Is Ann Coulter Right About the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King?

http://www.foxnews.com ^ | 6/`6/11 | Juan Williams

[BCrago66]

In her new best-seller Ann Coulter breaks with the politically correct history of the civil rights movement by openly criticizing Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The always provocative Coulter makes the case that King’s embrace of mass street protests, specifically breaking the law by staging marches without permits and gaining public sympathy by purposely putting children in the way of vicious dogs and blasts from power water hoses used by rabid segregationists, is a prime example of how liberals throughout history get their way by using angry, inflammatory mob behavior.

[BCrago66]

I've seen a lot of negative comments on Juan Willimas on FR over the years, but he always seemed to me to be one of the more honest liberals; it was his honesty and unwillingness to always toe the orthodox Left line that got him booted off NPR. Here's Williams concedes "...when Ann is right, Ann can be devastatingly right," and he essentially agrees with Ann Coulter's take on MLK v. Thurgood Marshall.

(This was published on 6/16, but I can't find it on FR, so I think I'm the 1st to post it.)

[Tax-chick]

Is Ann Coulter right? Are the facts what Ann Coulter says they are? Of course. Nobody ever disputes Ann Coulter’s facts.

Is one required to accept her interpretation? No, but if one can’t argue against it using facts and logic, that certainly says something ...

I think the uncritical deification of MKL Jr. has been, in a spiritual sense, the invitation of evil into the soul. The celebration of promiscuity and violence against women, for example, is part of MLK’s life.

[Fzob]

Sometimes Coulter can be an idiot.

[wintertime]

I am too much of a “CRANK” for Ann. I gave up on her a while ago.

[9YearLurker]

Yes, JW is a mixed bag, but a good part of him is uncommonly fair to the side he tends to disagree with.

[LS]

In "A Patriot's History of the United States," we more or less side with Williams. King was brilliant in that he recognized America's basic goodness and used it to force moral Americans to do the right thing. So it matters if the marchers were only adults? Somehow turning water cannons and dogs on peaceful adults denied the right to sit at a freakin' lunch counter is reasonable? And let's see, how is one to get a permit in a state that doesn't even recognize you as a citizen because of your color? Does ANYONE think Reagan would have tolerated color bans? Not when he was in office, and not when he was in any position of power he didn't.

King understood that America was fundamentally good, unlike the tyrant who is in office today. Too bad Coulter is clueless on this one.

[LibLieSlayer]

Release all of the FBI documents surrounding King and the CR movement and let America decide for herself... but they will NEVER unseal those documents.

LLS

[ladyjane]

The man was dishonest. In addition to being an adulterer he plagiarized his dissertation. Boston University should have rescinded his degree but they were afraid of the backlash.

[StonyBurk]

Isn’t that true of us all? A.C. IMO is like most extremely intelligent people sometimes their brilliance overides the ability in all to be an idiot. As stated by another (put another way) it is not her facts that get her in trouble its her presentation. I am going to hear Martin Luther Kings controversial kin (Dr.Alveda King on the 8th -the Lady blackballed by the others of that legacy for daring to say including homosexuals in the Civil Rights movement would be the death of that movement.(and she is right too-in that)

[LS]

No one I know has EVER "celebrated" King's womanizing, or his flirtation with communist hangers-on (though it's absolutely clear he himself was not a communist party member).

That's a long way from Coulter's idiotic accusation that because blacks didn't have permits in racist states that didn't even see them as citizens they could not address injustices. And it's this crap that gives conservatism a bad name.

[BCrago66]

You might be right. I’ll have to read that chapter of Coulter’s book, or listen to it on the audiobook version I downloaded the other day.

[cripplecreek]

King was a mixed bag as are all mere mortals.

Personally I find Malcom X to be a more interesting individual and would be interested in seeing where he would have settled ideologically.

[Happy Rain]

MLK2 was the first and only “good” communist.
“Demonic” mob mentality was,believe it or not,vital to bringing black civil rights to the fore and even though King was a socialist serial adulterer,he almost single handily made the negro race in America...well...AMERICAN!
Sure we still have race problems but King destroyed INSTITUTIONAL racism in America.
As a middle-age white man of the South,I can't stand Snoop Dog but I treasure Marvin Gaye—I despise Eric Holder yet admire Justice Thomas—and race has nothing to do with it.
THAT is the King legacy.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

The nightly images of the violence were used as effectively as the network TV-Marxist "bringing the war to America's living rooms" had on swaying opinion about the war in Viet Nam.

Understand that TV was still "new" in those days at least in the sense of affordable color TV. There they were.. who could dispute it. Right there on TV were the films and in many cases the reports from men who had earned their reputations during W.W.2 -- it had to all be absolute facts.

.. or like in my case when I disputed TV network "news" they reported another fact just for me: "we're professionals and you're not."

Damn right violence was used.

And to be critical of it (Support your local police) was to be racist -- besides it wasn't looting it was people collecting their layaway goods. (They had been overcharged for years and years and years and the overcharges were payments. So said some on TV network "news.")

[oh8eleven]

he always seemed to me to be one of the more honest liberals
No such creature exists.

[GoCards]

I tend to agree. The journey Malcom X took was a much more in depth and interesting full circle, if you will.

[Dacus943]

"Sometimes Coulter can be an idiot."

And sometimes, those who read Ann Coulter's works - are idiots! ;>

[tomkat]

..purposely putting children in the way of ...

This tactic seems to have caught on with some in the camel crowd.

[cripplecreek]

Malcom X wouldn’t have become a Reagan conservative but I do think he would have become a moderating force to tone down the rhetoric of the Justice Brothers.

[Maine Mariner]

Yes, it would have been interesting to see how Malcom X evolved. I wish Eldrige Cleaver had lived longer, before he died he was being vilified by the left.