Americans may be fuzzy on the details -- and how could they be clear, given the media's pro-Obama activities -- but some are realizing, slowly and with no corroboration in the public square, that such radical ties don't pass presidential muster.

Or do they? In the end, the answer will decide the election. Meanwhile, we, the people, are on our own. Once, America's political and media and social institutions would have reflexively rejected a presidential candidate with an alliance with, or even an affinity for, an unrepentant terrorist and anti-establishment revolutionary. No more. The line between the establishment and the anti-establishment has vanished -- at least as far as our political and media and social institutions are concerned. But there remain citizens for whom such distinctions matter.

Writing at National Review Online, Andrew C. McCarthy pegged the significance of the Obama-Ayers connection: "Yes, Ayers is blunter than Obama. As he so delicately told the Times, America makes him `want to puke.' The smoother Obama is content to say our society needs fundamental `change.' But what they're talking about," he wrote, referring to their complementary visions, "is not materially different. Such sentiments should make Obama unelectable."

Actually, such sentiments should make Obama radioactive. But ours is a culture of relativism in which one "belief system" is considered as valid as any other. Democracy? Marxism? Whatever! Lawful elections? Bombing the Pentagon? What's the difference? So greatly transformed by relativism is our society that not even elder statesman and veteran John McCain is alarmed by Obama's radicalism. If he were, this patriot who puts "country first," would be doing everything in his power to warn the American people against it.

Not that it matters, not now, not since Obama's radicalism entered the race. If this stalking horse finishes strong, Obama loses and America wins -- despite the other candidate.