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
Of course, that would mean people would have to actually KNOW who the hell he was and what he did.
Why was that a sucker punch? I thought it a legitimate question.
Well said.
What was good? How about his belief that a black man should be entitled to the same rights as a white man? That he should be able to vote and to attend the same state funded universities as a white man. That he shouldn't be denied a place at a lunch counter or a seat on a bus merely because of his color. That he should be free to advance as far as his abilities could take him without being hampered by his color. I think all those things are good things. Don't you?
So he sat on his ass until the media said, "Go launch a bus boycott in Birmingham?" The media said, "Go march in Chicago to protest discrimination in housing. Getting hit in the head with a brick will provide us a great new story. Is that what you're trying to tell us?
All, I might add, as direct products of the "dream" as it was actualized by King and his fellow crusaders.
King's 'dream' was equal opportunity and equal rights for all regardless of their race. Sorry if that upsets you so.
I’ve been waiting for this article to appear, or re appear whatever. I’m not saying big changes were not needed.
King may have been pure when he started, but let’s forget about his personal flaws for a moment. He had been radicalized, and captured by the hard left communists after a while, and had become an organ for their cause.
He had become another tool to bring down America by dividing us.
IMHO the question was unanswerable.
TommyDale said ...
"I have always wondered why so many people held this womanizing, plagiarizing Marxist in such high esteem. No one had the guts to tell it like it really was. I think the black community has many other leaders and heroes that had a better record in the community."
Non-Sequitur replied ... "Like?"
We were referring to the 60's, mind you.
Do you have a few on the tip of your tongue?
Malcom X, Everett LeRoi Jones [aka Imanu Amiri Baraka ... aka Amiri Baraka], and Stokely Carmichael don't count. ;)
Jackie Robinson. :-)
Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams
Nevertheless, his memory is severely tarnished by his unwarranted attacks on his own country
** There was a lot to attack whether this author wants to believe it or not. If I was living in the South back then, I don't know if I would have been happy about the Vietnam War either. Imagine going to stop communism in another country, but not taking care of your own country? Bizarre. I don't think they were unwarranted at all.
That's for sure!
I'm happy there was a Jackie Robinson in baseball, and Willie Mays, and Larry Doby, and Roy Campanella, and ... ;)
Plus, Robinson was an anti-Cmmunist Republican.
Right,and most of the violence came from white mobs that went crazy over the fact that he was in those towns to bring some justice to a VERY unjust system,Jim Crow laws.
I don't recall white mobs rioting. I do recall every major city had problems with blacks looting. Detroit, Los Angeles (Watts), Miami were not white mobs.
Do you think the people sitting at the segregated lunch counters were greeted with peace and love?
MLK B-Day has never been anything more then a paid day off for gov't workers. It was a crumb thrown to blacks to shut them up.
bump
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/low/dates/stories/october/1/newsid_2538000/2538169.stm
Perhaps this will jog your memory as it seems to be very selective.
I remember that, but the comment earlier was that it was the "white mobs" that did the rioting. I pointed out that the inner city riots and looting was done by black mobs. I think YOU may be the one with "selective memory".
I agree with the Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Larry Doby and Roy Campanella examples. Now who do they have? Take a good look at the criminal elements in the NBA, NFL and MLB and professional boxing. Tiger Woods is a good example today, as was Reggie White.
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