The Greatest American Ever

Martin Luther King: pro-Union. Anti-war. Anti-conservative.

And the conservatives hate him for it, so they try to make him into something other than a liberal. Let's never forget that Ronald Reagan said that Martin Luther King's assassination was a "great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they'd break."

In other words, Martin Luther King brought it on himself.

Let's never forget that it was liberals who fought and won the battle for civil rights in this country. And conservatives lost.

Oh, and just this week, we've seen Mike Huckabee, another Southern Conservative, defend flying the Confederate Battle Flag in South Carolina -- and it's not even the state flag there! That's a good example of just how dependent today's GOP is dependent on the votes of people who are descended from the people who fought civil rights 40 years ago.

OW, did you see that John Edwards was encouraged by Dr. King's son to stay in the race by this letter?

January 20, 2008

The Honorable John R. Edwards
410 Market Street
Suite 400
Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Dear Senator Edwards:

It was good meeting with you yesterday and discussing my father's legacy. On the day when the nation will honor my father, I wanted to follow up with a personal note.

There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of back and forth in the political arena over my father's legacy. It is a commentary on the breadth and depth of his impact that so many people want to claim his legacy. I am concerned that we do not blur the lines and obscure the truth about what he stood for: speaking up for justice for those who have no voice.

I appreciate that on the major issues of health care, the environment, and the economy, you have framed the issues for what they are - a struggle for justice. And, you have almost single-handedly made poverty an issue in this election.

You know as well as anyone that the 37 million people living in poverty have no voice in our system. They don't have lobbyists in Washington and they don't get to go to lunch with members of Congress. Speaking up for them is not politically convenient. But, it is the right thing to do.

I am disturbed by how little attention the topic of economic justice has received during this campaign. I want to challenge all candidates to follow your lead, and speak up loudly and forcefully on the issue of economic justice in America.

From our conversation yesterday, I know this is personal for you. I know you know what it means to come from nothing. I know you know what it means to get the opportunities you need to build a better life. And, I know you know that injustice is alive and well in America, because millions of people will never get the same opportunities you had.

I believe that now, more than ever, we need a leader who wakes up every morning with the knowledge of that injustice in the forefront of their minds, and who knows that when we commit ourselves to a cause as a nation, we can make major strides in our own lifetimes. My father was not driven by an illusory vision of a perfect society. He was driven by the certain knowledge that when people of good faith and strong principles commit to making things better, we can change hearts, we can change minds, and we can change lives.

So, I urge you: keep going. Ignore the pundits, who think this is a horserace, not a fight for justice. My dad was a fighter. As a friend and a believer in my father's words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, I say to you: keep going. Keep fighting. My father would be proud.

Sincerely,

Martin L. King, III

And Edwards won the debate last night. In the name of love and justice.

Every time I find a used copy of Stride toward freedom; the Montgomery story I buy it and gift it. It's a great tragedy that it isn't in print and required reading by every school child.

The National Review on the subject of the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
October 1, 1963

"The fiend who set off the bomb does not have the sympathy of the white population in the South; in fact, he set back the cause of the white people there so dramatically as to raise the question whether in fact the explosion was the act of a provocateur - of a Communist, or of a crazed Negro. Some circumstantial evidence lends a hint of plausibility to that notion, especially the ten-minute fuse (surely a white man walking away form the church basement ten minutes earlier would have been noticed?). And let it be said that the convulsions that go on, and are bound to continue, have resulted from revolutionary assaults on the status quo, and a contempt for the law, which are traceable to the Supreme Court’s manifest contempt for the settled traditions of Constitutional practice."

In other words: the bombing was the fault of the civil rights movement, and probably a black guy did it. Don't go changing on me, National Review!

If you hadn't reached back all the way to 1963, it would be inappropriate to drop a "BYRD!!" reference...

Hey, when the NAACP comes out against Byrd, then I'll take your anti-racist credentials more seriously, Farris.

Greatest American? Good luck with all that.

Facts about King:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/epstein9.html

No way in hell could King be called a conservative. Had he lived he'd probably be another Je$$e "Booty Call" Jack$on extortionist.

Let's never forget that it was liberals who fought and won the battle for civil rights in this country. And conservatives lost.

Interesting bolshevik-type revisionism. The way history recalls it, a Republican President freed the slaves, Blacks founded the Republican Party of Texas and more Rs voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1965 than Ds.

Democrats were the ones aiming the firehoses and siccing the dogs on Southern Blacks, and they're the ones keeping a too-large segment of American Blacks in mental chains today. Down with victicrats.

A Republican president before Republicans as we know them today really existed, dummy.

Also note that he wasn't talking in terms of parties, he was talking in terms of ideologies. It may shock you but there is a difference.

This new person is so dumb he makes JAY look smart by comparison. That's freakin' DUMB. So, going down the IQ ladder, there are dogs and cats, Jay, anaerobic bacteria, and then Global Warming.

Why is he even called that? Is that supposed to be sarcasm? Does he think that's witty and ironic?

He probably heard it on Hannity or Savage. Haven't met a conbot yet that has an original thought. Fortunately, someone like that doesn't have a particularly long shelf life-you usually read about them on the Darwin Awards web site.

GWA literally had nothing to respond to my post about liberals versus conservatives in the 1960s South. Not one word. Telling, isn't it?