are rich with beauty and vicious in human denial – having championed slavery, supporting Israel, fighting wars in Iraq and the Middle East where we don't belong. We should fight to stretch our imaginations to include all that there is. The situation where we are with education is catastrophic because we have constructed education like we are now constructing health care – as a market. Education is a right and education in a democracy is based on the incalculable value of everyone."

In his concluding remarks, D'Souza argued, "America is the great defender of wealth creation. America created the great sense of possibility. All I’m saying is that we should realize we have a good formula and we should fight to widen the pie for everybody, not just to redistribute the pie."

D'Souza's film, "2016: Obama's America," is to be followed soon by a new project, called "America."

His appearance has been overshadowed by the recent accusation from authorities that he donated more than the legal requirement to the 2006 campaign of Republican Wendy Long, who lost the race for the U.S. Senate seat in New York that had been vacated by Hillary Clinton.

The indictment charges D'Souza donated $20,000 to Long's campaign by aggregating the money from various people and falsely reporting the source of the funds.

As WND reported, many of D'Souza's defenders see the indictment as the administration exacting revenge over D'Souza's film.

His new "America" is scheduled for release July 4, and it is predicted to become a thorn in Obama's side because of the prosecution against D'Souza.

See a trailer for the upcoming "America:"