In a 1993 video presentation I outlined Hillary Clinton’s association with ultra-liberal Methodist minister Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, who pastored the Clintons during their time in the White House. Wogaman advocated far left social positions, held conferences favoring a world government and religion, and famously quipped, “The Scriptures, like the Washington Post, contain both truth and error.”[1]

Back in ’93 I also outlined Mrs. Clinton’s propensity for all things New Age, such as spiritism, séances, and numerous necromantic forays to the rooftop solarium of the White House, where she received “inspiring” communications from an entity identifying itself as deceased former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.[2] Hillary’s claim of being an “old fashioned Methodist”[3] didn’t hold much water back then, though her tutelage into the occult by such New Age luminaries as Marianne Williamson and Jean Houston appears to be bearing dark fruit to this day. However disturbing as all that may be, it is yet another of Mrs. Clinton’s “influences” that I wish to examine here.

Who is Michael Lerner and what is “Tikkun?”

Since 1988 both Bill and Hillary Clinton have been acquainted with Michael Lerner, the founder and editor of Tikkun Magazine. By 1993 Lerner had become a close confidant with Hillary,[4] was a frequent guest at the White House, and was being referred to by numerous reporters as the “guru” of both the President and particularly, Mrs. Clinton.[5] He was the source and inspiration of Hillary’s widely publicized use of the phrase “The Politics of Meaning,” which she debuted in a speech in Austin, Texas, on March 25 (1993) while pushing her own ill-conceived socialized health care plan.[6] Lerner released a book by that name in 1997.[7]

The word “tikkun” is in itself innocuous, meaning “to mend, repair, or transform the world.” The trick is, just how does such desired transformation take place and what does it look like when it’s completed? In the worldview of Michael Lerner, now a far left rabbi, tikkun represents an eccentric, left-wing, Jewish-based cult, mixing the Old Testament, medieval cabbala-occult mysticism, and 1960’s campus Marxism.[8] But it is Lerner’s life before the Clintons and Tikkun that is of particular interest, especially when one compares the Clinton-Lerner connection with another such relationship that came to light eight years ago between then-Senator Barack Obama and longtime infamous subversive, Bill Ayers.

 Ayers and Lerner

Like Ayers, Michael Lerner was a university professor, holding positions at both the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Washington in Seattle.

Both men embraced and advocated Marxism. In a February 22, 1970, interview in the Seattle Times, Lerner predicted that he would be fired from his academic post at the University of Washington due to his love for The Communist Manifesto and proclamation of "I dig Marx."[9]

Like most radicals in that day, Ayers and Lerner both endorsed the use of drugs, LSD in particular.

Lerner believed that Marxism correlated with the results of hallucinogenic drug use. In the early 1970’s he stated, “You have to take LSD. Until you’ve dropped acid, you don’t know what socialism is.”[10] Lerner’s advocacy of merely dropping acid seems tame when one considers that on September 13, 1970, Bill Ayers and three other Weather Underground members (including his wife, Bernardine Dohrn) helped Timothy Leary - the inventor of LSD - escape from the California State Prison at San Luis Obispo. Ayers drove one of two getaway cars in relay with Dohrn, taking Leary to Seattle and providing him and his wife, Rosemary, fake passports and airplane tickets to eventually flee to Algeria.[11] Though I found no evidence of it, one has to wonder if Ayers and Lerner connected on that trip to Seattle with Lerner’s hero, Timothy Leary, in tow.

Ayers’ history of protests and involvement with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that the more radical Weathermen/Weather Underground sprung from is legendary. So are the numerous bombings that he, Dohrn, and the Weathermen participated in, such as the U.S. Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972, and the 103rd Police Precinct in New York City. But Lerner blazed trails without which the anti-war movement of the 60’s may never have gained the radical steam needed to play the disrupting part that it did.

Upon his arrival at Berkeley in1964, Lerner led both the Free Student Union and the Berkeley chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. That same year he was also involved in the so-called “Free Speech Movement” and in the occupation of the university administration building that resulted in the arrest of 800 students for trespassing. This event was pivotal to the anti-war movement as it marked the first ever student takeover of a university campus building, setting the tone for what lay just ahead.

One of the most astounding facts concerning Lerner and Ayers is that, though both were arrested and tried for their roles in violence acts carried out on U.S. federal buildings, neither man was convicted.

In January 1970, Lerner, who had founded the radical “Seattle Liberation Front” to replace the waning SDS on campus at the U of W, invited SDS radical, Jerry Rubin, to speak at the group’s launch.[12] At the time Rubin and six others, known as the “Chicago Seven,” were on trial for conspiracy in Illinois for their part in violent demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

As fate would have it, Lerner organized an anti-Vietnam War protest to be held at the Seattle Federal Courthouse on February 17, 1970. As word circulated of the Chicago Seven’s trial coming to an end, the crowd ballooned to over 2,000 and the emboldened protesters clashed with Seattle police. During the ensuing riot, rocks and paint bombs rained on the police and courthouse, leading to 76 arrests and 20 injuries. Seattle Chief of Police, Frank Moore, stated, “The demonstrators came prepared for war … They were armed with pipes, clubs, chains, paint and tear gas … and they used them all.”[13] As a result, on April 16, 1970, a federal grand jury indicted Lerner and seven other SLF leaders for conspiracy to incite a riot. One indicted SLF leader went into hiding and the remaining seven became known as the “Seattle Seven.”

Eventually a mistrial was declared by Federal District Judge George Boldt culminating in a courtroom riot with punches being thrown that sent the defendants to jail on "contempt of court" charges. Lerner was sentenced and transported to Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary in San Pedro, California, where he served several months before the 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Court ordered him released (despite the claim made by J. Edgar Hoover in a public statement repeated on national radio and television that Lerner was "one of the most dangerous criminals in America" - though he had never been convicted of engaging in any act of violence).[14]

Meanwhile in Seattle, Lerner's contract was not renewed and the State of Washington Legislature had passed "the Lerner act," requiring that the University of Washington never hire anyone "who might engage in illegal political activity," a law later overturned by the Washington Supreme Court.[15]

So let’s recap the parallels of Bill Ayers and Michael Lerner.

- Both were university professors

- Both expressed their adoration for Karl Marx

- Both endorsed the use of LSD

- Both led chapters of the far left Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

- Both founded other radical subversive groups

- Both organized and led multiple anti-Vietnam War protests

- Both were arrested for conducting destructive, potentially deadly activities on federal property

- Neither were contrite or repentant for their actions

- Neither were convicted for their alleged crimes

- Both have continued to engage in “community organizing”

- Both have worked for numerous radical causes since the 1970’s

- Both have personally affected famous, influential politicians

- Both enjoyed access to the White House on numerous occasions [16] [17]

- Both continue to view America through radical socialist eyes today

- Both are stridently anti-Israel today [18] [19]

Though I never actively took part in the protests, I hung around the anti-war crowd at the University of Washington in Seattle in the early 1970’s. For a budding rock musician, it was the cool place to be, but my attraction to the protests was girls and drugs – not to participate in the war protests themselves. In those days I knew who Michael Lerner was. We all did. He was the intelligent, charismatic, but strangely frightening ring leader whose entire being was focused on counter-culture, anti-American activities. He definitely amassed quite a following that today I would liken to a cult.

While Lerner never made the FBI's Top Ten list of fugitives, nor was he ever forced to go on the lam for 11 years like Ayers, he was surely a kindred spirit with his Chicago counterpart in nearly every way. Ayers and Lerner were cut from the same cloth then and are tied to the same fabric today. Now Bill Ayers and Michael Lerner are connected forevermore to both the current and perhaps the next Democratic presidential candidates. Obama, Ayers, Clinton, and Lerner share the same ultra-radical ideology and there can be no doubt that the two politicians have been influenced by their leftist mentors.

These are like-minded fellow travelers who’ve never abandoned the extreme views of their youth. One is currently our president and one now wants to be, which leads us to the ultimate question: is America too stoned after eight years of Executive Branch socialism to wise up or will we just take another toke come November?

All of this information and much more is outlined in Eric Barger’s DVD presentation “New Age or Not: What Difference Does it Make? - Examining the Spiritual Life and Influences of Hillary Clinton.” Find it here.