Posted on 01/17/2005 11:03:12 AM PST by mrustow
It's back. The most important day of the year. More important than the deposed Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays, respectively. More important than Columbus Day. More important than Thanksgiving. More important than Christmas.
I know what you're saying. How can MLK Day be more important than Christmas? Easy. MLK was the most important person ever to live. Anywhere. Just ask his widow and children.
Let's look at the man's accomplishments. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in competition with Jack Kennedy and Wilt Chamberlain for the title of world's greatest womanizer. His favorite male company consisted largely of communists. He began his last day on Earth by beating the hell out of his mistress of the moment. He was a compulsive plagiarist who not only got his doctorate through fraud, but stole other men's words, and then copyrighted and re-sold the purloined pearls. And as the pre-eminent leader of the civil rights movement, he supported racial quotas, reparations, and racist law. What's not to like?
(As Theodore Pappas showed, in Plagiarism and the Culture War: The Writings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Other Prominent Americans, one-third of King's Boston University doctoral dissertation consisted of copying directly without attribution from the dissertation of his classmate, Jack Stewart Boozer, in addition to thefts from famous theologians.
And even if King hadn't gotten his doctorate through massive plagiarism, I wouldn't call him "Dr." What is it about the same black folks who show contempt towards whites with legitimate titles, that has them obsessively refer to "Dr. King"? Max Weber (1864-1920) was one of the greatest social scientists of all time, and he had a real doctorate, but no one today refers to him as "Dr. Weber." Unless you're Austrian or something, it's not normal to refer to dead people as "Dr." Heck, while teaching college, I stopped referring to the living as "Dr." or "Professor," unless the person in question was my boss or a medical doctor. If you're my colleague, I'm not referring to you by any title, Pal. And nowadays, outside of the real sciences, most of the doctorates being issued aren't worth the paper they're written on.)
Lest I forget, one is nowadays compelled to note that King displayed great physical courage on behalf of his convictions. But having the courage of one's convictions is a dependent variable -- the independent variable is the righteousness of one's convictions. Over 100,000 men and women currently in uniform in Iraq also display great physical courage every day, and the vast majority of them seek to defend, not to destroy America. And yet, to my knowledge, none of them has had a national holy day enacted by Congress in his honor.
About 16 years ago, when I watched the PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize for the first time, I loved the first half - the Martin years. But following King's assassination, the second half celebrated the Black Power movement as a seamless continuation of the civil rights movement whose dominant figure the martyred King was. "How dare you sully King's name!" I shouted at the TV screen, or words to that effect.
Eyes on the Prize celebrated black supremacists such as the "community control" activists (Rhody McCoy, Milton Galamison, the Rev. C. Herbert Oliver, et al.) who terrorized white teachers in the experimental, Ford Foundation-funded Brooklyn school district called "Ocean Hill-Brownsville." (Ocean Hill and Brownsville were and are two adjacent, poor, black-dominated parts of Brooklyn.)
For many years, I considered MLK one of America's greatest heroes. I once even published an encomium to him. Then I started to study the man. Big mistake.
For several years now, neoconservatives have presented King as a ... neoconservative, on race, at least. (And race is all they talk about, regarding King.) That means that he opposed affirmative action. They cite his "content of character" line:
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"
That line is from King's most famous speech, "I Have a Dream," which he gave on August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial. That's the only time he used such language. (Variations on the phrase "I have a dream" were then common in the American vernacular. In the 1959 Jules Styne-Stephen Sondheim musical, Gypsy, for instance, Mama Rose sings, "I had a dream ...")
In the next passage, King uses a powerful image to promote integration.
"I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!"
"I Have a Dream" is the speech, whose high points ("Let freedom ring!") King stole from a speech the Rev. Archibald Carey gave, of all places, at the 1952 Republican National Convention. King then copyrighted the stolen words as his own. Since his assassination, his family has compounded the plagiarism by shaking down individuals (including scholars, which no one had ever done before) and organizations for millions of dollars for the privilege of quoting a mishmash of Archibald Carey's stolen words and King's own words. That the copyright is fraudulent is, thanks to my old editor Ted Pappas and a few other writers by now well-known, but no one has so far had the gumption to take on the sanctimonious, self-righteous bunco artists who comprise the King family.
MLK didn't believe in any hooey about "the content of one's character." He was a race man! And taking his fine talk about black and white children playing together and holding hands seriously, requires a belief in race mixing that he also did not have. As journalist George S. Schuyler (1895-1977) understood, integration means, above all, blacks and whites making babies together.
Meanwhile, on MLK Day every year, black leftists insist on King's radicalism. That's the man they want celebrated. And they are right. King was a radical. The neoconservatives notwithstandsing, King supported affirmative action and reparations, and he got both. When the programs of the War on Poverty were initiated, it was understood that they were racial reparations programs. Thirty-odd years and a few trillion dollars later, contemporary civil rights hustlers developed amnesia, and demanded new reparations to blacks, but this time to the tune of as much as $1 million per black (an additional app. $37 trillion).
The proper meaning of "civil rights" is the rights due to citizens. In changing "civil rights" from something due all Americans to something due to some, based on the color of their skin, and not others, King committed the most egregious act of linguistic legerdemain since FDR turned the term "liberal" upside down, from the belief that government should interfere as little as possible in a citizen's life, to the notion that the government may meddle in all of a citizen's formerly private affairs without limit.
Martin Luther King Jr. was the greatest orator I have ever heard. But that too is a cautionary tale: Beware of silver-tongued serpents.
The real meaning of MLK Day is "Black Day." It is a federal holy day celebrating blackness. But if we are going to eliminate all holy days celebrating white men and instead have a holiday celebrating a black, why not at least celebrate someone worthy? Pre-civil rights America had many black heroes worthy of celebration. Off the top of my head, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and my choice, Booker T. Washington, come to mind. Even A. Philip Randolph, the founder of the first successful black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, would be preferable to King, in spite of Randolph's socialism. Those five were real giants, rather than the products of propaganda.
As always, when discussing King, I leave the last word to George S. Schuyler, who, had he had the tuition money, could have buried King's fraudulent Ph.D. dissertation in a pile of real dissertations.
In 1964, when King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Schuyler wrote "King: No Help to Peace":
"Neither directly nor indirectly has Dr. King made any contribution to world (or even domestic) peace. Methinks the Lenin Prize would have been more appropriate, since it is no mean feat for one so young to acquire 60 communist front citations.... Dr. King's principle contribution to world peace has been to roam the country like some sable Typhoid Mary, infecting the mentally disturbed with perversions of Christian doctrine, and grabbing fat lecture fees from the shallow-pated."
I'm not old enought to rememeber Martin Luther King. All that I know is what I learned in publik skool, and what I've learned on my own. Believe me, the two histories are completely different.
What's unfortunate is that 90% of the people only know what the diversity crusaders teach. And, anyone who contradicts them is hateful, bigoted, racist, et al ad infinitum.
IMHO, I think that there are many other African Americans that are far more deserving of a National Holiday. Carver and Douglass come immediately to mind.
True -- Carver and Douglass were great. I particularly like that Carver was both a scientist and a practical man. These black history celebrations always seem to be of political types.
Those that are open to new opinions on the subject (hey, maybe he wasn't a saint, after all) and those that would criticize anyone with an opinion that differs from the politically correct.
Yup. PC has taken root everywhere!
LOL!
Don't forget that thousands of freedmen became slave owners, as well.
Nonsense. His ideas, to the extent that he had any, were bad, too. (Exception: non-violence.)
Despite, the decrease in lynchings, the average life expectancy of a black male has gone DOWN.
That's nonsense! Where did you get that whopper -- World Weekly News?
So blacks should have been happy to remain second class citizens? I can't imagine living in a world where I was constantly was treated like I was a untouchable person who was unworthy of sharing the same facilities of the majority of the population. Maybe you want to go back to that time, but this black person does not.
Why am I surprised?! (The rich get richer.) BTW, what was your old firm's response?
Hey, P, everyone's just getting in the holiday spirit!
Now you have only about fifty corrections to go. You are not what I would call a positive advertisement for the public schools.
Unfortunately, the opposite is the case. The civil rights movement (including such luminaries as James Baldwin) demanded that only blacks may teach black children. Thus were experienced, competent teachers driven out of predominantly black schools, based solely on the color of their skin, and replaced with semi-literate, sometimes functionally illiterate black "teachers." Civil rights leaders were less concerned with helping poor blacks achieve equality than with achieving power, wealth, and control for themselves.
And the riots that civil rights leaders incited destroyed entire black neighborhoods, and with them the life chances of millions of black children.
very interesting post
Right,almost always started by hard core white segregationist hoodlums who rampaged against largely peaceful demonstrators who were marching for the same BASIC AMERICAN rights you and I have always taken for granted.
Gee,to some on this board you would think if it wasn't for this King ogre then we could all go back to the wonderful world of separate drinking fountains and colored folks riding the back of the bus!
Much of the time when King spoke in the South, racist whites rioted. When he spoke in the North (excepting for Cicero, Illinois), racist blacks rioted. Love him or hate him, he was one of the most polarizing figures in the history of American politics.
Is that the best you can do?
MLK did not secure any measure of equality for blacks. Jackie Robinson accomplished much more along those lines.
Then there's no point debating with you? You're waaaay too backwards to worry about.
And if I bent over for you, there'd also be no point debating me! You don't believe in debate, you believe in the unconditional surrender of anyone who disagrees with you. You don't know front from back.
The partner asked me if I wanted the "honor" of representing the King family. I wasn't crazy about the idea, and was even less so when I went to their website and found that it contained ideas that I felt were communistic and decidedly leftist. I reported my findings to the senior partner, declined to participate, and left it at that.
I think that they really wanted to be able to say that the firm represents the King family, and were annoyed with me that I didn't want to waste my time on them. As it turns out, no one else in the firm wanted to waste precious billables representing them, either.
They can pay for a lawyer, just like everybody else...especially with all the money they make shaking down everyone who dares to use an MLK quote.
First one to call names loses! ;-)
Try that on the next law prof who goes Socratic on you...then please give us a full report on the outcome...
mrustow: "That's nonsense! Where did you get that whopper -- World Weekly News?"
I researched this and you are correct and I was wrong. I apologize to all for not doing the proper research before I made this erroneous statement.
Nothing. As in, nothing would have been a huge improvement.
This is a snapshot of history as it occurred.
1940-1960: Black Americans enjoy the greatest economic improvement ever, without the U.S. Civil Rights Act, Voter Rights Act, Martin Luther King Jr., etc. Black neighborhoods across America bustle with black-owned small and not-so-small businesses.
1944: In a landmark legal case, a young black Army officer is courtmartialed. A bus driver who was also a deputy sheriff, orderd him to sit in the back of the bus, because of the color of his skin, and he refused. The young officer won the case. His name: Jackie Robinson.
1946: The same Jackie Robinson is signed to a minor league baseball contract by the Brooklyn Dodgers' Branch Rickey.
1947: Jackie Robinson breaks the color line, playing in his first major league game for the Dodgers. The world will never be the same again. (Robinson was a lifelong Republican.) After 1947, many black stars (Larry Doby, Roy Campanella, Monte Irvin, Satchel Paige, et al.) come over from the Negro Leagues to the formerly all-white major leagues.
1948: Harry S. Truman successfully integrates the Armed Forces, over the objections of Douglas MacArthur.
1949: James Edwards stars in the movie, Home of the Brave. Edwards, a fine but now largely forgotten actor who suffered mightily and died too young, would pave the way for Sidney Poitier to become the world's #1 movie star in 1967-68.
1950s: Black economic progress continues apace.
1953: Hulan Jack is elected Manhattan borough president, the first black since Reconstruction to win major elective office.
Skipping to the 1960s:
1963: King gives "I Have a Dream Speech" in DC.
1963: JFK assassinated.
1964: U.S. Civil Rights Act enacted by Congress.
Lyndon Johnson begins War on Poverty. Civil rights leaders tell blacks that the answer to all of their ills lies in government handouts.
1964-ca. 1968: Civil rights leaders begin inciting riots in cities across America. Thousands of private businesses are gutted and jobs lost, never to return. The losses are "replaced" by welfare programs and social workers. Millions of black children now grow up in hopeless slums where they see black people as either civil servants or criminals.
1965: Malcolm X assassinated.
Circa 1965: Civil rights leaders ally themselves with the communist National Welfare Rights Organization, in encouraging unwed black mothers, during an economic boom, to quit their jobs and go on welfare.
1965: Daniel Patrick Moynihan is made an example of, race-baited for raising alarms about the deterioration of black family. Moynihan shuts up, as do other whites who share his concerns.
Black economic progress slows down, then stagnates.
1966: Leftist NYC Mayor John Lindsay (though nominally a Republican) hires NWRO leader to be welfare commissioner, increases roles by 120% and increases welfare payments. Blacks flock to NYC, drunk on welfare. Housing is inadeqaute for the masses, and Lindsay doesn't want to discourage anyone from coming, so he builds huge housing projects that are unfit for families to live in.
1968: Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy are assassinated.
From the late 1960s on: a susbstantial and politically dominant portion of the black middle and upper-middle classes becomes the jailer of the black lower classes. As teachers, principals, college professors, social work bosses and poverty pimps, these "role models" tell black youngsters that due to white racism, they have no chance in life (while never explaining how the role models are doing so well, in spite of said racism). The role models encourage black youngsters to break the law, and when they are arrested, encourage them to cry racism. The role models make it impossible for the police to maintain order in black neighborhoods, and present gangsters as heroes.
Instead of demanding the highest standards of speech and conduct, as black educators did during segregation, the role models encourage slovenly dress, thuggish behavior, and street slang, which they christen "Black English," and then, "Ebonics."
Beginning late 1960s: Black role models and their Marxist comrades attack the very notion of illegitimacy as "racist." The black illegitimacy rate more than triples, from 22% to 70%.
True, without a civil rights movement, there might not have been a Voting Rights Act. But the VRA turned into an unconstitutional monstrosity, assuming it wasn't one to begin with. Without the VRA, blacks would pretty much have had to leave the South, in which case Jim Crow would have collapsed. No victims, no system. And without welfarism, when those blacks headed North, they would have had to work.
Without the civil rights movement, there would be fewer incompetent black public school teachers and administrators, and few poverty pimp and shakedown millionaires, a la Jesse Jackson. On the other hand, millions of blacks who were consigned by "the movement" to lives of poverty would have been able to climb out of poverty. Work would not have "disappeared," because willing workers would not have disappeared.
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