I always think it’s worth it each year to take 16 minutes out of the day on Martin Luther King Day, and just sit there and listen to Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in its entirety. It never fails gives me goose bumps. Here’s the clip:
And today we get Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Entropy in action?
In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
I cannot think of a religious, ethnic, or racial community more bitter, spiteful, and distrustful of their fellow Americans than the black community today. Certainly their cynicism provides some cold comfort for their present misery, and it is a natural byproduct of despicable past injustices visited upon them by pre-Civil Rights Era-America. But it’s precisely the opposite prescription prescribed by the great doctor we remember today.
I could derive other commentary from this speech, pertaining to judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, but it’s old hash, and the intellectual defense of affirmative action has already pretty well crumbled. The last vestiges of those bad policies will disappear soon enough, despite what moronic Supreme Court rulings hold.
No, what really matters these days is to liberate blacks from the terrible liberal social policies that replaced their inferior social status with soul-destructive dependence on government. Welfare, government urban housing, run-down public school monopolies, liberal divorce laws–all have contributed to a spiral of destruction and despair in which young black men are more likely to end up in jail than in college, and few see any reason to embrace American society. To change that, they need leadership that will feed them hope and ambition, rather than anger and mistrust.
Of course, now comes the obligatory poll showing the gulf in opinions between whites and blacks. I love how they don’t bother to get Asian, Hispanic, and other opinions… but I digress.
Some say the civil rights movement sparked a backlash that could reverse gains.
Among those concerns are efforts to require a voter ID card in Georgia; the expected confirmation of conservative Judge Samuel Alito to be on the Supreme Court; immigration’s effect on the job market for blacks; and an expected fight next year over reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.
“Politically, the group that has gained the most after the civil rights movement was white Southern conservatives,” Bositis said. “They have transformed the Republican Party, which has become the dominant political party.”
The appointment to the Supreme Court of Samuel Alito, son of Italian immigrants, sets back civil rights and marks a backlash? Hard-working Mexican immigrants set back blacks’ civil rights and marks a backlash?
So yeah, repeat the rote trite that pro-segregationist white Southerners simply dropped the Dem label and manufactured the GOP majority… yeah, that’s it. Aren’t we due for a lynching soon? Where’s my white robe?!?
LOL…I just realized that Andrew thinks “liberal divorce laws” contribute to problems in the black community…
LOL
The “…spiral of destruction and despair in which young black men are more likely to end up in jail than in college, and few see any reason to embrace American society…” consists partly of “liberal divorce laws”?
Here is a quote from one of your earlier posts about Cindy Sheean:
“As for this “America-hating” crap… you vastly overstate the issue. But to the extent that the anti-war movement really does get branded in that manner, perhaps it would help if they didn’t put forth as their leaders people who call terrorists “freedom fighters” and Bush “the world’s biggest terrorist” and so forth. Serious, reasonable, rational criticism of the war effort — including harsh, but still reasonable, criticism — is not anti-American, and very few serious people on the Right will say that it is.”
Well, you must group MLK Jr. in with those above that you criticize, because one year before he was shot, he said the following in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech of April 4th, 1967:
“But they ask — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”
Yes, MLK Jr. calls his own government the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
The whole “Beyond Vietnam” speech, delievered on April 4th, 1967, exactly one year before he was shot the day after giving his “I Have Seen the Mountain Top” speech while he was supporting striking sanitation workers in Tenn., is a devastating indictment of the spiritual sickness he viewed as pervasive in America, which includes a growing economic injustice.
“Yes, MLK Jr. calls his own government the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
Apparently, MKL Jr. didn’t have much experience with communism. At any rate, just because he was a good man doesn’t mean his every utterance was on the mark.
When I think of the wrongs against blacks, I don’t think of the lingering effects of slavery or segregation or the Klan. (All thanks to conservatives of the time.) The first thing that comes to my mind is divorce laws. Darn liberals!
Liberal divorce laws and welfare were fashionable for the upper classes, but they destroyed the black working class. Two-thirds of black children grow up without a father in the home.
Would you prefer me to blame everything on gay marriage like others on the right? Call me a pariah for focusing on the truth of the matter.
Ok Andrew, I’ll bite. Which restrictions on marriage would you like to bring back? And what laws do you want to create regarding people who have children out of wedlock?
I mean, you’ve put pretty much everything else out on the table here. Why stop now?
“…lingering effects of slavery or segregation or the Klan. (All thanks to conservatives of the time”
Oh, B.S. Let’s blame the conservatives for everything. Hmmm…Lincoln was a Republican. Freed the slaves. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed in part because of the support of Republicans, and in spite of Democratic opposition, including from Al Gore’s father. And the Klan? You might want to talk to that famous klansman, Sen. Robert Byrd (D) from West Virginia. Unless, of course, you’re trying to make some weird point that it was actually the Democrats from these periods of time that were the conservatives. LOL! Yeah, right.
Perhaps Sean was guilty of oversimplification in his short parenthetical remark (a remark not even central to his point), but your entire post is guilty of the same. You are aware of the dramatic relignment of southern politics over the last 50 years, are you not? Strom Thurmund ring a bell? And linking todays Republicans and Democrats to the parties of the same name in 1860? Pretty soon you’ll be talking about the Whigs.
My point was not that “his every utternce was on the mark.” I mean that isn’t my point at all and nowhere do I say that.
My point is about how people want to reshape MLK Jr.’s image to fit their idea of him and how people often times leave out MLK Jr.’s more politically charged utterances. In fact, it is his politically charged utterances over Vietnam, colonialism, militarism, and economic justice that make up the real heart of his message. Economic injustices embodied by the growing gap between rich and poor were a big issue for him. Yet if you watch the media makeovers today when they praise MLK Jr., they often leave all of that out.
People today want to remake MLK Jr. by ignoring the controversial parts of his message.
By the way, it’s incredibly historically dishonest to link Lincoln with today’s Republicans simply because Lincoln called himself a “Republican”.
I also think it’s dishonest to say the Republicans of 1964 are the same Republicans of today.
They all share the same name but the shifting sands of political realities change the meaning of the term, depending on the histocrical time in which it’s used.
Well, I think it is dishonest for Democrats of today to claim to be the party for civil rights. Tis not so. And as for the 60’s, it really wasn’t so. Libs complain about their perception that Bush is spying on American citizens (never mind that this is if you just happen to be on an Al Qaeda member’s speed dial, and not the average, law abiding citizen), but Robert Kennedy, a Democrat, was the one doing the spying on MLK, Jr. I guess that’s what they called protecting civil rights back then, in the Democratic party.
Pop Quiz: What is the illegitmacy rate among blacks in the US right now?
Knowing it doesn’t make you racist, its just a piece of information. When you get that rate, or if you know it, is to really too absurd to think ‘liberal divorce laws’ have something to do with propagating a culture where young black men are virtually left to grow up on their own?
The sad truth is that this would be a honest, non derogatory race question, but worded as is, would have numerous idelogues calling me racists just for the virtue of asking it.
Mendacious Mouse - your own quote of Dr King’s words contains *both* his feelings about government violence as well as “violence of the oppressed in the ghettos” … you might want to try the technique some time …
Two (or more) sides to something ? What a novel concept !
Economic injustices embodied by the growing gap between rich and poor were a big issue for him.
Please show me instances where MLK was expressing support for socialist policies in place of simple equality of opportunity and integration with whites.
By the way, it’s incredibly historically dishonest to link Lincoln with today’s Republicans simply because Lincoln called himself a “Republican”.
I also think it’s dishonest to say the Republicans of 1964 are the same Republicans of today.
Oh please. What Lincoln policies and beliefs has the modern GOP rejected? So because Southern conservatives became increasingly attracted to the Goldwater-esque backbone of the Republican Party, that means Goldwater conservatives adopted the pro-segregationist attitudes of the party newcomers? Get real. If anything, the South has actually progressed and is no longer remotely a bastion of racist white people. Imagine that!
January 16th, 2006 at 2:42:27 am
MLK’s speech transcribed
And today we get Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Entropy in action?
In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
I cannot think of a religious, ethnic, or racial community more bitter, spiteful, and distrustful of their fellow Americans than the black community today. Certainly their cynicism provides some cold comfort for their present misery, and it is a natural byproduct of despicable past injustices visited upon them by pre-Civil Rights Era-America. But it’s precisely the opposite prescription prescribed by the great doctor we remember today.
I could derive other commentary from this speech, pertaining to judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, but it’s old hash, and the intellectual defense of affirmative action has already pretty well crumbled. The last vestiges of those bad policies will disappear soon enough, despite what moronic Supreme Court rulings hold.
No, what really matters these days is to liberate blacks from the terrible liberal social policies that replaced their inferior social status with soul-destructive dependence on government. Welfare, government urban housing, run-down public school monopolies, liberal divorce laws–all have contributed to a spiral of destruction and despair in which young black men are more likely to end up in jail than in college, and few see any reason to embrace American society. To change that, they need leadership that will feed them hope and ambition, rather than anger and mistrust.
How much longer must we wait?
January 16th, 2006 at 3:11:01 am
Of course, now comes the obligatory poll showing the gulf in opinions between whites and blacks. I love how they don’t bother to get Asian, Hispanic, and other opinions… but I digress.
Some say the civil rights movement sparked a backlash that could reverse gains.
Among those concerns are efforts to require a voter ID card in Georgia; the expected confirmation of conservative Judge Samuel Alito to be on the Supreme Court; immigration’s effect on the job market for blacks; and an expected fight next year over reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.
“Politically, the group that has gained the most after the civil rights movement was white Southern conservatives,” Bositis said. “They have transformed the Republican Party, which has become the dominant political party.”
The appointment to the Supreme Court of Samuel Alito, son of Italian immigrants, sets back civil rights and marks a backlash? Hard-working Mexican immigrants set back blacks’ civil rights and marks a backlash?
So yeah, repeat the rote trite that pro-segregationist white Southerners simply dropped the Dem label and manufactured the GOP majority… yeah, that’s it. Aren’t we due for a lynching soon? Where’s my white robe?!?
January 16th, 2006 at 6:16:26 am
Yes, Andrew confirms it…He’s an idiot, or maybe I am just now noticing how much so.
MLK Jr. was incredibly concerned with justice yes. But what the media leaves out is his overhwelming concern for ECONOMIC justice.
People like Andrew believe in some kind of white bread version of MLK Jr.
Andrew probably wants to “liberate” working class people from the “bonds of minimum wage” as well….
January 16th, 2006 at 6:46:42 am
LOL…I just realized that Andrew thinks “liberal divorce laws” contribute to problems in the black community…
LOL
The “…spiral of destruction and despair in which young black men are more likely to end up in jail than in college, and few see any reason to embrace American society…” consists partly of “liberal divorce laws”?
Sheesh, where DOES this guy get these ideas?
January 16th, 2006 at 9:09:02 am
Brendan,
Follow this comment all the way through…
Here is a quote from one of your earlier posts about Cindy Sheean:
“As for this “America-hating” crap… you vastly overstate the issue. But to the extent that the anti-war movement really does get branded in that manner, perhaps it would help if they didn’t put forth as their leaders people who call terrorists “freedom fighters” and Bush “the world’s biggest terrorist” and so forth. Serious, reasonable, rational criticism of the war effort — including harsh, but still reasonable, criticism — is not anti-American, and very few serious people on the Right will say that it is.”
Well, you must group MLK Jr. in with those above that you criticize, because one year before he was shot, he said the following in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech of April 4th, 1967:
“But they ask — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”
Yes, MLK Jr. calls his own government the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
The whole “Beyond Vietnam” speech, delievered on April 4th, 1967, exactly one year before he was shot the day after giving his “I Have Seen the Mountain Top” speech while he was supporting striking sanitation workers in Tenn., is a devastating indictment of the spiritual sickness he viewed as pervasive in America, which includes a growing economic injustice.
Read the whole “Beyond Vietnam” speech here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
Listen to the MP3 here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clips/politicalspeeches/mlkagainstvietnam1attgogo.mp3
January 16th, 2006 at 10:57:18 am
“Yes, MLK Jr. calls his own government the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
Apparently, MKL Jr. didn’t have much experience with communism. At any rate, just because he was a good man doesn’t mean his every utterance was on the mark.
January 16th, 2006 at 2:18:53 pm
When I think of the wrongs against blacks, I don’t think of the lingering effects of slavery or segregation or the Klan. (All thanks to conservatives of the time.) The first thing that comes to my mind is divorce laws. Darn liberals!
January 16th, 2006 at 9:04:17 pm
Liberal divorce laws and welfare were fashionable for the upper classes, but they destroyed the black working class. Two-thirds of black children grow up without a father in the home.
Would you prefer me to blame everything on gay marriage like others on the right? Call me a pariah for focusing on the truth of the matter.
January 17th, 2006 at 2:03:42 am
Ok Andrew, I’ll bite. Which restrictions on marriage would you like to bring back? And what laws do you want to create regarding people who have children out of wedlock?
I mean, you’ve put pretty much everything else out on the table here. Why stop now?
January 17th, 2006 at 2:53:21 am
Sean,
“…lingering effects of slavery or segregation or the Klan. (All thanks to conservatives of the time”
Oh, B.S. Let’s blame the conservatives for everything. Hmmm…Lincoln was a Republican. Freed the slaves. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed in part because of the support of Republicans, and in spite of Democratic opposition, including from Al Gore’s father. And the Klan? You might want to talk to that famous klansman, Sen. Robert Byrd (D) from West Virginia. Unless, of course, you’re trying to make some weird point that it was actually the Democrats from these periods of time that were the conservatives. LOL! Yeah, right.
January 17th, 2006 at 4:19:02 am
David B,
Perhaps Sean was guilty of oversimplification in his short parenthetical remark (a remark not even central to his point), but your entire post is guilty of the same. You are aware of the dramatic relignment of southern politics over the last 50 years, are you not? Strom Thurmund ring a bell? And linking todays Republicans and Democrats to the parties of the same name in 1860? Pretty soon you’ll be talking about the Whigs.
January 17th, 2006 at 12:10:32 pm
David B.
My point was not that “his every utternce was on the mark.” I mean that isn’t my point at all and nowhere do I say that.
My point is about how people want to reshape MLK Jr.’s image to fit their idea of him and how people often times leave out MLK Jr.’s more politically charged utterances. In fact, it is his politically charged utterances over Vietnam, colonialism, militarism, and economic justice that make up the real heart of his message. Economic injustices embodied by the growing gap between rich and poor were a big issue for him. Yet if you watch the media makeovers today when they praise MLK Jr., they often leave all of that out.
People today want to remake MLK Jr. by ignoring the controversial parts of his message.
January 17th, 2006 at 12:13:44 pm
David B.
By the way, it’s incredibly historically dishonest to link Lincoln with today’s Republicans simply because Lincoln called himself a “Republican”.
I also think it’s dishonest to say the Republicans of 1964 are the same Republicans of today.
They all share the same name but the shifting sands of political realities change the meaning of the term, depending on the histocrical time in which it’s used.
January 17th, 2006 at 12:24:04 pm
Nun,
Well, I think it is dishonest for Democrats of today to claim to be the party for civil rights. Tis not so. And as for the 60’s, it really wasn’t so. Libs complain about their perception that Bush is spying on American citizens (never mind that this is if you just happen to be on an Al Qaeda member’s speed dial, and not the average, law abiding citizen), but Robert Kennedy, a Democrat, was the one doing the spying on MLK, Jr. I guess that’s what they called protecting civil rights back then, in the Democratic party.
January 17th, 2006 at 1:37:14 pm
Nun -
Pop Quiz: What is the illegitmacy rate among blacks in the US right now?
Knowing it doesn’t make you racist, its just a piece of information. When you get that rate, or if you know it, is to really too absurd to think ‘liberal divorce laws’ have something to do with propagating a culture where young black men are virtually left to grow up on their own?
The sad truth is that this would be a honest, non derogatory race question, but worded as is, would have numerous idelogues calling me racists just for the virtue of asking it.
January 17th, 2006 at 2:46:39 pm
Mendacious Mouse - your own quote of Dr King’s words contains *both* his feelings about government violence as well as “violence of the oppressed in the ghettos” … you might want to try the technique some time …
Two (or more) sides to something ? What a novel concept !
January 17th, 2006 at 3:18:43 pm
Economic injustices embodied by the growing gap between rich and poor were a big issue for him.
Please show me instances where MLK was expressing support for socialist policies in place of simple equality of opportunity and integration with whites.
By the way, it’s incredibly historically dishonest to link Lincoln with today’s Republicans simply because Lincoln called himself a “Republican”.
I also think it’s dishonest to say the Republicans of 1964 are the same Republicans of today.
Oh please. What Lincoln policies and beliefs has the modern GOP rejected? So because Southern conservatives became increasingly attracted to the Goldwater-esque backbone of the Republican Party, that means Goldwater conservatives adopted the pro-segregationist attitudes of the party newcomers? Get real. If anything, the South has actually progressed and is no longer remotely a bastion of racist white people. Imagine that!
January 18th, 2006 at 9:32:23 am
The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2269