Posted on 01/23/2005 7:33:44 AM PST by Lando Lincoln
Another January, another Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. The observance has to a great extent deteriorated, as have many other holidays, into just a paid day off for people with government jobs and an opportunity for retailers to snatch whatever available credit remains on bankcards.
At the same time, there will be no shortage of worshipful speeches and articles about Dr. King, some of them bordering on idolatry. For the man has moved to the pantheon of secular saints.
Politicians of all persuasions have jumped on the MLK bandwagon. Last year we frequently were reminded that it was Ronald Reagan who signed the legislation establishing the King holiday. The President had misgivings, but was shrewd enough to recognize a veto-proof juggernaut when he saw one.
It’s easy to forget that when the minister was alive he was tremendously controversial. Questioning his methods or motives was not beyond the pale.
Today, saying anything that remotely could be construed as critical of Martin Luther King, Jr. is a certain ticket to being branded a racist or being measured for a tinfoil hat.
And I’m speaking here not about bringing up his alleged marital infidelities or his association with known Communists or even asking why the FBI’s tapings of the civil rights leader — authorized by liberal icon Bobby Kennedy — were sealed for 50 years.
As someone who lived through the period, what I remember most about Martin Luther King, Jr. is what he said about this Nation that now reveres him.
He charged in 1967 that the United States was " the greatest purveyor of violence in the world." He claimed that in Vietnam "we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe." He asserted that Americans might have killed a million Vietnamese civilians, "mostly children."
In the same speech, delivered in New York City’s Riverside Church, he detailed his objections to the Vietnam War, a struggle that many citizens viewed as a valiant effort to save people from the horrors of Communism.
The very first reason he cited for his opposition was this:
"There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."
King’s first objection to Vietnam, then, was that it diverted resources from the war on poverty. According to him, anti-poverty programs had been "eviscerated."
That wasn’t accurate even at the time he pronounced it. Lyndon Johnson declared the war on poverty in 1964. By the year King gave his Riverside Church speech, total welfare outlays by the federal government had almost doubled over those three years.
Spending on almost every facet of the welfare state had escalated. More tax dollars were being devoted to education, jobs training, community development and social services. Eviscerated? Not hardly.
Even liberals had qualms about King’s speech. Not with his ignorance of welfare expenditures, but with his irresponsible comments on Vietnam. The Washington Post editorialized that his speech "was filled with bitter and damaging allegations and inferences that he did not and could not document."
The editorial ended by noting: "Many who have listened to him with respect will never again accord him the same confidence. He has diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country and to his people. And that is a great tragedy."
Martin Luther King exhibited a steadfast devotion to equal rights. He was a man of courage and eloquence. That can’t be taken away from him.
Nevertheless, his memory is severely tarnished by his unwarranted attacks on his own country and his naive faith in the efficacy of the welfare state. Acknowledging those aspects of his crusade isn’t racist. Just reality.
This appears in the January 13, 2005 Oak Lawn (IL) Reporter. Mike Bates is the author of Right Angles and Other Obstinate Truths, which is available at Barnesandnoble.com, Booksamillion.com, Amazon.com or iUniverse.com and can be ordered through most bookstores. http://www.michaelmbates.com
That was a different revolt. The blacks were fighting the tyranny of the Jim Crow laws. Everyone should have used restraint back then. Including the people that were lynching blacks.
You originally were complaining about the violence of the sixties. The point is that tyranny breeds violence--whether it was tyranny of the Crown or tyranny of other citizens.
I don't remember any tyranny in the 60's. There certainly was some revolting things going on in the South, but not elsewhere. I don't see that as a reason to riot and burn cities in the North and West. There is still too much hatred toward whites, which only causes resentment toward blacks. Not all of us are guilty, you know.
Then, you would not have had any reason to cause a riot back then. I guess you could have used any bathroom, water fountain, seat, or pool you chose to. You were never considered a second-class citizen. I guess you just won't ever get it.
I don't think YOU get it. Not everyone experienced that, not even blacks. Some did, I don't deny that. But what happened to blacks in the South then didn't happen to them in New York, Chicago, Watts, Detroit, or even in Miami. It was an EXCUSE to loot and burn, just like the Rodney King trial. That was really smart -- burn down their own neighborhoods. Real smart.
The world has gone insane, my friend, because it depends on the relativist mishmash like what the meaning of is, is. historical revisionists don't like the harshness of philosophical absolutes or inconvenient facts and the Constitution is studded with them. It is much easier for some, to imagine that humanity is evolving and that the Constitution must be 'interpreted' as a flexible and living document malleable enough to fit the times. Those that do would really be better off in Europe or some other 'enlightened' society where their organizing doctrines can be changed as often as they do their underwear. Perhaps more often.
No thanks.
Me? I'm in the it says what it means camp because humanity will always remain the same and organized power will always seek to usurp humanity's God-given rights and freedom. I've got a sneakin' suspicion you and I are poles apart.
MLK like JFK was lucky enough to get killed BEFORE all the real truth about both came out--ergo a saint.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.