Open Thread: Martin Luther King Jr.
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ … I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. … And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.” –Martin Luther King Jr.
Historian Shelby Steele observed, “There is an awful lot of conservative sentiment in black America, but at the moment, the party line is ruthlessly enforced.” Indeed, some of King’s chief lieutenants, like Jesse Jackson, tolerate no dissension from their liberal ranks now. They have abandoned King’s dream, and aligned themselves with political and social agendas obsessed with color at the expense of character.
Black conservatives of national stature, such as Clarence Thomas, Ward Connerly, Michael Steele, Jesse Lee Peterson, Alan Keyes, Don Scoggins, Alvin Williams, Ken Blackwell, Thomas Sowell, Star Parker and Walter Williams are routinely castigated by the Black Supremacists, as “Uncle Toms” and “puppets.” Yet these are the men and women who really understand King’s central message about character.
Today, Barack Obama will be waxing eloquently about King’s legacy. But it is worth noting that in 1966, Martin King went to Obama’s hometown of Chicago to meet with Mayor Richard Daley, father of the current Windy City Don. Chicago was a hotbed of racial hatred under Daley, and not much has changed.
King observed of that enmity, “This is the most tragic picture of man’s inhumanity to man. I’ve been to Mississippi and Alabama and I can tell you that the hatred and hostility in Chicago are really deeper than in Alabama and Mississippi.”
Chicago was not only a den of racial hatred but the violent black supremacist movement was born there. King said, “Those who are associated with ‘Black Power’ and black supremacy are wrong.”
It is that very racial hatred and hostility in which Obama has been steeped, particularly by mentors such as Jeremiah Wright.
At King’s funeral, one Bible passage, Matthew 5:9, summed up his life’s mission: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
Obama was not stewarded by peacemakers.
Finally, irrespective of one’s conclusion about Martin Luther King’s proper place in history (given the historical account of his sometimes-lacking personal integrity and character), the two texts cited below (from The Patriot Post’s Historic Documents section) are well worth reading – for each of them proclaim truth.
