Posted on 01/19/2004 4:40:57 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
In the politically tumultuous 1960s, the brazen young minister from Atlanta seemed almost intent on courting controversy.
From his support of gay rights to his disdain for warfare, Martin Luther King Jr. ruffled feathers with everyone from his sometimes-allies in the NAACP to the military, which was then embroiled in the Vietnam War.
Decades later, King's willingness to "speak truth to power" still resonates with Rabbi Elias Lieberman of the Falmouth Jewish Congregation.
"We live in a country where, every day, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer," Lieberman told the audience yesterday at the Federated Church in Hyannis, invoking King's spirit of confrontation.
"And, despite his rhetorical promises to the contrary, we have a president intent on leaving growing numbers of children behind."
Lieberman was one of several speakers yesterday to lace the church's annual Martin Luther King Jr. event with unflinching criticism of the country's leadership.
Between 200 and 300 people attended the annual service, which was started by the Cape Cod branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1971. The event was co-sponsored by the Cape Cod Council of Churches.
Opening the service, NAACP president John L. Reed criticized President Bush's decision to pursue war in Afghanistan and Iraq while also promising to expand the space program.
"I am sick and tired of hearing about compassionate conservatism," said Reed, slamming a catch phrase of the Republican administration. "Please don't let it be said ... that a mission to the moon and Mars was more important than a scholarship to college."
Holding up a placard marked WWDKD - short for "What would Dr. King do?" - Lieberman tore into Bush because "funds desperately needed in this country are sucked into a black hole of military spending.
"Dr. King would speak truth to power," Lieberman said. "Grounded in the fiery zeal of the Hebrew prophets and the teachings of Jesus, Dr. King refused to hold back in his condemnation of moral bankruptcy in our political leadership. We can do no less."
Meanwhile, Diane Casey-Lee, executive director of the Cape Cod Council of Churches, praised Cape residents for sharing in King's vision of a "beloved community" that rallies behind its most vulnerable citizens.
"And I hold up a vision of a Wellness Center for the Homeless, the creation of a 10-year plan to end homelessness on Cape Cod and the islands, and a transitional program offering hope for a new future," she said.
Mashpee resident and keynote speaker Dana Mohler-Faria, president of Bridgewater State College, praised the good works of people who see themselves as members of the "brotherhood of man."
"Bill Gates. Microsoft Founder. Billionaire, many, many times over. He's still a young man, and yet he has already given away more than half of his net worth," Mohler-Faria said. "More than $25 billion to promote better health and learning throughout the globe."
He also recounted the experience of a Bridgewater custodian who helped a frustrated student pass a math class by meeting with her daily during their lunch hour. The two became fast friends, and have remained in touch even after the young woman's graduation.
"In this way, the billionaire industrialist is no different than the civil rights leader, and the humble custodian is just as capable of affecting positive change in the lives of others as the most well-heeled philanthropist," he said.
Well, I'll say it. A mission to the Moon and Mars is more important than a scholarship to college. As the saying goes, give a hungry man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime.
Space is adventure and exploration. It draws people to excellence like nothing else can. Lately, NASA has been in the business of educating children about space. When you do exciting things in space you don't have to coach students to get them involved and passionate about learning. With this new push into space, we'll have our pick of the best motivated and educated people.
Grand goals product grand things. Exploration produces technology, spurs discoveries and propels students into math, science and engineering. We have enough social scientists and gloom and doom. It's time we challenged our youth and gave them dreams to dreams and mountains to climb.
Nothing that a two week venture in the wilderness, with a knife, and one pack of matches couldn't cure.
Let the thinning of the herds begin.
I believe King and Bush would understand each other.
The blacker-than-thou paradox divides***I remember those days well, a heady time when African-Americans took education for granted as the sure route to self-improvement and the subsequent uplifting of the whole race.
On my tiny Texas campus of fewer than 1,000 students, only fools refused to read and study diligently. Only fools destroyed their brains with drugs. Only fools physically hurt their brethren. In fact, "being smart" was in. We called it being "heavy." We even expected jocks to be heavy. All musicians, especially the jazz types, were heavy.
Black power meant just that: being black and powerful, being armed with education and the drive to improve our lot in a hostile environment where the very concept of racial egalitarianism was still alien to most white Americans. Black power meant sharing the good and eliminating the bad.
In time, the concept of black power changed. Instead of being a sentiment that united us, it became a source of deep division. Those who followed Martin Luther King and his nonviolent movement, for example, were not as black as those who followed, say, Malcolm X's philosophy or that of the fearless Black Panthers.
No longer bringing us together, black power had become a negative litmus test for one's degree of "blackness." We had entered the "Blacker than Thou" era. On campuses nationwide, black students separated themselves into enclaves.***
The 1972 end to the moon missions coincided with the inward focus of an America disheartened by failure in Vietnam (its first major martial defeat since the War of 1812), an economy heading into prolonged stagflation, and domestic unrest at home in the form of war protests, race riots, and skyrocketing crime. President Bush begins his new quest in the midst of a worldwide war on terror, in which America faces the specter of mega attacks by fanatics who make the barbarians Rome faced seem positively genteel by comparison.
Undaunted by worldwide conflict, and confident that a great civilization can and will prevail, President Bush has made a courageous choice - one that exemplifies America's famed optimism and "can-do" spirit at its best.***
It's statements such as .......
"We live in a country where, every day, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer," Lieberman told the audience yesterday at the Federated Church in Hyannis, invoking King's spirit of confrontation. "
....... that lights a fire under me.
What kind of statement is that?
There is no doubt these are socialists who want those that work to share their earnings, and give to those that refuse to.
Let them eat cake
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