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."
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.
See #179 ... or don't. I don't want you to feel like I'm making you a second-class citizen by suggesting anything to you, poor dear.
Good analysis.. Much truth here, PARTICULARLY the "Great Society's" impact on the black community. I think that the Federal legislation was inevitable, given the South's stonewalling.
I agree with you on the hesitant double amen. I guess a better way to speak my point would have been..."If we need to select holidays by race, then Carver or Douglass...." etc etc etc.
It's hard to dispute the opinion that King accomplished a lot in the name of Civil Rights. But was he worthy of a national holiday? Not sure about that one.
I do think that it's safe to state that Dr. King (or anyone, for that matter, who was heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s) would be disgusted by what the movement has de-evolved into today. Did you read about the small stink in Florida about how the minority population would stay away from the polls in 2004 because they were 'intimidated' by the voting machines? 40 years ago, people were facing beatings, dogs, and fire hoses just for the right to vote. Now, they're 'disenfranchised' just because of a fancy voting machine. I think that it's repugnant that the current crop of civil rights 'leaders' consistently sell their constituents short.
King is a classic case of a man who was NOT "for all seasons." The MLK of 1963 is what we celebrate, not the MLK of 1968. They were as different as night and day.
There's a reason Central and South America are sh!tholes compared to the US and Canada. The Spanish totally raped those countries.
Your basic argument is that the Civil Rights Movement was unnecessary, that things and attitudes were changing due to Robinson and other events immediately after WWII. I don't believe you are taking into account the resistance to some of these changes. Robinson faced daily racial abuse from baseball fans both north and south. And your scenario that segregation would be resolved if all of the blacks moved north discounts racism in the north and the fact that it takes at least a little money to move, something that many blacks in the south did not have.
"You pathetic excuse for a human being."
I try. You should find yourself a good white-pride website to post your chearful banter on.
True! Law profs can't say "drop and give me 20!" and since grading is done by anonymous exam, they can't retaliate, either!
You know who was responsible for "MLK" Day?
Ronald Reagan.
Most all Spanish colonies are steaming piles. Rape indeed... I thank God they didn't discover anything in Trinidad where my mother is from.
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.
The Kings apparently feel that due to the Rev's sacrifice, none of them should ever have to work or pay their own way, again. Imagine if the family of everyone who made the ultimate sacrifice felt that way? Oops, hundreds of 911 families already do!
mrustow: "That's nonsense! Where did you get that whopper -- World Weekly News?"
Grey Ghost II: 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. -----------------------------------------------------------
No sweat.
I'm afraid you're right about the federal legislation, especially regarding voting rights (In the face of the 14th Amendment, I'm not sure that the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act had anywhere near the same significance or effect). How much federal mischief could have been avoided, if only people who claimed to be for states' rights had simply respected the rights of blacks, as citizens of southern states?
Robinson faced daily racial abuse from baseball fans both north and south.
That would explain why Jackie threw in the towel, quit baseball, and the major leagues were never integrated.
Jackie Robinson prevailed! That's because, not to denigrate his heroism, but like many blacks of his generation, he had true grit. That so few blacks today have true grit, is why they have such trouble understanding Robinson's achievement. (As to your thought, "And do whites today have true grit?" Most whites today don't have it, and don't need it. But their forbears did.)
And your scenario that segregation would be resolved if all of the blacks moved north discounts racism in the north
No black man was ever kept out of the City College of New York, then academically the toughest college in America, on account of the color of his skin. But that wasn't the main reason that blacks called the North "the Promised Land." During the world wars, manpower shortages in northern factories created opportunities for blacks to work and make real money. Sure, the opportunities for new black migrants dried up, as soon as Johnny came marching home again, but most of the other blacks kept their jobs.
and the fact that it takes at least a little money to move, something that many blacks in the south did not have.
All it took was a train ticket. Read the histories, if you don't believe me. The typical black who headed North didn't have a pot to pee in.
In the classic episode of "Star Trek" entitled "I, Mudd" Mr. Spock drives two androids to distraction by saying to each in turn "I love you, however, I hate you." When the hated android points out that she is identical in every way to the loved one, Spock responds, "yes, that's why I hate you."
How can anyone in the world not see the irony? The two most similar ethno-cultural communities in world history continue to be treated in exactly the opposite ways. For most of their four hundred years of history together it was whites who were celebrated and Blacks who were demeaned. And now the liberals have come along and (I suppose) in the name of some grand compensatory scheme decided that the only way to correct that deplorable situation is to reverse it.
Nowadays while poor whites, Fundamentalist whites, uneducated whites, homophobic whites, bigoted whites, criminal whites, rightwing whites, and whites who can't speak good English are ridiculed as subhuman neanderthals, Blacks in each and every one of these categories are celebrated and encouraged.
Whites (by which I mean Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Celts, who are the main targets of liberal racism) who have no running water are funny and deserve their misery, Blacks who have no running water are romantic revolutionary figures on a par with Che Guevara.
While Fundamentalist whites are the modern counterpart of the medieval inquisitors and must be disabused of all supernaturalism in favor of European science, Fundamentalist Blacks are Rousseau's pre-religion "noble savages," not only not in need of de-supernaturalization, but whose supernaturalism is revolutionary and proto-Marxist (you know, like that of moslems and Irish Catholics).
While uneducated whites who talk like Snuffy Smith are a strange combination of clown and monster (as in the notorious "X-Files" episode about inbred rednecks in Pennsylvania), Black utilization of the speech of Uncle Remus is somehow a revolutionary act of Marxism-Leninism.
Bigotry and "homophobia" are "hate crimes" when allegedly committed by whites, but there is utter liberal silence at the mirror reflection of those attitudes by Blacks, who are mirror reflections of poor Southern whites (and vice versa).
A poor white who turns to crime supposedly does so despite the "fact" that he was born into the Ruling Class of the World (you know, like the people Robin Hood used to help), while poor Blacks do so as a revolutionary statement about social justice.
A poor white who insists that "the Jews" have stolen his country and fluoridated his drinking water is (rightly) dismissed as a raving lunatic. Contrariwise, the most successful and well-educated Blacks are actually encouraged by society to engage in JBS-level conspiracy theories about Jewish neocons inventing AIDS.
And finally, while "Ah'm proud o' mah race!" in the mouth of a white marks a benighted, toothless, high school dropout, the same statement is actually the crowning achievement of an Ivy League education for American Blacks.
It seems the ultimate liberal plan for Blacks is to turn them into white trash with melanin.
Yet the unpleasant fact of history is that American did not correct its faults when it should have before someone like King could come along. No. History will always and forever record the end of jim crow as a project of the most radical elements of American society. I'm sure there's some great universal justice at work behind all this. But of course, that same justice will eventually catch up with Blacks who now enjoy sitting on the sidelines while their white fellow-citizens and "co-religionists" are abused by their atheist and liberal friends.
Every year on MLK Day the topic of discussion is "the dream." But what is that dream? Is it a color blind society? A society in which the traditional roles are reversed in an attempt to attain a "karmic" tit for tat? Or is it a society of abortion on demand, homosexuality, attacks on the Ten Commandments, etc.? How long can the Black masses remain willfully ignorant of the fact that the people who claim King as their own (including most members of his family and his old associates) are the very ones who are promoting the most radical attacks on Biblical morality today? How long will the Black masses see all this inflicted on us all in the name of "the dream" and continue to tell themselves that King was merely a Black Billy Sunday?
Of course this type of cultural blindness applies universally. Most poor white Protestants are convinced that the Founding Fathers were all "born-again chr*stians!" It's kinda hard to fault one and leave the other unmentioned.
Ultimately, King was a false messiah, a "messiah" whose death was supposed to redeem all, all but in fact only redeemed a some and actually marks others as accursed and beyond redemption. The real irony is how eerily like J*sus his cult as become. To this day devout chr*stians cannot see the irreverence J*sus represents to Torah Judaism just as Fundamentalist Blacks cannot see Dr. King as anything other than a "born again chr*stian." How ironic that the greatest iconoclasts and smashers become icons and idols.
I don't know if the Fundamentalist Black masses will ever be able to understand this, but the adoration of King by people who in the main blaspheme heroes makes him the hero for people who don't believe in heroes, just as racism has become the sin for people who don't believe in sin (and who deny that all mankind is descended from Adam and Eve).
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