Slight not what is near though aiming at what is far.
Euripides
Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.
I think sometimes we have to separate any man from his legend. I have sometimes mentioned that Martin Luther King Jr, like his father, was a Republican; the Republicans during Reconstruction enacted civil rights legislation which vanquished southern white Democrats deeply resented. White Democrats gradually reassert their power through the polls (including intimidation of new black voters by various groups). GOP-controlled state governments, largely propped up by remaining federal troops, gave way after the controversial 1876 Presidential election when GOP candidate Rutherford Hayes, who won 47% of the popular vote, narrowly beat Samuel Tilden by a single electoral vote, awarded disputed electoral votes for 3 states (Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina) in a compromise ending Reconstruction in the south. White Democrats consolidated their control with arbitrary voter qualifications (e.g., poll taxes, property ownership or literacy tests) de facto disqualifying most black citizens and enacted "separate but (un)equal" Jim Crow laws, paying lip service to new Constitutional guarantees but in effect perpetuating an underclass.
The principle of "separate but equal" was upheld in a nearly unanimous Supreme Court ruling, Plessy v Ferguson. The State of Louisiana required (in the Separate Car Act) railroads operating inside the state to implement and enforce racially segregated cars. Homer Plessy, a mulatto with one black grandparent, purposefully attempted to board the whites-only car and was arrested. Judge Ferguson rejected Plessy's lawsuit against the State of Louisiana, and the Supreme Court rejected Plessy's Fourteenth Amendment challenge, ruling segregation doesn't imply inferior treatment.
Southern states used the Plessy ruling to rollback remaining vestiges of Republican civil rights legislation. Funding of facilities, in particular public schools, was hardly equal (consider, for instance, segregated schools in lower tax revenue neighborhoods). This eventually resulted in the unanimous Brown v Board of Education at Topeka, which ruled public school segregation laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment and provided a beachhead for new civil rights initiative in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. operated.
I share Dr. Martin Luther King's dream for every American, regardless of his genetic makeup, being free, not just in words, but in reality, and his prescription for nonviolent change. However, I must respectfully disagree with his politics, which, if anything, are even more strident than Barack Obama's views and polemically dismissive of conservative views. Take, for example, his March 31, 1968 sermon, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution."
For example, Dr. King suggests that the only thing the federal government gave slaves was their release, that liberty meant nothing if they didn't have the resources to exercise their liberty (sort of like being released along an isolated highway, not a place to stay, food to eat, a phone to call someone, etc.) [This is the concept of positive liberty/rights; I had a number of related posts during the 2008 campaign when an old Obama radio interview made the news cycle, where he expressed wistful skepticism that the court system could be used to work around conservative legislators and directly demand necessary economic security expenditures.] He then alleges that white immigrants were given access to free land in the West, farm subsidies, farmer colleges, etc., and basically suggests that the country's policies have been hypocritical and racially motivated:
Now there is another myth that still gets around: it is a kind of over reliance on the bootstrap philosophy. There are those who still feel that if the Negro is to rise out of poverty, if the Negro is to rise out of the slum conditions, if he is to rise out of discrimination and segregation, he must do it all by himself. And so they say the Negro must lift himself by his own bootstraps... they never stop to realize the debt that they owe a people who were kept in slavery two hundred and forty-four years... But [the freed black person] was not given [anything] to make that freedom meaningful...And these are so often the very people who tell Negroes that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps. It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.I think Dr. King is oversimplifying history in a provocative way and is distorting what conservatives are saying. A number of immigrants have come to this country with nominal assets, Asian immigrants have also faced racial discrimination, and many first-generation immigrants had limited command of English, a definite disadvantage in this country. In fact, many conservatives oppose in principle the public policy examples King is raising (e.g., government farm subsidies or land grants). And many freedmen, since the early days of the republic, had made their own professional niche in society without government handouts, something Dr. King conveniently ignored. We agree that slavery was a moral injustice of the highest order, intrinsically incompatible with the individual's unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--but we can't erase the past and what happened to one's ancestors. We have to start with today's possibilities and make our own future. In fact, we regard victimization as a more subtle form of government enslavement that strips away the individual's power and encourages dependence on others, unworthy of one's own God-given gifts.
I will not comment on several other other King positions in detail here, but just to list a few: he saw spending on the Vietnam War as a zero-sum game with domestic poverty programs; he saw America as arrogant and exploitive of third-world countries, entirely consistent with Rev. Jeremiah Wright's "God damn America" rhetoric and President Obama's international apology tours. He uses the same rhetoric about America isolating itself internationally as a consequence of its Vietnam policies as the Democrats repeatedly used against George W. Bush for his Iraq policies during his second term in office.
Other allegations have been made about Dr. King, including questions of plagiarizing part of his doctoral dissertation, scandalous sexual relationships, and the like. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but any human being makes mistakes. What I think defines Dr. King is his leadership during difficult years of our country's history. Could he have even envisioned a day where the same party that once institutionalized discrimination against blacks in former Confederate states would nominate and see elected the first black man as President? There may never have been a President Obama without the leadership of Martin Luther King, and a nation is grateful.
Dedicated to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Astronaut Mark Kelly
Gabrielle's husband Mark told doctors that Gabrielle had smiled at him and to others that she has even rubbed his neck. I am astounded by the improbable, rapid, remarkable recovery to date; God is great! I am also particularly struck by Mark's incredible decency and overtures to assailant Jared Loughner's sorrowful parents. I would hate to put words in Mark's mouth, but the first thing I thought when I heard the good news was of one of my favorite songs from the 1980's:
Looking at the World Through Christina Taylor Green's Eyes
The same news story cited above also mentioned the corneas of youngest fatality of the Tuscon Massacre, 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, with the agreement of her parents, had been successfully transplanted to two children. I hope no parent would ever have to face that decision, but the gift of Christina has not only inspired a nation but brought sight to two children. God bless the Green family for their generous gift and the memory of beautiful Christina.
Public Humor
"Due to the recession there are now 15,000 less lawyers. Nobody ever talks about the good things that happen because of the recession." –Jay Leno
[The only thing better than 15,000 fewer lawyers would be 15,000 fewer elected officeholders to do mischief with the people's liberties... After all, what do lawyers do when they can't find a job or teach? That's right--they run for public office...]
"The [Congressional Republicans] also hoping to cut back on government regulation on Wall Street. I think we can all agree that Wall Street does a good job policing itself." –Jimmy Kimmel
[...I think we can all agree that the government does a good job regulating its own spending. Let's hope that the Republicans can cut back on spending.]
Musical Interlude: One-Hit Wonders/Instrumentals
Deep Blue Something, "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
