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.
Its 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 Im speaking here not about bringing up his alleged marital infidelities or his association with known Communists or even asking why the FBIs 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 Citys 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."
Kings 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 wasnt 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 Kings 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 cant 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 isnt 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
I have the guts to tell it like it was. No historical figure is or was perfect, as is no human. Many had skeltons in their closets...affairs, dubious liasons, etc. However, MLK was a catalyst for equal rights in America. He did not do this alone, but he was the one pushed forward as a leader.
Many can talk, as we do here; but few have the tenacity or public charisma to actually effect change. You don't have to love him, you don't even have to like him; however, credit should be given where credit is due. Martin Luther King opened the eyes to injustice in America.
Many gave their lives so that all America's children have the freedoms and liberties that they do. When people are praying for the troops that fight this day to stamp out oppression in the world, they pray for the troops as whole. There is no selection process in that.
Just as MLK himself was assassinated, maybe his character was, as well. Even if he was not perfect, he was human. He had the courage to follow through on his convictions, to correct an injustice. While some people may find it distasteful, he was not just a black leader, he was an American leader. That, IMO, is telling it like it was.
I believe that King's role was to step into and solidify a simmering movement already under way. King did NOT invent this movement any more than he directed Rosa Parks. The creation of the SLC was an attempt to create a coalition and obtain a unified front for the national media. King learned, somewhere, the tactics and techniques of doing just that. Because of this, he is pointed to as the luminary of the age in just the same way as Jesse Jackson is today and, of course, this was also why it was so important for JJ to steal the mantle and annointing ASAP.
Ah, so if we could only return the the world of the 50's then all that would go away?
Coleman Young. He was the best at fostering understanding.
The choice would be to hang these criminals without a trial, or record the crimes? Oh, that was not a written law. You forgot about those hangings, when blacks only needed to be suspected of a crime. I'll take today's society any day. Let's talk about the blacks today that succeed.
In other words, provide leadership and a voice to people who had been suffering too long under an unjust situation? So what was wrong with that? Character flaws aside, he did step up and provide that leadership. And he and other leaders with him paid a price for that in beatings and jailings and more than a few assasinations. Are we not a better country overall for it? Someone mentioned Justice Thomas and Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice before. Those three could never have risen to the position that they have under the conditions prevelent in the south, and much of the North, at the time of King and the Civil Rights movement.
Sad that MLK, has been diluted to Jessie Jackson, and Al Sharpton.
Truly, Black Monday.
See post #9:
"In the final analysis...it is up to the machinery of the culture to decide what he was and what he accomplished. So far, the Left has been in firm control of that legacy and they have sainted him with honors far, far beyond his ken. In any event, he was the lightning rod for social change and a good deal of that was good and necessary. A good deal of it, however, was just plain bad and we still suffer the ill effects of the 'moral' crusade of those times...In the future, the debate may be rejoined with the restraint of political correctness gone. Then the true measure of the man will be taken - when all those that would bludgeon legitimate questions are finally seen as the true bigots of the present age."
Well I'm always willing to learn. Just what of what King stood for was just plain bad?
"In other words, provide leadership and a voice to people who had been suffering too long..."
No, those are your words. What he did, he did because he was annointed by the national media - not because of his personal moral merit. Today's annointed leadership in the persons of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are products of the same machine.
Ask yourself this question: Why was the party of Jim Crow, the KKK, lynchings and all of the repression you speak about so closely allied with that age and movement in spite of their historic crimes and their actual resistence (Against CRA: %D's > %R's) to change?
Somehow Democrats and black leadership were able to conceal all of that history and baggage and transform traditionally Republican voting blacks into a stable of state dependent wards. Today, after nearly $6 trillion dollars spent in erradicating poverty and the supposed ills of racial injustice, we now have a legacy of more poor, greater social disintegration and demographics amongst black America that they may never recover from. All, I might add, as direct products of the "dream" as it was actualized by King and his fellow crusaders.
"Just what of what King stood for was just plain bad?"
A better question would be: What was good?
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. By using your yardstick of moral righteousness, any historic figure should be weighed solely by the content of their words - not by the content of their character or the consequences of their actions.
In my view, King role did that was positive little beyond reminding us of our Constitutional duty to provide equality under the law - something, I might add, Americans have ALWAYS led the world in. His abruptly terminated legacy and his followers have wrought positive mayhem in their zeal for the "dream" and its suppose utopia.
ping
Some people forget that the civil rights movement was not monolithic. There were groups like the Black Panthers who openly advocated violence. It is our good fortune as a country that Martin Luther King emerged as the most prominent leader of the movement. MLK was non-violent, and had the charisma (or whatever you want to call it) to convince others to stand up and be non-violent with him. Pretty extraordinary if you ask me.
As for his flaws - so what? As far as I know, there has only been one leader in the history of the world who was not flawed, Jesus. Reading the Bible reveals that God often chooses some mightily flawed people to do his work.
"For example?"
in contrast to that foolish statement, wasn't MLK booed and jeered at the watts riots because he spoke out against the riots.
The liberals have developed a cult of King, based on revised history that overlooks or hides the ugliness that was Martin Luther King, Jr. These are the same liberals who are trying to invent revised history to trash our Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and the great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.
Go figure!
It is a shame that "is the Martin Luther King, Jr" you recall. I don't respect MLK for what the revisionist liberals do for, or against him. I respect the movement that he led.
I remember being five years old, and my mother telling me that there were separate bathrooms and drinking fountains for different people. At the age of five, I found that incredible. But then, I am from the North.
Isn't it ironic that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King were assassinated for the great things that they did?! Today, I am now much older than five, but I am just as incredulous that some people still just don't get it. More than that it makes me both sad, mad, and sick.
BTW, it is not only the liberals that revise Martin Luther King's life. There are many who gleefully use character assassination, just as they use bullets. I am thankful that these people are only few and far between.
If America ALWAYS held up its duty to provide equality, Martin Luther King would not have had a platform. The fact that there were many who believed, and still believe, that they are "chosen" Americans, is the reason that civil rights are even being discussed here.
It is not the truth that bothers me - no man should be idolized (See Lincoln, Lee, FDR, Reagan) because it ignores the truth and also make ANY critisism impossible.
I am just wondering about his motives.
I pick today, thanks.
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