Martin Luther King was no hero to the right.
Another, even more prominent conservative said it was just the sort of “great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they’d break.”
That was Ronald Reagan, the governor of California, arguing that King had it coming. King was the man who taught people they could choose which laws they’d break–in his soaring exegesis on St. Thomas Aquinas from that Birmingham jail in 1963: “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. … Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.”
As I wrote a year ago, the right has been trying and trying to adopt Martin Luther King as one of their own, when in fact their movement was directly opposed to him. Modern day conservatism owes a debt to racists.
Modern conservatism is dependent upon southern conservatives, who were wrong on race, and who migrated from the old racist Democratic party once it became the party of liberalism. And now Southern conservatives are the electoral backbone of the GOP. It’s no accident that 88% of Mississippi whites voted for Bush in 2004 — not because Bush is racist, but because nobody hates liberals more than a neo-segregationist. So the new project of the right is to defang MLK so that his words and ideas no longer threaten their do-nothing, see-no-evil philosphy of race issue that southern racists find so palatable.
conservatives are racists. period. How can they think to try and associate themselves or why> with MLK.
They fought MLK day for years.
I want to know why they are trying to making him one of them now?
Could you do an article about this??
“Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust”
Sp I take it that you oppose any and all gun control legislation, Oliver?
The right to self-defense absolutely uplifts the human personality.
This has been a message from the NRA’s Surrealist Department.
It would have helped if I could have read the whole article without the song - and - dance of a subscription.
I’m not so sure if [then] Gov. Reagan referred to Martin Luther King’s civil disobedience, or even the civil disobedience in which so many people participated.
I remember reading a blurb for a “conservative’s” book about MLK, Jr. that said, “Everywhere he spoke there were riots afterward” (obviously an exaggeration, but it is not a stretch to make a connection between the calls to equality, and the frustration that leads to violence).
I must confess that I am not familiar enough with all of Dr. King’s speeches and writings to be sure that he did, indeed, preach or advocate nonviolence. I only know, for sure, that he acted in a nonviolent way, and demonstrated nonviolently.
Of course, the idea that conservatives are racist is nonsense, as is the idea that Republicans are.
Anyone who has read “The Making of the President 1968″, or “The Emerging Republican Majority”, knows that it was the Democrats’ opposition to the war / pandering to the New Left that got the voters who had voted for Wallace in 1968 (about 11%, if I recall) to vote for Nixon in 1972.
To this day, there are still people who believe that if Wallace had not run, Humphrey would have got those votes and beat Nixon. That’s why they ran an anti - war liberal (McGovern) in 1972. Race was certainly not an issue then; Vietnam was — hence, the drubbing McGovern took…
“Republicans are racist” is a sweeping generalisation.
“Racists will probably find that they feel quite comfortable in the Republican Party” is an accurate statement.
Since you pass yourself as having so much knowledge of American politics, I ask you, NG, or anyone else who cares to answer:
Which Democratic politicians who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, went on to become Republicans?
Which Democratic politicians who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, lost their seats in the next election?
Surely it was a lot, no, what with all the southern racists abandoning the Democrats?
Zell Miller?
43 Years Ago = Now
N G: I’ll take that as “As usual, I haven’t a clue”
Take it however you like, nutrag.
Ah, yes, NG, the left’s leap to obscenity when intelligence is required is legendary.
“Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust”
Sp I take it that you oppose any and all gun control legislation, Oliver?
The right to self-defense absolutely uplifts the human personality.
First of all, anyone who needs a gun to have personality needs help.
Secondly, swords are MUCH more bad-ass than guns. =P
Since you pass yourself as having so much knowledge of American politics, I ask you, NG, or anyone else who cares to answer:
Which Democratic politicians who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, went on to become Republicans?
Which Democratic politicians who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, lost their seats in the next election?
Surely it was a lot, no, what with all the southern racists abandoning the Democrats?
Democrat != liberal. Just ask Joe LIeberman or Zell Miller.
The southern racist Democrats became Republicans. Nobody who’s cracked open a history book and can comprehend the words on the page disputes this. It’s why the Republican party’s strength to this day is in the south and why in the last election the only place Dems didn’t make inroads was in the south (though we retained our Georgia seats and picked up in FL, which is the least culturally southern of the southern states).
Oliver, someone said that already…
My question was an opportunity for someone to support that statement.
I see you have passed on your opportunity…
“The southern racist Democrats became Republicans,” you say?
Which ones?
I repeat:
Which Democratic politicians who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, went on to become Republicans?
“On June 17, the Senate voted by a 76 to 18 margin to adopt the bipartisan substitute worked out by Dirksen in his office in May and to give the bill its third reading. Two days later, the Senate passed the bill by a 73 to 27 roll call vote. Six Republicans and 21 Democrats held firm and voted against passage.
Only one Democratic Senator who voted against civil rights shifted allegiances to the Republicans … Most democrats who opposed civil rights such as Albert Gore Sr., J. William Fulbright, and … Robert C. Byrd … The vast majority of southern segregationist did not become Republicans.
So, I repeat:
Which Democratic politicians who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, went on to become Republicans?
Which Democratic politicians who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, lost their seats in the next election?
Say it all you want, but it just ain’t so!
“Nutrag” isn’t obscene where I come from, it’s a synonym for “nutcase”. That’s how I meant it.
Which Democratic politicians who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, went on to become Republicans?
Strom Thurmond crossed the aisle in September, 1964, only a couple of months after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.