[Tailgunner Joe]

Honoring the King Myth

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[BenLurkin]

A man worthy of honor,

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Very interesting! This article shows that Kings true legacy IS someone like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, unfortunately.

[CyberCowboy777]

King said of Reagan, "When a Hollywood performer, lacking distinction even as an actor, can become a leading war hawk candidate for the presidency, only the irrationalities induced by war psychosis can explain such a turn of events."

When was this?

[Restorer]

Why is a man once reviled by the Right now celebrated by it as a hero?

Because the Right was wrong when it opposed the civil rights movement of the 50s and (early) 60s?

I wonder if the author is attempting to say that conservatives of the time were right. He never explicitly says so, but the article strikes me as vaguely Lottian.

[sharktrager]

during the 50s and 60s, the Right almost unanimously opposed the civil rights movement

...except for those pesky Republicans in the House and Senate who passed the Civil Rights Act, while a majority of Democrats (including Al Gore's father) voted against it.

[2nd_Amendment_Defender]

I do not believe some of the information in the above article. But I do believe that Martin Luther King was an adulterer and supported affirmative action. Affirmative action is racism against people of caucasion decent.

[Captainpaintball]

Bflr. This is gonna get me in a heap of trouble!

[Cowboy Bob]

In addition to his dissertation many of his major speeches, such as "I Have a Dream," were plagiarized,...

If this is true, how could the family hold copyrights on them?

[RLK]

Why is a man once reviled by the Right now celebrated by it as a hero?

-------------------------------

Because the lies, distortions, and purposefull omissions created to transform King into a saint have grown so powerful that few people have the courage to confront them. And because few people now have enough respect for themselves and the constitution to either recognize or care about the infringements upon personal choice or individual freedom that the civil rights movement imposed.

[marron]

The times were complicated.

That the old Jim Crow South was immoral should be plain on the face of it. But if you were a "conservative" from the South, you probably did not see it at the time, or if you saw it, you probably didn't see a solution.

This is where terms such as "conservative" and "rightist" get confusing. Jim Crow was a Democratic Party institution. The oppression of Black citizens can be reasonably laid directly at the feet of Democrats, who resisted extending full citizenship rights to Blacks for most of a century following the end of Reconstruction. If you consider that the Democrats were also the Slavery party in the south, and the slavery appeasement party in the North, their history of racial oppression goes back considerably further.

We use "conservative" typically to refer to classic liberalism, whigism, which is to say respect for individual liberty and limited government. The article refers to the proponents of Jim Crow as "conservatives" and "Rightists", but this is correct only if by conservative you mean "traditionalist" rather than "classic liberal". And rightist is correct if what you mean is nationalist.

It is this confusion of terms that allows Democrats to avoid responsibility for 150 years of racialist oppression, while ignoring that Republicans fought for color-blind citizenship all throughout the bad old days, and continue to fight for it into the present day.

The "states rights" issue also complicates the discussion. Republicans believe in the 9th and 10th ammendments, which means that they certainly believe in "states rights". Power is intended to be divided between different levels, and different departments, as a bulwark against abuse by any one institution. If the feds are out of control, you have state and local law to provide a check on their power. Likewise, if local authorities are out of control, there are state and federal authorities that can be called on to intervene.

But for Democrats, "States Rights" was perverted into a justification for the oppression of their black citizens.

Republicans always opposed this perverted version of "states rights". And it is this perversion that now makes it difficult to have a reasoned discussion of the real, constitutional, issues. Any discussion of the 9th and 10th ammendments recalls the old Democrat position, and almost ends the discussion before it starts. Again, its a propaganda ploy, intended to lay Democrat crimes at Republican feet. We must not sit still for it.

Finally, most civil rights legislation has been passed by the Republicans, historically, sometimes with and sometimes without Democrat support. Republicans were certainly uneasy with certain provisions of the 1965 law, on constitutional grounds, and I well remember the concerns and the discussions. The party was torn between the need to be faithful to the constitution, and the desire to put a quick end to Jim Crow.

It is sad and sick to see the Democratic party now claiming credit for a fight that they were on the wrong side of for a century, back when to be a Republican in a southern town was to be a very lonely man.

As for Martin Luther King, to prove that he was a flawed man is to prove nothing. Jim Crow was immoral. To fight it was dangerous and lonely, and I have nothing but respect for anyone who got out of their easy chairs and into the fight. We all believe that, if it came right down to it, we would be willing to put our lives on the line for freedom. But it did come down to it, and it was a flawed preacher, and his flawed followers, who stood up. For all of his flaws, he is the bigger man than his detractors, who were content to see oppression continue into yet another generation.

His views on some issues insured that he would never be a Republican. But his opposition to Jim Crow put him squarely in line with the Republican party principles, and squarely against the institutional Democrat party . We should not now let the Democrats tell our history. They have a lot to answer for. Lets let them answer for it.

[joesnuffy]

Seditious material...even if it is the truth

[Holden Magroin]

Right on. In addition to playing the race card (calling the philosophy of Barry Goldwater, whose father was Jewish, "Hitlerism") and being a dupe for North Vietnamese propaganda, King was a major philanderer - hardly a person who should be honored with a federal holiday. Even Mr. RINO himself, John McCain, voted against the creation of a King holiday.

It's about time conservatives quit looking for approval from so-called civil rights activists by lauding King; groups like the NAACP don't even like him. While King seemed to advocate integration, the race-hustling poverty pimps want black college students to have separate-but-equal graduation ceremonies, dorms, and studies departments. Groups like the NAACP also insist on calling blacks "African-Americans" in order to stress that they're "Africans" first and Americans second. People like Bill Bennett and Jack Kemp need to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that the race hustlers don't share their vision of a colorblind America.

Also, conservatives right here at Free Republic need to quit boasting of how Republicans helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forced private "public" accomodations like hotels and restaurants to serve minorities. Forcing one group of people to associate with another is tyrannical and un-American.

[per loin]

For an insight into the manufacturing of MLK out of Michael King (his real name) read Ellison's "The Invisible Man"

[WaterDragon]

First of all, conservatives and Republicans did NOT oppose the Civil Rights Act. They fought to get such a bill introduced over and over and were always blocked by the Democrats. What the Republicans opposed were some of the provisions of the Act which turned out just as they suspected -- reverse racism.

Secondly, Martin Luther King will forever be one of my greatest heroes regardless of any vices or imperfections. What he accomplished was astounding and a tremendous service to this country.

[WaterDragon]

ALSO....King would NEVER have condoned the whoring of the black people pursued by such trash as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

[Red Jones]

very interesting article; I read some quotes from MLK in some memos he wrote to jesse jackson where he opposed racial quotas and was chastising jackson for supporting them. Who knows where MLK would've been on all the issues if he'd lived.

[x]

Good discussion. There's much that's true in this. King was neither a conservative nor a free-marketeer. As a member of the civil rights establishment he could have been expected to follow its drift to affirmative action and quotas. And he was a plagarist.

MLK Jr's attitudes towards Christianity and Communism can only be understood in the context of his times. Of course he wasn't a Christian Coalition Christian, but that's hardly the only kind. He was in the liberal tradition of the mainline Churches of the 1950s and 1960s. That Christianity seemed almost to evaporate into secular social activism, but it had the imprimatur of the churches at the time. King had been on record against Marxism in the 1950s, but also grew increasingly anti-anti-Communist. The variety of positions on the left in those days all tend to look the same now, but there were distinctions, especially between those who were philosophically Marxist and those who weren't. As the 1960s developed, some who had earlier opposed Marxist materialism were drawn into a kind of "popular front" with Marxists.

I question whether King deserves his own national holiday, but still affirm his generally positive influence on American life, in spite of many of his ideas. King pursued his vision non-violently and allowed us to pick and choose which parts of it we wished to realize. Perhaps as a representative of a repressed minority he didn't have so much choice. But contrast King with the Confederates that this Rockwell site so often celebrates and one can see the value and praiseworthiness of his willingness to work peacefully and within the system. One can question Martin Luther King's elevation to a national and conservative icon and still respect his demonstration that there are other ways to effect change or defend one's rights than taking up the gun.

[Centurion2000]

It's kind of funny in hindsight but one place that I worked at actually had a James Earl Ray Appreciation Day in place of MLK day.

[fatima]

Bump for later read