"After the Declaration of Independence was signed, Virginia statesman John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson: 'We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?'
Much time has passed since Jefferson arrived for his inauguration. The years and changes accumulate. But the themes of this day he would know: our nation's grand story of courage and its simple dream of dignity.
We are not this story's author, who fills time and eternity with His purpose. Yet His purpose is achieved in our duty, and our duty is fulfilled in service to one another."
Close enough that my point still stands: Bush and almost all Republicans continue to pay deserved homage to our nations founders.
I think that you are basically correct in that. But there is a fundamental antithesis between the Collectivist egalitarianism of Martin Luther King, and what the American tradition is all about. The Founding Fathers would have had no truck with King--none!
On the recent Monday holiday, a number of people posted remarks from some of King's less quoted words, claiming to show that he was not pro-Communist, because he took exception to some of the totalitarian tendencies of Communism. In courtesy to those regular posters at this venue, I will accept their point. This does not change the fact that he saw Government as having a duty to level Society; to redistribute wealth through various social interventions, and to force the acceptance of persons on the basis of collectivist determined norms, even in the private sector, even at the expense of rights of free choice, free association and normal human preference. These ideas, if not Communist with a large "C"--and I have never thought that King was a Communist, only that he was used by the Communists and others on the far Left as a rallying figure for their collectivist ideology--certainly embraces the central themes of a Socialist order.
Bush makes a mistake when he reaches out on the basis of such a philosopher! There have been truly great American Negro leaders, such as Booker T. Washington--men who shared the ethos of the American mainstream. Outreach is a perfectly worthy goal, but it should not be on the basis of giving up the farm to save the barn.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site