Freeper Campaign to expand Martin Luther King Day to "Activists Day"

1/17/04 | Huber

[Huber]

It's time to do justice to the memory of Dr King and all of the other courageous activists who continue to work for positive change in our society. Just as we recognized the injustice of celebrating the memory of only two presidents, Washington and Lincoln, and established "Presidents Day" (so that we could honor Jackson, Kennedy, Nixon and Clinton as well), it is now time to honor all activists, and hereby declare the second Monday in January, "Activists Day". Activists Day could celebrate, in addition to Dr. King, Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez, Jane Fonda, Rachel Corrie (the bulldozer girl), Patricia Ireland, the Reverend Al Sharpton and others as well as (in being inclusive) Phyllis Schlafly, Ward Connerly and others on the right.

What do you all say, can Freepers make a difference in the name of inclusiveness and expand Dr. Martin Luther King Day to Activists Day?

[dsc]

Rotate that arrow 90 degrees clockwise, and you'll be closer to the truth.

Letting matters progess more slowly would have brought us to a better place by now. What the activism has accomplished is to create a professional victim class and a permanent underclass, while creating resentments among people who otherwise wouldn't have a beef.

When I was a boy, I could safely walk through the black side of town after dark. Try that now.

Further, I really hate it that the "civil rights" movement was exploited by both foreign and domestic communists to undermine our civic welfare.

[risk]

If you were black in the 1960s, I don't think you would have anted progress to come more gradually. And as far as victim mentality goes, that's a complex problem that I don't think we can blame on Doctor King. To demand what is promised by our founding documents is the opposite of victimhood.

As far as what has come from the left and from foreign powers, we all have to accept responsibility for the exploitation of racism and its "solutions" in this society. If this country had not violated the very foundations of its principles of freedom at the very onset of our establishment, then we would not have needed the civil rights movement 180 years later. This is a profound idea that we simply cannot deny. A royal mess is on our hands, and it all started when we failed to live up to our ideals.

Today is no different. King's most important contribution was to demand that America be its best. He also demanded that blacks be principled and honorable while they went about the business of seizing equality.

[mhking]

Letting matters progess more slowly would have brought us to a better place by now. What the activism has accomplished is to create a professional victim class and a permanent underclass, while creating resentments among people who otherwise wouldn't have a beef.

Yassuh, boss! I's a been glad tuh hav' waited fuh a level playin' field.

Oh, please. Spare me your platitudes. Had King not been around, the 70s and 80s would have been more bloody than they would have been. And I STILL would not have the opportunities I have today.

You said one thing that was correct: King was no saint. Then again, neither is anyone else in American history.

King and his contemporaries' actions in the 50s and 60s was not the problem. The problem is that "well-meaning" liberals and the "professional" civil-rights hucksters that have corrupted King's aims since the 70s have done their level best to create a class-based system that leaves most blacks on the lower side of everything.

[dsc]

"If you were black in the 1960s, I don't think you would have anted progress to come more gradually."

What any individual wants is not always the best thing.

"And as far as victim mentality goes, that's a complex problem that I don't think we can blame on Doctor King."

The civil rights movement created it.

"To demand what is promised by our founding documents is the opposite of victimhood."

Jeez, and people are criticizing me for platitudes.

"As far as what has come from the left and from foreign powers, we all have to accept responsibility for the exploitation of racism and its "solutions" in this society."

Utter crap.

"If this country had not violated the very foundations of its principles of freedom at the very onset of our establishment"

Perhaps "Migrations and Culture," "Race and Culture," and Conquests and Culture," by Thomas Sowell--a black man--might give you some perspective.

"This is a profound idea that we simply cannot deny."

It's a hackneyed platitude that betrays the complete absence of historical perspective.

"Today is no different."

Isn't it? So the civil rights movement accomplished nothing? All whites are racists?

"King's most important contribution was to demand that America be its best."

What King did was demand that changes which were already occurring be accelerated past people's ability to accept change.

"He also demanded that blacks be principled and honorable while they went about the business of seizing equality."

Your use of the word "seizing" pretty much says all that needs to be said about your approach to the subject.

Before King, 80 percent of black children were raised in intact families. Now, illegitimacy reaches 80 percent in some areas. Oh, sure, there are other causes. Johnson declared war on poverty, and poverty won. All told, though, race relations are at their lowest ebb ever in the US, and King played a leading role in that.

[dsc]

"Yassuh, boss! I's a been glad tuh hav' waited fuh a level playin' field. Oh, please. Spare me your platitudes."

And spare me your racism. I hate racism as much in a black as in a white or a Japanese.

"Had King not been around, the 70s and 80s would have been more bloody than they would have been."

Road apples. The civil rights movement created those riots as surely as God made little green apples.

"And I STILL would not have the opportunities I have today."

Yeah, you tell that to Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes, Jesse Peterson, and Walter Williams.

"Then again, neither is anyone else in American history."

Actually, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson come awfully close.

"King and his contemporaries' actions in the 50s and 60s was not the problem."

Those actions were a big part of the problem.

"The problem is that "well-meaning" liberals and the "professional" civil-rights hucksters that have corrupted King's aims since the 70s have done their level best to create a class-based system that leaves most blacks on the lower side of everything."

At least we agree that the race-hustling poverty pimps have not served black Americans well.

The whole thing should have been done more slowly, more gradually, and without measures that merely shifted discrimination onto other groups rather than ending it. And certainly without creating the mythology that you and that other fellow have bought into.

[rdb3]

Care to weigh in on this?

No comment. I better not say anything.

[Hank Rearden]

It's already known as Government Parasites' Yet-Another-Day-Off Day.

[BenR2]

Good idea.

(Therefore, it will never fly.)

[risk]

Thanks for responding, MH.

Since Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't continue growing and developing as a human being, and people can't know what he would have said as the last 30 years of history unfolded, the unscrupulous can look back and say that he did or didn't do this or that, so that makes him unviable.

I'm not buying it. The reality is much more sad. If Dr. King hadn't been around to influence America in the 20th century, the civil rights movement could have been much more violent and chaotic than it was. And if he had not been assassinated, the civil rights movement could have been more effective. He would have evolved and grown as a political philospher, contributing untold brilliance. I'm certain that he would have taken his backroom resistance against communism in the movement to the forefront, for example.

But he was killed, and there is no way we can go back and undo the damage. Speaking ill of the dead has its own kind of ugliness. But King would have asked us to do our best to make sure that his work continued. And I think conservative Americans have the best opportunity to do that. He might be surprised to find that right wing Americans took up his cause and completed it, but as our political values are based on the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution -- every word of it -- he would come to understand very quickly. I'm sure we could have convinced him that Karl Marx has no role to play in solving this American problem.

One thing is for sure: King's work isn't done yet. People who think he brought change too quickly, or that his ideas are responsible for broken black families are proof of that.

[Outraged]

Care to weigh in on this?

Ya, it should be called Civil Rights Day, in memoriam of the Republican party and their fight against the leftist segregationalists who voted against civil rights legislation in 64....Oh ya, and in salute to the Reverend I think we should put up the 10 Commandments in all public buildings permanently.

[Enterprise]

"King's most important contribution was to demand that America be its best."

Remember though, that when whites demand that America be at its best, and use his words about content of character and not color of skin they are accused of twisting his words.

"He also demanded that blacks be principled and honorable while they went about the business of seizing equality.

There was nothing principled about the WOP and seizing people's hard earned income and transferring it to those who didn't earn it, and people who accepted such money are unprincipled. And affirmative action is an unprincipled seizure of equality. Those who are hire and promote, and those who are hired and promoted over others who are more qualified are unprincipled bastards.

[Huber]

Oh ya, and in salute to the Reverend I think we should put up the 10 Commandments in all public buildings permanently

Did you see this before you posted?

Winston-Salem official places Ten Commandments at city hall [Vernon Robinson - Black Conservative] WCNC ^ | Jan. 19, 2004 | AP Presswire

[Outraged]

Did you see this before you posted?

No I did not, great minds think alike I suppose...That is awesome!

Praise be to the Lord Almighty, ruler of Heaven and earth!

[Outraged]

No comment. I better not say anything.

I appreciate what you have to say, and I love your home page thingy (or whatever it is called when I click on your name)...:)

[risk]

Remember though, that when whites demand that America be at its best, and use his words about content of character and not color of skin they are accused of twisting his words.

Not that you're suggesting it, but why would anyone hold what other whites and blacks say against MLK? His writing and speaking stands on its own. He changed this country by pointing out a specific form of hypocricy in a warm, peaceful, and brotherly manner. Others have taken his words and twisted them around. He may have not done enough to prevent that, but he was only a man. He was human, not a saint!

There was nothing principled about the WOP and seizing people's hard earned income and transferring it to those who didn't earn it, and people who accepted such money are unprincipled.

We have two issues at hand:

1. MLK's passionate plea for the American Constitution to mean exactly what it says, as written, with no exceptions.
2. His concern over poverty and specific advocacy of socialism as a solution.

I would remind you that his first effort is clearly correct under all circumstances, with no room for doubt. And I would remind you that while MLK was active, we were quite far away from providing a society that could in any way be described as living up to the ideals of our own founding documents. King spoke to whites as well as blacks in bringing people to the conclusion that racism could be ended, should be ended, and would be systematically eliminated. To some extent he succeeded in work that we all must continue.

Regarding the second side of MLK, his socialist side, I would also remind you that he was not a government official, and he did not enact a single piece of socialist legislation. He offered his ideas and theories in the face of grotesque poverty, hideous, inhumane suffering due in part to racism. At least he was trying.

In trying, he pressured the public and lawmakers. But it was largely white, liberal socialists who enacted that legislation -- with the lack of wisdom that is only all too clear to you and me today. Where was MLK while most of the damage was being done?

James Earl Ray had killed him not because of his socialist notions but because King had the courage to ask us to be true to our American ideals. If he were around now, I think he would be distancing himself from activists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who have besmirched his name. I think he might have been able to set an example for them that would have kept them from drifting into demagoguery, but that is another story. Look to men like MHKING and RDB3 for an alternate example.

In any case, King was only one man asking his country to change. And change it did. Charlton Heston, one of the most conservative men in recent times also stood with MLK. Why? Because he recognized that the Constitution demands that we treat all people equally before the law. Critics of MLK today who offer serious alternatives to the ideas he presented are interesting. Those who just tear down his contributions are likely to be seen as hateful and angry over their lost superiority in our society.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I can't help but think threads started to agitate (as this one clearly is) are done by people with inferiority complexes. They say if you take out the leader, the mob is silenced. In this case, I say let the poster speak, he embarrasses himself - the mob left the building years ago.

[Sonny M]

This is a dream

One of my friends is a liberal and a teacher.

He gave a simple assignment.

Write a paper about a civil rights leader, except MLK jr or Malcomn X.

The idea was to get them to learn who else was involved.

The principal stepped in after complaints and changed the assignment, to make it only MLK jr.

[Enterprise]

Is it not fascinating to read what Robert Byrd once said of MLK? (From Limbaugh's site)

"On March 28, 1968, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia made a stunning comment about Martin Luther King, Jr. This is four years after the Civil Rights Act. The Democrats are said to be best friends of minorities, yet, listen to this quote in the audio link below.

BYRD: Martin Luther King fled the scene. He took to his heels and disappeared, leaving it to others to cope with the destructive forces he had helped to unleash. And I hope that well-meaning negro leaders and individuals in the negro community in Washington will now take a new look at this man who gets other people into trouble and then takes off like a scared rabbit."

[rdb3]

Is it not fascinating to read what Robert Byrd once said of MLK?

No, it's not surprising. I'm not even gonna say he was wrong. His being an ex-Klansman notwithstanding, this does not refute my assertion that someone like King was needed at that time.

Now, since I have your undivided attention, what say you? Do you think that someone like King was needed at that time?

[TaxRelief]

What do you say? Can your dream be achieved without socialism?