Today, we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of one of the greatest speeches in American history:
Comments
ILoveCapitalismsays
Celebrations can be bittersweet, or touched by sorrow. As I hear this speech, I feel great sorrow that President Obama does not share the dream of an America in which people are “judged…by the content of their character.” (Shown by his dishonest approach in the Trayvon Martin case, and many other examples.)
Perfect example of Obama failing to live up to the dream: “I don’t know – not having been there and not seeing all the facts – what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two that he Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.” No sooner does he admit to not knowing the facts that he goes on to judge the case based on nothing more than the color of the men’s skin.
mixitupsays
Truely one of the greatest speaches I have ever seen. I studied him in college and have his speech framed in my office. It was incredible to see at that time. It was one of those historic “WOW” moments.
That said, the meaning and purpose has been sadly hijacked by the “race baiters” and “race hustlers” like Sharpton and Jackson(a wannabe MLK). Hugely dissapointing is how Congressman Lewis and Andy Young have carried on here in Atlanta and Georgia – Martin would be appalled. As for obama, Martin would be thrilled that this diverse country could/would elect a black man as President, and be deeply disappointed at the “self serving” and arrogant manner that he has ‘reigned” over ALL the people of this great country.
” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., August 28, 1963
Kevinsays
We need many more people like Dr. King in our race discourse. Non-violent, yet firm; no pandering; and appealing to our better natures and our belief in the Divine (okay, most of us, and he was a preacher).
This is indeed one of the finest speeches of the 20th Century, both in content and delivery.
Seansays
Forgive me for not having undying adoration for Dr. King, but I have a serious problem with anybody who willingly and knowingly places children in harm’s way. His children’s march may have been a serious coup for the civil rights’ movement, but he knew that those children would be facing people with batons, water cannons, and dogs, and the will and desire to use them. Even when I was a child, such an act struck me as reprehensible, or as near to it as I could consider it. If we condemn the use of child soldiers, why do we not condemn King for his actions? Gandhi, King’s inspiration, never sent children to face the British. It was always consenting adults, typically men, who confronted British soldiers. For all the good King may have done, we seem to forget this rather ugly episode of the civil rights’ movement. Why is that?
Call me devil’s advocate. I just think it’s important to point out the bad aspects of “good” events, and the good aspects of “bad” events, especially as such events are presented by the media and the entertainment industry.
“Back in the late 1950s, Democrats used the National Guard to prevent blacks from getting a better education by going to a better school. Now, Democrats are preventing blacks that want a better education from fleeing failing public schools by opposing school vouchers.”
And that includes our President. *sigh*
Jman1961says
…and our belief in the Divine (okay, most of us, and he was a preacher).
Comment by Kevin — August 28, 2013 @ 4:56 pm – August 28, 2013
One thing we could all stop doing is calling him Dr. King.
He wasn’t a medical doctor, but a PhD (and guilty of some fairly blatant plagiarism on his doctoral thesis in pursuit of that degree).
It plays to one of the most base desires of the prodigious a-holes of the left that any of us should minimize the Christian traditions that made this country possible, along with the men and women who embodied the best of those traditions.
With that in mind, let’s do the right thing and reference this man with the honorific which represented his greatest beliefs and endeavors during his too short 39 years: let’s call him Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
ILoveCapitalismsays
Jman, good one. Rev. King it is, makes sense!
Seansays
If conservatives can rant that Jesse Jackson should’ve resigned his ministry after siring an illegitimate child, why does MLK, who was confirmed to have had dozens of affairs, including several instances of hiring prostitutes, get off scot free?
Jman1961says
why does MLK, who was confirmed to have had dozens of affairs, including several instances of hiring prostitutes, get off scot free?
Comment by Sean — August 28, 2013 @ 9:02 pm – August 28, 2013
Because the good that the man did, and the great numbers of human beings who benefited from that good far outweighed the bad that he did, and the relatively small number of people who were harmed.
For that disgusting race pimp Jackson, the numbers are reversed.
I believe this answers your question.
Richard Bellsays
After a touch of “fixing” on my part, I think *heliotrope* says it better than I.
-We understand fully what the problem is. The keepers of the racial gates are bigots who hate conservatives and blame us for every problem in society. That is their reality, and as a result, they consider those of us who are conservative to be Nazi infidels who must be forcibly converted to worship the creed of the racial hucksters or be destroyed. Hence why they smear us as responsible for everything, why they claim all our policies are bad, why they scream that everything we do is evil, and why they demonize conservatives constantly. They are sick, deranged bigots and we see that clearly.-
I am just trying to point out, Jman, that there are things about King that get ignored or glossed over: he supported Planned Parenthood, a group founded by an avowed eugenicist who wanted to eliminate the black population; he supported North Korea in Vietnam, and glossed over their crimes; he supported the institution of racial quotas to insure that businesses had a percentage of black employees equal to the percentage of black people in a given town; he supported the abolition of prayer in public school; he believed that the United States was founded on genocide and that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution did not apply to black people because those documents were written by slave owners.
King did fight against legitimate oppression; whether or not the current problems of the black community are in any way an unintended consequence of the work he did is up for discussion. But even the Founding Fathers, for all the good that they did and their intrinsic importance to our history, are not wholly unambiguous paragons of goodness; it is practically commonplace to mention their slave-owning, anti-Catholic sentiments, and other character flaws. If we are going to be honest in our understanding of history, we need to examine a person, failings and successes alike.
mixitupsays
#9 – I am a conservative, and I have never ranted that Jackson should resign his ministry. I also know many conservatives, and have never heard them rant about Jackson resigning his ministry. I read a number of conservative blogs and monitor quite a few conservative web sites, and don’t remember them ranting that Jackson should resign his ministry. What I have seen is Jackson accused of being a “race whore,” a tax cheat, corrupt, a “race pimp” and a racial divider. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a flawed man, a man with a number of “warts,” but he was NOTHING like the Reverend Jackson
Maybe you are painting with a very broad brush, which is a VERY common practice with most liberal democrats. Maybe you read or heard several, a few, or a number of conservatives/republicans rant about Jackson resigning his ministry, but your liberal projection to encompass ALL conservatives is very specious at a minimum, and asinine in general.
Anybody besides me notice that ONCE AGAIN, President Barack Hussein Mugabe managed to turn an event celebrating something else into an opportunity to rant ALL ABOUT HIM AND HIS FAILED IDEOLOGY?
Richard Bellsays
14- ALL ABOUT HIM AND HIS FAILED IDEOLOGY?
Yes, it’s always about him.
Seansays
Mixitup, I’m hardly a liberal. I was unaware that “all” conservatives were implicated in my usage of “conservatives; I was unaware that my political orientation hinged upon satisfying your linguistic/grammatical standards.
Take a gander at the comments sections of previous posts and you will find that, as a gay man who vehemently opposes many pro-gay and liberal gay agendas due to their motives and effects, I may be one of the most conservative commenters on this sight. I actually take more offense to “liberal democrat” than to “fag”: the latter is at least a crude and highly offensive statement of truth, the former is an outright lie.
Again, I am certainly not a liberal, and actually take personal offense to that accusation. Take a second to find out just who you are trying to insult so that your insults are at least accurate.
Jman1961says
If we are going to be honest in our understanding of history, we need to examine a person, failings and successes alike.
Comment by Sean — August 28, 2013 @ 9:37 pm – August 28, 2013
You won’t get an argument from me, Sean.
Besides the fact that I don’t address anyone with a PhD as ‘doctor’, the simple fact is that Reverend King should never have been so honored as a result of his plagiarism while at Boston University, which fact I pointed out at #7.
The man had many flaws, to be sure.
But do you doubt for one moment his clear moral superiority to the Jacksons, Sharptons, and this prepubescent shitkicker we have in the White House, even with those questionable beliefs and alliances that you cited?
Seansays
Jman, I will let Ronald Reagan, a man whom King described as “lacking distinction even as an actor” and as suffering from “war psychosis,” answer for me: “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.”
While King’s call to judge men “by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin” is noble and inspirational, his methods and other views were, to my mind, anywhere from questionable (supporting racial quotas) to downright immoral (placing children in harm’s way). Too many people view King with the same rose-tinted glasses that some liberals accuse conservatives of having for the Founding Fathers. Did he do good? Yes. Did he have great personal problems? Yes, like many other great figures.
All I’m saying is, if we are going to tell the whole story about some of our heroes, let’s do it with ALL of our heroes, whether they be Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, George Patton, Rev. Martin Luthor King, Jr., or George W. Bush. That’s all I’m saying.
Jman1961says
Sean-
I have great respect for Reverend King, albeit of a fairly narrow focus.
I’ve never considered the man to be in the pantheon of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln.
He does not have the stature, in my mind, of a Harriet Tubman, or a Frederick Douglass, or a Booker T. Washington, who had this to say about the racial grievance mongers of his day:
“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.” – Booker T. Washington (1911)
This may seem crude, but MLK’s elevation to the status of saint was attained not so much by his body of work as it was by the bullet that killed him on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, the fatal shot having been fired by James Earl Ray, a staunch Democrat.
Much the same way that the left beatified John Kennedy for having half his head blown away in Dallas in 1963; his assassin was a leftist and communist.
I thought it was crazy right wingers that committed these horrific crimes.
Martyrdom and revisionist history can work wonders for a person’s legacy.
By the way, I consider Ronald Reagan to be MLK’s equal as an historic figure, if not greater.
SC.Swampfoxsays
Geez, this thread got nasty in a hurry.
I agree with Sean’s statement @18. I will go further and say there are no saints among any of our presidents, past or present. According to Bill O’Reilly’s book “The Killing of Kennedy after the speech was made 50 years ago. King and his group went to the White House and Bobby Kennedy pulled King aside and told him to watch out about his sexual endeavors. I don’t have the book. It is out on loan to someone else. But, according to the book, J. Edgar Hoover already had audiotapes that could be used to for political blackmail of King. Of course the implication to the Kennedy’s was that Hoover had dirt on everyone, including the Kennedy’s, whom he despised……….. I don’t remember if RFK told MLK that Hoover had the tapes. I would recommend O’Reilly’s book to all on this board. It is a page turner.
I was 12 years old when the speech was given, when Kennedy was murdered and I hit puberty. To say the least nothing was the same in my life after the murder of Kennedy.
SC.Swampfoxsays
Jman1961, today both the right and left seem to claim to be in tune with Reagan, Kennedy and King. Today, in my opinion, we have nothing but midgets on both sides of the aisle. I guess that comes with becoming a cynic with being 62 years old. Absolutely nothing surprises me today.
Seansays
Jman, we are in agreement. I find King’s dream a great goal, to be inspiring. And while I may have problems with King’s views on other matters and his methods, I still agree with that desire to judge people based on their character. So yes, Jackson and Sharpton, and all others who seem to be trying their darnedest to sabotage that goal for their own selfish gains, are morally loathsome to me. In accordance with King’s vision. 😉
Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington may be my favorite thinkers of all time. The verbal smackdown they would deliver on the race mongers of our time would be epic.
Jman1961says
Today, in my opinion, we have nothing but midgets on both sides of the aisle.
Comment by SC.Swampfox — August 28, 2013 @ 11:01 pm – August 28, 2013
Agreed.
This is where I was headed in an earlier post.
I have a great deal of respect for Reverend King; not nearly as much for Dr. King, the politician.
Yet, in spite of the very true and unflattering facts about the man which Sean listed, he’s a giant compared to the people on the national stage nowadays.
…today both the right and left seem to claim to be in tune with Reagan, Kennedy and King.
Any claim the left has to Reagan is something several orders of magnitude more repellant than a tasteless joke.
Kennedy was a tax cutter and in some cases ‘hawkish’ when it came to foreign affairs, and these two facts alone would have him labeled persona non grata in today’s Democrat party.
As for the good Reverend, had he been a white preacher, today’s left would have consigned him to the dustbin of history not long after his death.
Jman1961says
Sean –
For the views and positions that they held at the times of their deaths, I actually have more respect for Malcolm X, who I think was ‘ascending’ in terms of his political and social views when he was murdered by his ‘brothers’ in the NOI in 1965, than I do for MLK, who I think was on course for what could have been, had he not been murdered, a slow slide into RGM (racial grievance mongering) hackery.
SC.Swampfoxsays
I live in South Carolina. What irks me to no end is that everyone continues to say that the Civil Rights movement that occurred in the Southern States. I admit that the South had a real problem, but African-Americans were mistreated throughout the United States. Race riots outside of the American South began in 1964. But the riot that shocked me the most occurred in August of 1965 in Watts, which is now called South Central Los Angeles. Theses riots did not end until around 1970.
Now fast forward to today, we all know that big government and the programs that were instituted back in the 1960s, have had negative effects on the African-American family and even white American families. This has to be reversed. But, Obama and the Democrat party continue buy votes with American taxpayer money. It as if we are all becoming heroin junkies wanting our fix and selling our souls to big government.
heliotropesays
Martin Luther King, to my knowledge, never claimed to be the Messiah or even a near perfect human.
J. Edgar Hoover, who assiduously trailed him, was no paragon of virtue. Bobby and Jack Kennedy were masters of sin and peccadilloes. Martin Luther King’s words and actions in bringing his peaceful resistance to the fore have become legend.
Legend is often the core of culture and the father of tradition. I respect Martin Luther King for his vision and his indefatigable work in seeing that vision take root.
What part of his vision is anathema to improving race relations and furthering the betterment of blacks in America?
Why tear down his accomplishments and the power of his words with salacious gossip and charges of impropriety?
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Ignatiussays
The need for saints is strong and dangerous.
mixitupsays
Sean, my comments and “insults” as you call them, were a result of your comment at #9. I can only react to what you put down for all the world to see. I care not what you may or may not have said in other threads. I will accept your retort that you are not a “liberal democrat.” I wouldn’t be all that insulted by the label, it is ONLY words – not stones.
In your retort though, I didn’t see your defense of juxtaposing MLK with Jackson. To me, they are night & day, apples & oranges. Of course I have read your later comments as you seem to flesh out more of your disdain for MLK and his flaws and warts of his younger years. My only response to your thread of comments and your desire to expose a dark underbelly of Martin would that you read Heliotrope at #26. As is his style, it is an eloquent retort to all the jawboning about MLK’s flaws. It’s funny, after I read through some of the jawboning, the first thought that popped into my head was: “He who lives in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” I think Heliotrope captured that same thought in the last line of #26.
As for me, I will respect those very positive things that Martin accomplished, and died for, and let others pick at his warts and flaws, knowing that I need not duck in fear of getting hit by a “rock.”
As I phrased it on Twitter the other day, the problem with the black community is that fifty years ago black parents wanted their kids to grow up to be MLK; now they want them to grow up to be Trayvon Martin and Rachel Jeantel.
MLK was not perfect. No one is. Nor do his imperfections overshadow his achievements. The history of humankind is a history of humans, all of whom are wretched in the sight of their Maker and quite often in the eyes of their contemporaries and counterparts, but many of whom have transcended that to create thoughts, ideas, items, and legacies of astonishing beauty.
And MLK is a piker compared to his race-baiting and pimping mantle-seekers.
EssEmsays
I don’t comment much here, especially in the last year, because I can’t really call myself a gay conservative anymore and I don’t want to abuse GayPatriots’ hospitality.
Conservatism –and by that I do not mean the head-shakingly feckless and useless GOP–has come to seem to me just a rear-guard stalling and losing action hobbled by its acceptance of earlier forms of liberalism, including an attachment to the obsolete and pie-in-the-sky notion of a “colorblind society.” The only people trying to be color-blind are nice White people –The Most Foolish People On The Planet– who are blind to the dynamics of their dispossession and displacement.
The desire to claim some kind of connection with an imagined color-blind MLK and his “dream” is part of it: conservatives’ terror of facing up to the insolubility of the race issue and forever trying to escape from the inescapable accusation of “racism.” (Which is just like trying to prove you’re not a witch.)
90% of Mitt Romney’s votes came from White people. 90%. Because conservatives have renounced their original sin of “racism” –the Liberal equivalent of “witchcraft”– they are unable even to think of this as any kind of mandate to advocate for the only people who vote for them, pathetically “reaching out” to alien Latinos who resent and will never trust them. “Conservatism” has no electoral base at all outside Whites. The only people who acknowledge that are our enemies. Doesn’t make it any less true.
“Dr” King –who plagiarized most of his PhD thesis, btw– led a movement that has slipped a knife into the heart of this nation, getting Whites to see themselves as without any moral standing or self-confident racial status, so that they can be manipulated into self-erasure, becoming a plundered minority in the land that their people created.
“MLK” only cared about his own people. All his sanctimonious blather about “America” was just a means to an end. He has been stunningly successful, especially as a martyr: a once great nation commits suicide over the 13% who have proved themselves, in the last 50 years of vast sums spent and a huge networks of laws and entitlements for them enacted, unable to do much more than self-destruct and blame others for it.
“Martin” doesn’t belong to you. He belongs to Barack and Oprah and Foxx and Sharpton and Jackson and the NAACP and the Black Caucus. Let him go and look for your own heroes.
Barack Hussein Obama, twice elected by the “American” people, as loathsome as he is, is just a symptom of a much deeper collapse. “Conservatism” is wholly unable to fix that.
ILoveCapitalismsays
I don’t comment much here, especially in the last year, because I can’t really call myself a gay conservative anymore and I don’t want to abuse GayPatriots’ hospitality.
Oh, please. *I* don’t call myself a conservative. You’re usually interesting. Comment more often, if you’d like.
“Martin” doesn’t belong to you.
He said what he said, about color-blindness. I, for one, believe it. Maybe he didn’t believe it or carry it out consistently, but it’s the part of his legacy that I admire… as opposed maybe to some other parts.
In other words, please credit me (for one) with really believing that “race” is a mistaken way to think about human beings, a dead end. Rather than psychologizing that I am trying to escape whatever.
Then again, since I argue that I’m not really a conservative, I suppose your words could still be true of conservatives; I mean, I wouldn’t presume to say, one way or t’other.
Jman1961says
…because I can’t really call myself a gay conservative anymore…
What would you call yourself now?
heliotropesays
conservatives’ terror of facing up to the insolubility of the race issue and forever trying to escape from the inescapable accusation of “racism.”
This truth about political conservatism is at the heart of the mess that liberal welfare programs have made of the black family.
The MLK charade on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday was focused on how far black America has to go to become equal and it was all race-baiting hokum. It was as if MLK spoke 50 years ago and his “I have a Dream” speech had no effect whatsoever.
I believe that judging people by the content of their character has become much more prevalent and that in using that measure, the character of too many welfare blacks just does not measure up to the decent norm or society. Too many welfare blacks are pulling each other down and they are on the fringes of the public square.
The Chicago gang-ridden black ghetto is a failure of government. Any conservative knows what the solution is. But the civil-right race-baiters will squeal like stuck pigs over just about anything if black skin is involved.
Conservatives have to stand up to this crap and risk the riots. Cowardice has become the backbone of conservatism.
Now “stop and frisk” is under assault in NYC where the policy has made the city enormously safer.
I understand the discomfort of being subject to police contact for walking while black. But where are you walking and when are you walking and what is your demeanor and how many “stop and frisks” are caused by bigoted white cops with no reason for the process other than racial contempt?
The content of the character of too many blacks has come up short in increasing numbers in the past 50 years.
Public schools are having an increasing problem with “inner city” pathologies. When the school has to feed and grow the minds of children of the village people and contain and try to handle the crap that the “inner city” children haul with them, the mission of the school changes.
As soon as a new way of dealing with ghetto pathologies arises, the professional race-baters start counting noses and claim that it is all a scheme to go back to slavery.
When GayPatriot had more “liberals” coming here to cast their pearls before us swine, it was always the same exaggerated paranoia based on the mean-spiritedness and troglodyte tendencies of the Nazi, fascist right. They would shift any topic and ignore any fact in order to get down to painting a picture of pure evil.
In short, we conservatives need to fight fire with fire. There is a reason Chicago fails to contain its ghettos. There is a reason Detroit is dead. There is a reason people arm themselves.
But, we seem to care more about getting along. O-Boehner-care funding is coming down the pike. Affirmative Action has no exit strategy. The 47% must be fed and over-promised.
We are at the crossroads – the tipping point. In large part, Romney lost because a huge number of the neglected conservative base took option of staying home. They were discarded. Romney could not associate himself with anything smacking of Sarah Palin. He could not associate himself with the TEA Party. He could not imagine that his “plantation” base would not come to the polls quietly and subserviently. And he lost. No guts, no glory.
Kevinsays
“I don’t comment much here, especially in the last year, because I can’t really call myself a gay conservative anymore and I don’t want to abuse GayPatriots’ hospitality. ” –EssEm
I know that I am a new and infrequent commenter, but please don’t stop commenting: if this were merely an echo chamber, it wouldn’t be interesting. (Comments also become less interesting when they descend to the ad hominem level, but that’s another issue.)
“With that in mind, let’s do the right thing and reference this man with the honorific which represented his greatest beliefs and endeavors during his too short 39 years: let’s call him Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.” –Jman1961
Good point. I’ll try to do that, although breaking habits is hard.
Celebrations can be bittersweet, or touched by sorrow. As I hear this speech, I feel great sorrow that President Obama does not share the dream of an America in which people are “judged…by the content of their character.” (Shown by his dishonest approach in the Trayvon Martin case, and many other examples.)
Perfect example of Obama failing to live up to the dream: “I don’t know – not having been there and not seeing all the facts – what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two that he Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.” No sooner does he admit to not knowing the facts that he goes on to judge the case based on nothing more than the color of the men’s skin.
Truely one of the greatest speaches I have ever seen. I studied him in college and have his speech framed in my office. It was incredible to see at that time. It was one of those historic “WOW” moments.
That said, the meaning and purpose has been sadly hijacked by the “race baiters” and “race hustlers” like Sharpton and Jackson(a wannabe MLK). Hugely dissapointing is how Congressman Lewis and Andy Young have carried on here in Atlanta and Georgia – Martin would be appalled. As for obama, Martin would be thrilled that this diverse country could/would elect a black man as President, and be deeply disappointed at the “self serving” and arrogant manner that he has ‘reigned” over ALL the people of this great country.
” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., August 28, 1963
We need many more people like Dr. King in our race discourse. Non-violent, yet firm; no pandering; and appealing to our better natures and our belief in the Divine (okay, most of us, and he was a preacher).
This is indeed one of the finest speeches of the 20th Century, both in content and delivery.
Forgive me for not having undying adoration for Dr. King, but I have a serious problem with anybody who willingly and knowingly places children in harm’s way. His children’s march may have been a serious coup for the civil rights’ movement, but he knew that those children would be facing people with batons, water cannons, and dogs, and the will and desire to use them. Even when I was a child, such an act struck me as reprehensible, or as near to it as I could consider it. If we condemn the use of child soldiers, why do we not condemn King for his actions? Gandhi, King’s inspiration, never sent children to face the British. It was always consenting adults, typically men, who confronted British soldiers. For all the good King may have done, we seem to forget this rather ugly episode of the civil rights’ movement. Why is that?
Call me devil’s advocate. I just think it’s important to point out the bad aspects of “good” events, and the good aspects of “bad” events, especially as such events are presented by the media and the entertainment industry.
A great comment over here– http://www.mediaite.com/tv/watch-president-obama%E2%80%99s-full-remarks-for-50th-anniversary-of-march-on-washington/ — says it all:
“Back in the late 1950s, Democrats used the National Guard to prevent blacks from getting a better education by going to a better school. Now, Democrats are preventing blacks that want a better education from fleeing failing public schools by opposing school vouchers.”
And that includes our President. *sigh*
One thing we could all stop doing is calling him Dr. King.
He wasn’t a medical doctor, but a PhD (and guilty of some fairly blatant plagiarism on his doctoral thesis in pursuit of that degree).
It plays to one of the most base desires of the prodigious a-holes of the left that any of us should minimize the Christian traditions that made this country possible, along with the men and women who embodied the best of those traditions.
With that in mind, let’s do the right thing and reference this man with the honorific which represented his greatest beliefs and endeavors during his too short 39 years: let’s call him Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
Jman, good one. Rev. King it is, makes sense!
If conservatives can rant that Jesse Jackson should’ve resigned his ministry after siring an illegitimate child, why does MLK, who was confirmed to have had dozens of affairs, including several instances of hiring prostitutes, get off scot free?
Because the good that the man did, and the great numbers of human beings who benefited from that good far outweighed the bad that he did, and the relatively small number of people who were harmed.
For that disgusting race pimp Jackson, the numbers are reversed.
I believe this answers your question.
After a touch of “fixing” on my part, I think *heliotrope* says it better than I.
-We understand fully what the problem is. The keepers of the racial gates are bigots who hate conservatives and blame us for every problem in society. That is their reality, and as a result, they consider those of us who are conservative to be Nazi infidels who must be forcibly converted to worship the creed of the racial hucksters or be destroyed. Hence why they smear us as responsible for everything, why they claim all our policies are bad, why they scream that everything we do is evil, and why they demonize conservatives constantly. They are sick, deranged bigots and we see that clearly.-
http://washingtonexaminer.com/sen.-tim-scott-wasnt-invited-to-event-commemorating-mlk-march-on-washington/article/2534830
I am just trying to point out, Jman, that there are things about King that get ignored or glossed over: he supported Planned Parenthood, a group founded by an avowed eugenicist who wanted to eliminate the black population; he supported North Korea in Vietnam, and glossed over their crimes; he supported the institution of racial quotas to insure that businesses had a percentage of black employees equal to the percentage of black people in a given town; he supported the abolition of prayer in public school; he believed that the United States was founded on genocide and that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution did not apply to black people because those documents were written by slave owners.
King did fight against legitimate oppression; whether or not the current problems of the black community are in any way an unintended consequence of the work he did is up for discussion. But even the Founding Fathers, for all the good that they did and their intrinsic importance to our history, are not wholly unambiguous paragons of goodness; it is practically commonplace to mention their slave-owning, anti-Catholic sentiments, and other character flaws. If we are going to be honest in our understanding of history, we need to examine a person, failings and successes alike.
#9 – I am a conservative, and I have never ranted that Jackson should resign his ministry. I also know many conservatives, and have never heard them rant about Jackson resigning his ministry. I read a number of conservative blogs and monitor quite a few conservative web sites, and don’t remember them ranting that Jackson should resign his ministry. What I have seen is Jackson accused of being a “race whore,” a tax cheat, corrupt, a “race pimp” and a racial divider. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a flawed man, a man with a number of “warts,” but he was NOTHING like the Reverend Jackson
Maybe you are painting with a very broad brush, which is a VERY common practice with most liberal democrats. Maybe you read or heard several, a few, or a number of conservatives/republicans rant about Jackson resigning his ministry, but your liberal projection to encompass ALL conservatives is very specious at a minimum, and asinine in general.
Good try though. Better luck next time.
Anybody besides me notice that ONCE AGAIN, President Barack Hussein Mugabe managed to turn an event celebrating something else into an opportunity to rant ALL ABOUT HIM AND HIS FAILED IDEOLOGY?
14- ALL ABOUT HIM AND HIS FAILED IDEOLOGY?
Yes, it’s always about him.
Mixitup, I’m hardly a liberal. I was unaware that “all” conservatives were implicated in my usage of “conservatives; I was unaware that my political orientation hinged upon satisfying your linguistic/grammatical standards.
Take a gander at the comments sections of previous posts and you will find that, as a gay man who vehemently opposes many pro-gay and liberal gay agendas due to their motives and effects, I may be one of the most conservative commenters on this sight. I actually take more offense to “liberal democrat” than to “fag”: the latter is at least a crude and highly offensive statement of truth, the former is an outright lie.
Again, I am certainly not a liberal, and actually take personal offense to that accusation. Take a second to find out just who you are trying to insult so that your insults are at least accurate.
You won’t get an argument from me, Sean.
Besides the fact that I don’t address anyone with a PhD as ‘doctor’, the simple fact is that Reverend King should never have been so honored as a result of his plagiarism while at Boston University, which fact I pointed out at #7.
The man had many flaws, to be sure.
But do you doubt for one moment his clear moral superiority to the Jacksons, Sharptons, and this prepubescent shitkicker we have in the White House, even with those questionable beliefs and alliances that you cited?
Jman, I will let Ronald Reagan, a man whom King described as “lacking distinction even as an actor” and as suffering from “war psychosis,” answer for me: “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.”
While King’s call to judge men “by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin” is noble and inspirational, his methods and other views were, to my mind, anywhere from questionable (supporting racial quotas) to downright immoral (placing children in harm’s way). Too many people view King with the same rose-tinted glasses that some liberals accuse conservatives of having for the Founding Fathers. Did he do good? Yes. Did he have great personal problems? Yes, like many other great figures.
All I’m saying is, if we are going to tell the whole story about some of our heroes, let’s do it with ALL of our heroes, whether they be Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, George Patton, Rev. Martin Luthor King, Jr., or George W. Bush. That’s all I’m saying.
Sean-
I have great respect for Reverend King, albeit of a fairly narrow focus.
I’ve never considered the man to be in the pantheon of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln.
He does not have the stature, in my mind, of a Harriet Tubman, or a Frederick Douglass, or a Booker T. Washington, who had this to say about the racial grievance mongers of his day:
This may seem crude, but MLK’s elevation to the status of saint was attained not so much by his body of work as it was by the bullet that killed him on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, the fatal shot having been fired by James Earl Ray, a staunch Democrat.
Much the same way that the left beatified John Kennedy for having half his head blown away in Dallas in 1963; his assassin was a leftist and communist.
I thought it was crazy right wingers that committed these horrific crimes.
Martyrdom and revisionist history can work wonders for a person’s legacy.
By the way, I consider Ronald Reagan to be MLK’s equal as an historic figure, if not greater.
Geez, this thread got nasty in a hurry.
I agree with Sean’s statement @18. I will go further and say there are no saints among any of our presidents, past or present. According to Bill O’Reilly’s book “The Killing of Kennedy after the speech was made 50 years ago. King and his group went to the White House and Bobby Kennedy pulled King aside and told him to watch out about his sexual endeavors. I don’t have the book. It is out on loan to someone else. But, according to the book, J. Edgar Hoover already had audiotapes that could be used to for political blackmail of King. Of course the implication to the Kennedy’s was that Hoover had dirt on everyone, including the Kennedy’s, whom he despised……….. I don’t remember if RFK told MLK that Hoover had the tapes. I would recommend O’Reilly’s book to all on this board. It is a page turner.
I was 12 years old when the speech was given, when Kennedy was murdered and I hit puberty. To say the least nothing was the same in my life after the murder of Kennedy.
Jman1961, today both the right and left seem to claim to be in tune with Reagan, Kennedy and King. Today, in my opinion, we have nothing but midgets on both sides of the aisle. I guess that comes with becoming a cynic with being 62 years old. Absolutely nothing surprises me today.
Jman, we are in agreement. I find King’s dream a great goal, to be inspiring. And while I may have problems with King’s views on other matters and his methods, I still agree with that desire to judge people based on their character. So yes, Jackson and Sharpton, and all others who seem to be trying their darnedest to sabotage that goal for their own selfish gains, are morally loathsome to me. In accordance with King’s vision. 😉
Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington may be my favorite thinkers of all time. The verbal smackdown they would deliver on the race mongers of our time would be epic.
Agreed.
This is where I was headed in an earlier post.
I have a great deal of respect for Reverend King; not nearly as much for Dr. King, the politician.
Yet, in spite of the very true and unflattering facts about the man which Sean listed, he’s a giant compared to the people on the national stage nowadays.
Any claim the left has to Reagan is something several orders of magnitude more repellant than a tasteless joke.
Kennedy was a tax cutter and in some cases ‘hawkish’ when it came to foreign affairs, and these two facts alone would have him labeled persona non grata in today’s Democrat party.
As for the good Reverend, had he been a white preacher, today’s left would have consigned him to the dustbin of history not long after his death.
Sean –
For the views and positions that they held at the times of their deaths, I actually have more respect for Malcolm X, who I think was ‘ascending’ in terms of his political and social views when he was murdered by his ‘brothers’ in the NOI in 1965, than I do for MLK, who I think was on course for what could have been, had he not been murdered, a slow slide into RGM (racial grievance mongering) hackery.
I live in South Carolina. What irks me to no end is that everyone continues to say that the Civil Rights movement that occurred in the Southern States. I admit that the South had a real problem, but African-Americans were mistreated throughout the United States. Race riots outside of the American South began in 1964. But the riot that shocked me the most occurred in August of 1965 in Watts, which is now called South Central Los Angeles. Theses riots did not end until around 1970.
Now fast forward to today, we all know that big government and the programs that were instituted back in the 1960s, have had negative effects on the African-American family and even white American families. This has to be reversed. But, Obama and the Democrat party continue buy votes with American taxpayer money. It as if we are all becoming heroin junkies wanting our fix and selling our souls to big government.
Martin Luther King, to my knowledge, never claimed to be the Messiah or even a near perfect human.
J. Edgar Hoover, who assiduously trailed him, was no paragon of virtue. Bobby and Jack Kennedy were masters of sin and peccadilloes. Martin Luther King’s words and actions in bringing his peaceful resistance to the fore have become legend.
Legend is often the core of culture and the father of tradition. I respect Martin Luther King for his vision and his indefatigable work in seeing that vision take root.
What part of his vision is anathema to improving race relations and furthering the betterment of blacks in America?
Why tear down his accomplishments and the power of his words with salacious gossip and charges of impropriety?
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
The need for saints is strong and dangerous.
Sean, my comments and “insults” as you call them, were a result of your comment at #9. I can only react to what you put down for all the world to see. I care not what you may or may not have said in other threads. I will accept your retort that you are not a “liberal democrat.” I wouldn’t be all that insulted by the label, it is ONLY words – not stones.
In your retort though, I didn’t see your defense of juxtaposing MLK with Jackson. To me, they are night & day, apples & oranges. Of course I have read your later comments as you seem to flesh out more of your disdain for MLK and his flaws and warts of his younger years. My only response to your thread of comments and your desire to expose a dark underbelly of Martin would that you read Heliotrope at #26. As is his style, it is an eloquent retort to all the jawboning about MLK’s flaws. It’s funny, after I read through some of the jawboning, the first thought that popped into my head was: “He who lives in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” I think Heliotrope captured that same thought in the last line of #26.
As for me, I will respect those very positive things that Martin accomplished, and died for, and let others pick at his warts and flaws, knowing that I need not duck in fear of getting hit by a “rock.”
As I phrased it on Twitter the other day, the problem with the black community is that fifty years ago black parents wanted their kids to grow up to be MLK; now they want them to grow up to be Trayvon Martin and Rachel Jeantel.
MLK was not perfect. No one is. Nor do his imperfections overshadow his achievements. The history of humankind is a history of humans, all of whom are wretched in the sight of their Maker and quite often in the eyes of their contemporaries and counterparts, but many of whom have transcended that to create thoughts, ideas, items, and legacies of astonishing beauty.
And MLK is a piker compared to his race-baiting and pimping mantle-seekers.
I don’t comment much here, especially in the last year, because I can’t really call myself a gay conservative anymore and I don’t want to abuse GayPatriots’ hospitality.
Conservatism –and by that I do not mean the head-shakingly feckless and useless GOP–has come to seem to me just a rear-guard stalling and losing action hobbled by its acceptance of earlier forms of liberalism, including an attachment to the obsolete and pie-in-the-sky notion of a “colorblind society.” The only people trying to be color-blind are nice White people –The Most Foolish People On The Planet– who are blind to the dynamics of their dispossession and displacement.
The desire to claim some kind of connection with an imagined color-blind MLK and his “dream” is part of it: conservatives’ terror of facing up to the insolubility of the race issue and forever trying to escape from the inescapable accusation of “racism.” (Which is just like trying to prove you’re not a witch.)
90% of Mitt Romney’s votes came from White people. 90%. Because conservatives have renounced their original sin of “racism” –the Liberal equivalent of “witchcraft”– they are unable even to think of this as any kind of mandate to advocate for the only people who vote for them, pathetically “reaching out” to alien Latinos who resent and will never trust them. “Conservatism” has no electoral base at all outside Whites. The only people who acknowledge that are our enemies. Doesn’t make it any less true.
“Dr” King –who plagiarized most of his PhD thesis, btw– led a movement that has slipped a knife into the heart of this nation, getting Whites to see themselves as without any moral standing or self-confident racial status, so that they can be manipulated into self-erasure, becoming a plundered minority in the land that their people created.
“MLK” only cared about his own people. All his sanctimonious blather about “America” was just a means to an end. He has been stunningly successful, especially as a martyr: a once great nation commits suicide over the 13% who have proved themselves, in the last 50 years of vast sums spent and a huge networks of laws and entitlements for them enacted, unable to do much more than self-destruct and blame others for it.
“Martin” doesn’t belong to you. He belongs to Barack and Oprah and Foxx and Sharpton and Jackson and the NAACP and the Black Caucus. Let him go and look for your own heroes.
Barack Hussein Obama, twice elected by the “American” people, as loathsome as he is, is just a symptom of a much deeper collapse. “Conservatism” is wholly unable to fix that.
Oh, please. *I* don’t call myself a conservative. You’re usually interesting. Comment more often, if you’d like.
He said what he said, about color-blindness. I, for one, believe it. Maybe he didn’t believe it or carry it out consistently, but it’s the part of his legacy that I admire… as opposed maybe to some other parts.
In other words, please credit me (for one) with really believing that “race” is a mistaken way to think about human beings, a dead end. Rather than psychologizing that I am trying to escape whatever.
Then again, since I argue that I’m not really a conservative, I suppose your words could still be true of conservatives; I mean, I wouldn’t presume to say, one way or t’other.
What would you call yourself now?
This truth about political conservatism is at the heart of the mess that liberal welfare programs have made of the black family.
The MLK charade on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday was focused on how far black America has to go to become equal and it was all race-baiting hokum. It was as if MLK spoke 50 years ago and his “I have a Dream” speech had no effect whatsoever.
I believe that judging people by the content of their character has become much more prevalent and that in using that measure, the character of too many welfare blacks just does not measure up to the decent norm or society. Too many welfare blacks are pulling each other down and they are on the fringes of the public square.
The Chicago gang-ridden black ghetto is a failure of government. Any conservative knows what the solution is. But the civil-right race-baiters will squeal like stuck pigs over just about anything if black skin is involved.
Conservatives have to stand up to this crap and risk the riots. Cowardice has become the backbone of conservatism.
Now “stop and frisk” is under assault in NYC where the policy has made the city enormously safer.
I understand the discomfort of being subject to police contact for walking while black. But where are you walking and when are you walking and what is your demeanor and how many “stop and frisks” are caused by bigoted white cops with no reason for the process other than racial contempt?
The content of the character of too many blacks has come up short in increasing numbers in the past 50 years.
Public schools are having an increasing problem with “inner city” pathologies. When the school has to feed and grow the minds of children of the village people and contain and try to handle the crap that the “inner city” children haul with them, the mission of the school changes.
As soon as a new way of dealing with ghetto pathologies arises, the professional race-baters start counting noses and claim that it is all a scheme to go back to slavery.
When GayPatriot had more “liberals” coming here to cast their pearls before us swine, it was always the same exaggerated paranoia based on the mean-spiritedness and troglodyte tendencies of the Nazi, fascist right. They would shift any topic and ignore any fact in order to get down to painting a picture of pure evil.
In short, we conservatives need to fight fire with fire. There is a reason Chicago fails to contain its ghettos. There is a reason Detroit is dead. There is a reason people arm themselves.
But, we seem to care more about getting along. O-Boehner-care funding is coming down the pike. Affirmative Action has no exit strategy. The 47% must be fed and over-promised.
We are at the crossroads – the tipping point. In large part, Romney lost because a huge number of the neglected conservative base took option of staying home. They were discarded. Romney could not associate himself with anything smacking of Sarah Palin. He could not associate himself with the TEA Party. He could not imagine that his “plantation” base would not come to the polls quietly and subserviently. And he lost. No guts, no glory.
“I don’t comment much here, especially in the last year, because I can’t really call myself a gay conservative anymore and I don’t want to abuse GayPatriots’ hospitality. ” –EssEm
I know that I am a new and infrequent commenter, but please don’t stop commenting: if this were merely an echo chamber, it wouldn’t be interesting. (Comments also become less interesting when they descend to the ad hominem level, but that’s another issue.)
“With that in mind, let’s do the right thing and reference this man with the honorific which represented his greatest beliefs and endeavors during his too short 39 years: let’s call him Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.” –Jman1961
Good point. I’ll try to do that, although breaking habits is hard.