Posted on 01/15/2004 3:30:27 PM PST by denydenydeny
Edited on 06/29/2004 7:10:15 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
ATLANTA (Reuters) - Several hundred protesters loudly booed President Bush on Thursday as he laid a wreath at the grave of Martin Luther King on the anniversary of the civil rights leader's birth.
"Bush go home" and "peace not war" the protesters shouted from behind a barrier of parked buses across the street from King's grave.
(Excerpt) Read more at wireservice.wired.com ...
A pity, that.
Were he alive today, we may have never heard of Jackson and Clinton.
What kind of fallacious reasoning is that? Were they communists? Were they in league with godless secularists who planned for a violent overthrow of the United States of America?
You're right! I guess they are employed.
From the online article, "Honoring the King Myth" - http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1999/01-04-99/king_myth.htm
In 1983, shortly after Congress approved the bill which would create a national holiday honoring the late civil rights activist Martin Luther King, former New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thomson sent a letter to his old friend Ronald Reagan, urging the President not to sign the bill for a holiday honoring "the memory of a man of immoral character whose frequent associations with leading agents of communism is well established."
In response to Thomson, the President wrote: "On the national holiday you mentioned, I have the reservations you have, but here the perception of too many people is based on an image, not reality. Indeed, to them the perception is reality." (Emphasis in original.) In other words, Mr. Reagan knew that Martin Luther King was, in reality, unworthy of national adulation. Nonetheless, on November 2, 1983, he put his signature on the bill and the holiday became law.
Communist Connections
Since, as Mr. Reagan candidly observed, the perception of King had become the reality, it makes sense to go back and look at the stark reality of the man J. Edgar Hoover once dubbed "the most notorious liar in the country." During the Kennedy Administration, Kings connections with Communists were well known to both JFK and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In fact, Bobby Kennedy with his liberal credentials overflowing directed the FBI to institute surveillance of King, including wiretaps of telephone calls. While much of the information gathered by the FBI remains sealed by court order until 2027, some of it has come to light.
On December 8, 1975, for instance, the Washington Post pinpointed New York attorney Stanley Levinson as the "important secret member of the Communist Party" who was discovered by the FBI to have been Kings mentor, financier, and confidante for 12 years. The Levinson relationship began during Kings meteoric rise to national prominence. In her memoirs, Kings widow described Levinsons contributions to her husbands work as "indispensable." Levinson even wrote speeches for King.
In 1957, perhaps stimulated by Levinson, King attended and taught at a training school in Tennessee where he was photographed with Communists Carl and Anne Braden, Abner Berry, and Aubrey Williams.
In 1960, King hired one Hunter Pitts ODell to his staff. When ODells position as a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party was revealed in 1961, King supposedly fired him. But it turned out that rather than discharging this key Red, he had transferred and promoted ODell to a higher post within Kings Southern Christian Leadership Conference. When ODell was again exposed, King went through the same routine of announcing his dismissal. But a check by United Press International found him still employed by Kings organization.
Stumping for Hanoi
On April 4, 1967, King demonstrated the influence Communists in his organization (such as "principal aide" Fred Shuttlesworth) had enjoyed when he savaged U.S. policy in Vietnam during a fiery speech at Riverside Church in New York. King went so far as to liken the conduct of U.S. forces in Vietnam to that of the "Germans in the concentration camps of Europe." Life magazine characterized the speech as "a demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." Syndicated black columnist Carl Rowan wrote that King "has alienated many of the Negros friends and armed the Negros foes." Leftist John Roche of Americans for Democratic Action fame claimed that the speech showed that King had "thrown in with the commies." The Washington Post commented that the speech "had diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people."
But not everyone was appalled by Kings inflammatory rhetoric. Writing in the Communist Partys Political Affairs, Party public relations chief Arnold Johnson enthusiastically quoted King as describing the U.S. as the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." The Communist press had earlier extolled Kings violence-producing marches and demonstrations, events that customarily led to property damage and loss of life in black neighborhoods.
In October 1988, J.A. Parker of the Washington-based Lincoln Institute, an organization of Black conservatives, refused to buy into the phony image of King and pointed to evidence showing that King had been "under communist discipline." Parker insisted that the "King holiday is an insult to all Americans black or white." And he launched a drive to have Congress repeal it. A Congress representing truth and the interests of all Americans would do exactly that.
And that's supposed to mean exactly... what? I didn't post my "sentiments", I posted facts; it doesn't matter whether you "share" them or not. Your job is to refute them, demonstrate them in error or simply admit that the facts are correct.
Neither do you share the sentiments of President Reagan:
"On the national holiday you mentioned, I have the reservations you have, but here the perception of too many people is based on an image, not reality. Indeed, to them the perception is reality." (Italics in original; Bold is mine.)
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