House of Eratosthenes

I propose we celebrate this man’s great dream, by measuring our current leaders according to this standard. With an open mind, let us gauge their appreciation, or lack thereof, of this concept of a very basic human birthright.

Freedom, to me, is when you’re doing something someone else does not like. Someone rich. Someone powerful. Someone well-spoken, who can talk to a crowd and really get it all stirred up and excited. When that person loathes what you are doing or saying, and you’re allowed to keep right on doing it anyway, then you are free.

If this is not possible, for whatever reason, then you are not.

Let us celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday with a clear and honest inspection of the job we have done, as a society that calls itself free, adhering to and fulfilling his vision.

Morgan, speaking of MLK day, here’s something that’s been bugging me for a full year now.

Today, as on this day last year, some are saying, “Isn’t a shame that Martin Luther King Jr didn’t live to see our first African American president? He would have been proud.”

Uhm, no, not necessarily. See, King did more – much more – than just advance the rights and dignity of minorities. He also advocated a certain color-blindness. You know, “Not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?” I believe it’s right there in the famous “I have a Dream” speech, arguably one of the most important addresses of the 20th century.

This really annoys me. Thoughts?
- cylarz | 01/18/2010 @ 12:31
cylarz: I couldn’t agree more. Not being racist means not taking race into consideration at all. It is indeed a step in the right direction that we have elected a black man to be president, but as long as “the first black man to…” is in the sentence, it doesn’t represent much progress at all.

Which is why it has always seemed odd to me that people think that a good way to help end racism is by recognizing achievements in terms of the minorities who achieved them. Quite the contrary, it’s a good way to make sure we never stop identifying people by race.
- Andy | 01/18/2010 @ 16:14
Precisely. MLK’s movement has been hijacked by populists who think they’re carrying on his legacy. And the usurpation began all the way back at that speech in The Mall. Can’t blame them, really, the scene looks like what populism is supposed to be: One man, assembling hundreds of thousands together, and using his booming voice to tell ’em what’s-what and what-for.

But this ends up being the polar opposite of what freedom really is: A central charismatic figure, creating a definition of who-should-be-allowed-to-do-what, and the teeming millions around him join the movement not to challenge the definitions but to add their zeal and their energy so that the new protocols become a reality. It’s all wonderful until the protocols are concerned with prohibiting something as opposed to allowing something — then, what you have there, is a dictatorship. And this is a much shorter and more slippery road than most people think.

Dr. King didn’t live long enough to see us devolve into this charming dystopian mess, in which otherwise sterling careers are brought to an end with statements containing the phrase “could be construed as.” Had he foreseen it, I think he’d have done some things differently; and I think he probably did see what was coming, before he inserted that most famous phrase you gentlemen are quoting. It’s a shame that even though this is the high point of the speech, memorialized in letter, it’s so often forgotten in spirit. That’s probably because a lot of loudmouths are making some pretty decent coin making sure we’re all judged not by the content of our character, but by the color of our skin.
- mkfreeberg | 01/18/2010 @ 19:30
“Free”. I like it. Great observation, Morgan. And great comments, cylarz.

I had a conversation a year or so ago where I mentioned that the GOP should rightly bear the mantle of The Party of Civil Rights. I also pointed out the MLK himself was a registered Republican.

To which even my relatively conservative friend responded “yeah, but the two parties have kind of switched roles since then”.

I shook my head. No. They don’t get it. Civil rights are for everyone. It’s what the Constitution says. With slavery, we weren’t living up to the very ideals embodied in the Constitution that defines our Republic. The Republican Party’s tradition, embodied in its name, reflects that we are a Republic and we have rules to live up to to remain true to that Republic.

The other party that bears the name of one of the tools of our Republic, that being Democratic elections and approving certain things by popular vote within the confines of the Republic’s Constitution …. and they’ve fudged the very idea of what we are in most people’s minds … “we are a Democracy”. We are not a Democracy. At least we’re not supposed to be, and anyone who has studied the history of the founding of our nation knows it.

The Republicans have “switched” roles only to the extent that they appear to be ever more willing to go along with the idea that Government is there to fight for “social justice” … and “social justice” sounds like it means one thing, but as with most Progressive ideas it means something very specific and quite different from what it sounds like it means. It means “redistribution of wealth”. It means Socialism.

But to the Republicans’ general credit, they do appear to be, or have appeared to have been, even in the years since the 1960’s, the party that pays more than a little lip service to the idea of the Republic — at least more so than the other party … and insists that All Men Are Created Equal, and no man deserves special treatment from the state no matter what his lot in life. So it is the party that sometimes resists when laws that do just that are brought up.

What has happened is that the Democrats have run a very successful PR campaign to paint opposition to special treatment as equal to opposition to Civil Rights. Up is Down. Black is White. Left is Right. Peace is War.

But the fact remains that equal treatment by the State is Civil Rights.

MLK would be proud of the destruction of institutionalized racism left in his wake. He would be appalled and saddened as to how that has been squandered and the movement was hijacked and turned into something which turned institutionalized racism to institutionalized reverse-racism, and dependence for many of the descendants of former slaves — effectively a kind of self-imposed “cultural slavery”.
- philmon | 01/18/2010 @ 22:06
You guys are spot on. Thank you for the kind words.

I remember being soundly irritated with some political cartoons I saw right after Obama’s inauguration. One of them showed Jug Ears clicking his heels next to a statue of MLK Jr. He and the statue were reaching out their hands to give each other a high-five.

The other cartoon depicted the statue of Lincoln at the memorial that bears his name in Washington DC. The statue is shown grinning ecstatically. In both cases, the message was, “These assassinated men, who devoted their lives to obtaining equal rights for blacks, would have been so proud to see a black man elected president.”

The tragedy is that both of these pathetic commentaries appeared on Townhall.com, an ostensibly conservative website.
- cylarz | 01/18/2010 @ 23:39
Lemme tell you guys, Martin Luther King Jr’s message was exactly that the days of treating people like they were different because of their color were over.

Nobody who heard him ever doubted that his message was for everybody, black or white or plaid, and it never varied – White people need to stop holding black people down, and black people need to get their shit together and earn respect. Sittin around with your hand out and hopin to get patted on yo little nappy head is shameful, and deserving of every calumny ever heaped on blacks by segregationists. And he told ’em, bubba, never doubt it.

Nobody, ever, missed the point when Dr. King was preaching. The travesty of his name’s being associated with race-hustlers and socialists is only possible through the relentless dumbing-down of generation after generation via the idiocy of television and the public schools. I was there, and I saw the reaction he set off in all kinds of people, in the midwest and in Texas, black and white. He scared older folks of both colors because it meant they’d have to change, and he pissed off the young turks of both colors because it meant they’d have to grow up. If James Earl Ray hadn’t shot him, a Black Panther would have sooner or later.

That was a man, and hearing his name in the mouth of trash like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton makes me sick. Wait’ll you get to be a few years older, and the depth and speed at which reality is turned on its head by popular “culture” will make your head spin. Orwell was right, and the legacy of MLK is a prime example.
- rob | 01/19/2010 @ 00:41

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