A Dream [The best piece on M.L. King Jr. I've seen.]

"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."

This is not the most important line in King's speech, but it is important. So many decades later -- in a time when the Jacksons, père et fils, stand accused of assaulting an anti-preferences black minister BECAUSE he is against racial preferences and dares to speak his mind, in a time when the people of California pass a proposition against racial preferences and their state government does everything it can to disobey its rulers, in a time when, if you are against judging people by the color of their skin you are called racist -- we have to wonder why this dream is deferred.

When we refuse to obey a higher law, we become subject to a lower. Lewis's great example is that if we refuse to obey the law of prudence when we venture onto an icy sidewalk, we will discover ourselves to be obeying the law of gravity! Of course, we are always obeying that law, we have no choice. But if we are not carefulwhen walking on ice, we experience the "wrath" of that law.

It's a lighthearted example, but the reality can be painful. And when you consider that a leading prelude to death among the elderly is a broken hip, our laughter dies and we become thoughtful.

The oozing sore, the infection our Republic suffered at its birth was slavery. The greatest convulsion our nation ever underwent was the wrath of God on our failure to purge ourselves of that affliction. The persistence of racism still threatens the life and health of this country, while the consequent delerium corrupts our thoughts and affections.

"The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone."

"We cannot walk alone." This is the merest commonplace, the simplest acquiescence to the obvious. The human creature, riven by conflicting desires, seeks solitude in the crowd and companionship in solitude. We cannot, we do not walk alone, and yet we cannot bear to be with one another. The liberating burden of compassion and charity is too much for us. We reject the love that atones for a multitude of sins and then, ridiculously, are astonished when the sins remain and our disobedience to the Higher Law of Charity leaves us subject to the lower laws of contention, envy, fear, and divisiveness.

We do not walk alone, we need not walk alone. We are surrounded by "a great cloud of witnesses". God Himself is with us. Armies of angels offer us their aid. The holy ones who have gone before intercede for us. In unexpected places we encounter greatness and goodness.

But they will not walk for us. It is up to us, it is always up to us, to take the next step.

"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'"

"Let" freedom ring? We might as well try to "let" the sun shine, to "let" the wind blow, to "let" an infant cry to be fed. Freedom rings.

It is our own hearts that are enslaved. To those long in darkness, the brightness of the sun sears their blinking eyes. The peal of freedom's ringing torments ears unwilling to hear. If we shut our eyes, we will never learn to bear the light. If we stop our ears, we will never learn to listen.

Until we see that our hearts are in bondage, until we dare to long for freedom -- for the glorious liberty of the sons of God, freedom's changes will ring on our ears as discord and noise.

In the movie, The Inn of the Seventh Happiness, a courageous elderly Chinese woman volunteers to have her feet unbound. Her daring offer is declined because to loose feet so long constrained would cause unbearable pain.

Our hearts have long been bound in fear, envy, and hatred. It may be that there is no way to freedom but through unbearable pain. Weeping spends the night, but Joy comes in the morning. We have plenty to weep over, and much more to hope for.

In this site we mock and reflect on the issues of the day, on the ephemeral. And though the issues are ephemeral, they are no less important for their brevity. It took Peter only a few minutes to deny the Lord. The bullets that killed Dr. King were in the air for milliseconds. It takes almost no time to say, "I hate you." Smallness and importance are in no way correlative. The Eternal pitches His tent in the evanescent. A manger once held something bigger than the universe.

It takes almost no time to start a life or to end it, to break a heart or to mend it. And if the heart must be broken before it is mended, then let it -- let mine -- be broken so that, at last, it may be healed.

Our advice: On this day, choose Life. Choose Justice. Choose Freedom. Then take the next step. It won't take a minute. It will take the rest of your life.

This is from the personal site of fellow Freeper, "Mad Dawg."

I can't say how much I admire both this article and his site. I'm posting the essay over at my site, Declaration Foundation as well as posting it here.

I commend Dawg's site to you all, and hope that more pieces from it may be posted here.

Best to all,

Richard F.

Here is your competition for best essay on MLK.

"Being Kingly"

For Justice!

Richard F.

ping for a lovely piece.

Cheers,

Richard F.

That "Being Kingly" is good stuff. Thanks for aiming me at it. I think we have to say that MLK was iconic -- in a way greater than himself. To see, on the one hand, his being coopted by the race pimps, and on the other the occasion of his birth prompting considerable thought, some of it very good indeed ...

I'll be meeting with Clegg, Connerly, and some others on Jan 30th in DC.

Let's hope we can get the anti-preferences and the pro-life movements back in the offensive mode!

Cheers,

Richard F.

THANKS FOR THE BUMP

Civil rights and justice for ALL

THANKS FOR THE BUMP

You're so welcome.

I really, really love this article.

Liberty and justice for all!

Richard F.

Thanks. Good work. It is really amazing to see how the Declaration of Independence holds us together to this day. I am currently reading John Adams by McCullough, and it is heartening to see how the hard work and sacrifice of the Adamses paid off. I had already read about their son John Quincy, who was also a believer in the American Creed, and so was not surprised to find much to admire in his parents. Martin Luther King Jr.'s name deserves to be uttered in the same breath as the greatest American patriots, in my opinion.

Co-incidence ... I was just listening to an interview with McCullough on C-Span. He was wondeful on Adams, and said straight out that he was sure Adams would have been with Lincoln in 1860, had he been alive.

Thanks for the reply.

Richard F.

Jefferson, of course, would likely have gone with the Confederacy. Madison seems to have come to his senses in later life, after Jefferson and the intrigue of Enlish/French politics had ceased to influence him, and was by 1830 aligned with Whig ideology, as espoused by Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams. Which only goes to show that we are ultimately on our own. We can't look to the Founders to solve our problems for us, since the Founders themselves did not often agree. Washington himself was vilified in his own time, by republicans. Go figure.

You can listen to them here: http://www.freedomvision.com/famousspeeches/home.htm

Here is the Real Audio for "I have a Dream":

http://www.freedomvision.com/famousspeeches/ihaveadream.ram

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