Posted on 02/08/2006 9:20:47 AM PST by yoe
At the funeral of Coretta Scott King, President Bush said her dignity was a “daily rebuke to the pettiness and cruelty of segregation.” The president, with class and compassion, spoke at New Birth Missionary Church in Atlanta, Georgia, to honor the wife of civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unfortunately, there were others who spoke and turned what should be a sacred ceremony into an opportunity to engage in left-wing attacks.
As noted in the story Political Posturing at King Funeral Draws Cheers, Jeers, liberal activists used the funeral of Coretta Scott King to demean President Bush and attack the Republican Party. In a setting that should have brought people together, so-called leaders such as former President Jimmy Carter and Rev. Joseph Lowery chose instead to engage in racial politics and left-wing talking points.
Stoking anger about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, former President Carter said, “The struggle for equal rights is not over. We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans.”
Carter also alluded to President Bush’s current NSA surveillance program but noting the “’secret government wiretapping’ of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. many years ago.”
Carter failed to mention that the wiretapping of the Rev. King was ordered by then Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.
Rev. Joseph Lowery felt it appropriate to focus on Iraq during Mrs. King’s funeral. In his comments he said, “She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there, but Coretta knew, and we know, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here.”
The antics bring back memories of the funeral of the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone. During that funeral in 2002, which was held just prior to the November elections, Democrats such as Harry Reid turned the solemn event into a left-wing political rally.
Reid said during his comments, “The people of Minnesota are going to have to decide who they want to represent them in the United States Senate, whether they want someone who has the legacy of a Hubert Humphrey and a Paul Wellstone or whether they want somebody that is conducting polls while somebody is taken out of the woods, having been killed in a plane crash.”
President Bush left politics out of the ceremony and, instead, focused on honoring the Mrs. King for her strength and achievements.
In that life, Coretta Scott King knew danger. She knew injustice. She knew sudden and terrible grief. She also knew that her Redeemer lives. She trusted in the name above every name. And today we trust that our sister Coretta is on the other shore — at peace, at rest, at home.
There is a time and place for politics, and there is a time and place for honoring loved-ones as the pass from this world. Funerals are not political rallies, and the comments from the likes of Carter only provide further evidence that the left knows no bounds from which to attack.
After all, it's not as though these leftists ever seek out "middle ground". (except of course when they're demanding that conservatives move closer to their position)
Good points, all!
Republicans: The party of Reagan and the party of class.
MLK was speaking during and of a different era. He stood for and was many things, but we will put his affiliations and dalliances aside and remember him for getting the ball rolling as it were, to a more equal life for those of his race that wanted it. Those of that race that have exploited their brothers and sisters for personal gain - New Orleans and Jessie Jackson come to mind - are the ones who left the MLK dream on the cutting room floor.
There was some powerful preaching after the politicians left, I hope most of you took the time and listened to that.
Carter's son Jack is running for the Senate in Nevada - apparently he is as looney as his father; it was the same old rhetoric he opened with. Nevada, keep this man out of our Senate!
You can play with politics,woe to him that thinks he can fool God.The Rev. Joseph Lowery and those that cheered him on are slaves of the democrats and the money they get out of them.What losers! Coretta who?? I guess Coretta earned what she got from this bunch.
Anyone curious about King’s attitude to war and its relationship to domestic politics need only read any one of his later speeches on the subject – King understood that North Vietnam was a repressive government and shared responsibility for the destruction wrought by the War, but opposed the war anyway anyway, for example in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech of April 4th, 1967 he observed that:
“This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem.”
Nor was he unclear or evasive about a major reason for his opposition:
“There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”
He explicitly linked his devotion to the civil rights struggle with his anti-war stance:
“Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people?”They ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment, or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church-the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate-leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight…”
As he linked it to his religious convictions:
“A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I'm not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another (Yes), for love is God. (Yes) And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.”
And if challenged their events of 9/11 he might well have replied:
“We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."
Finally, he was completely clear about what he perceived as the responsibility to bring his opinion before either the public or politicians, even as he agonized over the knowledge he might be incorrect:
“Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on… Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.”
One can’t say with certainty what King would have thought of the Iraqi Occupation, but IMO him woud certainly have opposed it. And I doubt he would have been reluctant to say so, or upset if anyone else did, in a eulogy at another anti-war leader’s funeral;.
As for the conviction that King was a supporter of some sort of Horatio Alger plan for the elimination of poverty and that his is an essentially conservative legacy that has been hijacked by Statist Radicals and Multicultural Opportunists, that’s pure fantasy. King was a strong believer in, and supported of, massive Federal anti-poverty programs, and his political legacy clearly belongs to the left wing of the Democratic Party and is almost completely antithetical to programs of the last few Republican Administrations – as intellectual history the view is hooey and as a political ploy it convinces nobody but the people who are spouting it.
Love him, or hate him, but don’t misrepresent or misunderstand him: Martin Luther King would likely have been berating just about everything the Bush administration says and does.
And if he had chosen the occasion of a funeral to do the berating, he would deserve the scorn that is currently being heaped on Jimmy Carter and Joseph Lowrey.
The politicization of a memorial service is viewed, by most, as unseemly, rude, and ill-mannered. MLK never struck me as any of those, and I doubt he would have sunk into the mire that we all witnessed yesterday.
"This afternoon we gather in the quiet of this sanctuary to pay our last tribute of respect to these beautiful children of God. They entered the stage of history just a few years ago, and in the brief years that they were privileged to act on this mortal stage, they played their parts exceedingly well. Now the curtain falls; they move through the exit; the drama of their earthly life comes to a close. They are now committed back to that eternity from which they came.
These children-unoffending, innocent, and beautiful-were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.
And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician [Audience:] (Yeah) who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats (Yeah) and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. (Speak) They have something to say to every Negro (Yeah) who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream..."
Martin Luther King, Jr.- Eulogy for the Young Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing, September 18, 1963
There are many similar examples of political speech at such eulogies - it's traditional in many African-American churches. What President Bush sat through was tame by comparison to the address M L King would quite likely have made if he had lived to deliver Coretta Scot King’s eulogy to a captive audience including the President.
I'll start getting mad about this when Fred Phelps stops showing up at the funerals of fallen soldiers.
I wonder why he didnt attend the funeral? I mean he had plenty of words for Condoleeza at her comfirmation hearing? I would love to hear what the Klans member has to say about the Kings.
Well, first, I do not see the Iraqi war as an "adventure."
The rest is very Interesting....Do I read it right? King was willing to let others suffer in order to simply help the poor at home?
Maybe King was not the humanitarian that I envisioned him as. Perhaps he was so enamored with black power that families being raped and murdered meant little to him if they occured outside the US?
But, they should not be surprised when non-blacks resent these occasions being employed to trash a sitting President of the United States.
Bush was graceful and noble in his words and his bearing. Jimmy Carter (who is not black) was churlish and childish in his bitterness.
He is not only the worst president of the 20th century, but he is also the worst living ex-president.
I doubt he'll have to worry about being excoriated at his funeral by any Republicans. In fact, they'll likely have little to say, at all.
ping
It's one thing when it's understood that everyone in attendance most likely shares your views. It's something entirely different when those who show to pay their respects are attacked. There's plenty of opportunity to attack them outside the funeral setting, where they targets of the attacks can defend themselves. But as I said earlier in the thread, that's no what the leftist punks want. They want to be able to attack without challenge, to take advantage of the class shown by their opponents, rather than reciprocating for it.
There is another difference between the two funerals. One was for people who were murdered, the other not. In the first case, it's a bit more natural that the speakers there would have something to say about the murderers, and the context in which they operated.
I wonder if the Rev. King would wonder what has become of this once mannerly and orderly small town nation. I can't help but think he would have begun, as his wife did, to look for our strengths, our honor and love of nation as one people, not divided by race or class.
Dr. King did help persuade the Federal Government to make welfare the prime help for the poor. He did see segregation of the races curbed, schools opened to all no matter how far the distance. He would have lived to see how both programs have crippled those who have come to rely on the largess of their country – not rely on self, just the opposite. The result is inner city gangs, drugs, crowded housing, crime and thousands of parentless children. A social engineering experiment that went awry because some people thought they understood what was needed, a form of Socialism which destroys the human spirit.
Dr. King’s words ring hollow today…”Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream..." The Dream is dieing from lack of care/respect and love for one’s country and the willingness to fight for and keep freedom; the Dream is dieing because our roots/history are being rewritten; we don’t know who we are. For all his beautiful words and his powerful encouragement, he would have seen the failure that all see, we failed to teach; we have failed to really teach our teachers to teach and we have failed to require them to teach fact and the basics. In our effort to help all, we have become a multicultural, rootless society rather than a cohesive, color blind, class blind strong country. Thanks to a Dream that was lost all too soon to political correctness and the politicians.
Good quote, will bookmark for later use.
So its a "black" thing, huh? Let me guess: we wouldn't understand?
I reject the notion that it is par for the course for black ministers to take off topic shots at the sitting president of the united states when he comes to honor the deceased at her funeral. In fact, one might say that this justification for the Rev's comments about WMD and "weapons of mass deception" is another example of the liberal bigotry of low expectations: "Ya'll can't expect them there nee-grows to act respecful. It jess ain't they culture."
Baloney.
And comparing Martin's words at the memorial for the Birmingham Four to the inartful and ham-fisted spew from that "reverend" (and of course that fool Jimmy)? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
For example the “Right” wants to see him as an exponent of a meritocratic race-blind America of individual initiative and reward, the “Left” to discover a commitment to social justice pursued by a powerful government bent on righting historical wrongs which subvert individual success and disguise individual merit, the Right tends to be uncomfortable with his Religious conviction because it is more deeply concerned with the pursuit of justice than process of judgment, the Left tends to be uncomfortable with his religiosity on general principles and so on.
But even if both the Left and the Right would like to claim at least some portion his legacy the fact remains that world view is almost entirely of the “Left”. And that attempts demonstrate otherwise quickly run up against this writings, his works and his associates, and it’s to those views, I think, that you have to look to guess how he might understand present situations.
For instance, to take your example:
“I wonder if the Rev. King would wonder what has become of this once mannerly and orderly small town nation?” I’m reasonably sure based on reading a good deal of ( and good deal about) his opinions that he would have started by replying that he thought this is a highly idealized or at least highly selective version of American history - that such communities appeared “orderly and mannerly” largely because they were highly stratified by race, ethnicity and class, and because they were run largely without outside interference with or oversight of local elites who were generally comfortable with this arrangement.
Needless to say, if I’m correct he’s a dubious icon for most readers here.
LBJ and FDR were both worse than Carter IMO.
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