Let's take a trip down the rabbit hole to 1969. As we look back from a safe distance of 40 years, America in the late '60s looks temporarily insane.
In those days, America's terrorism problem was a group of violent college kids called the Weathermen, named after a Bob Dylan song. But they were not Peter, Paul and Mary. Compared to the Weathermen, modern Iraq war protesters are a dime bag of oregano.
The Weathermen Underground bombed the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. They declared war on the United States and packed sticks of dynamite with roofing nails, fence staples and propane bottles to use on police stations and military recruiting offices.
And Larry Grathwohl of Cincinnati was there, living in a Weathermen "collective" in Cincinnati, sleeping on a mattress on the floor.
"I think it's important," he said of his story when we met for coffee at an IHOP. "They're going backward to rewrite history."
Grathwohl recalled the night he was singled out for an LSD-fueled all-nighter of "criticism." He ducked the drugs and kept his cover as they called him a "pig." But they were right. He was an informant for the cops.
Grathwohl, raised in Hyde Park and now of Amelia, was a student at the University of Cincinnati, just back from Vietnam when he joined the Weathermen. A Cincinnati cop he knew said it might be useful. Soon he was an FBI informant, close to Weatherman leaders Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.
Ayers and Dohrn, now married, made headlines this year for being linked to Barack Obama. Sarah Palin was mocked for saying Obama was "palling around" with Ayers. But after the election, Ayers admitted to being "family friends" with the Obamas.
Grathwohl says the press gave Obama a pass, and gave Ayers a Get out of Jail Free card.
"Bill insists he was only against the war. That's not true," he said. "They were communists, part of an international revolutionary movement of Cubans, Chinese and Vietnamese. We were going to attack the U.S. from within. The ultimate goal was to overthrow the government."
In an op-ed column after the election, Ayers admitted the group placed "several small bombs in empty offices." He said the "attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam War."
Grathwohl replied: "I sat in meetings where we were planning bombs. Bill gave instructions for the place and time so the greatest number of people would be killed or injured."
Grathwohl said he warned Ayers that "people will be killed." He says Ayers replied, "In a revolution, some people have to die."
In his New York Times op-ed, Ayers wrote, "The risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions never leaves my thoughts for long."
Grathwohl testified about the Weathermen to grand juries and Congress. His version is more pointed - like roofing nails. He describes Ayers as "a spoiled rich kid who had a silver spoon in his mouth his entire life. Most of them were like that."
He says he heard Ayers talk about putting 75 million Americans in re-education camps. "He said 25 million might have to be eliminated."
"The plans they were making were scary," he said. But when bombs started going off, "they were no longer just a bunch of spoiled kids talking."
In early 1970, a bomb intended for an officers' dance at Fort Dix, N.J., exploded and killed several Weathermen. At about the same time, a cop was killed in a San Francisco bombing. Dohrn was a suspect on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted.
Ayers and Dohrn went into hiding until 1980, when they surrendered. But charges were dropped because the FBI used illegal wiretaps.
Grathwohl says they never paid for their crimes or showed remorse.
"Even though it is decades later, it is important that we guard against efforts to turn people such as Billy and Bernadine into latter-day Robin Hoods, and that we remember them for what they were and still unabashedly represent today."
Ayers now pushes radical ideas as a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dohrn teaches law and is director of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University. They live in a wealthy neighborhood near the Chicago home of their family friend, the next president of the United States.
Looking out from the rabbit hole of 1969, maybe it's 2008 that looks insane.
