Shut 'em down...
Birth of Tha SYNDICATE, the philosophical heir to William Lloyd Garrison.
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.
Posted on 01/19/2003 10:48:50 AM PST by SJackson
Jewsweek Magazine I believe that commemorating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King is the right thing. I believe that civic entities should signify the observance with an official holiday. I have always celebrated Dr. King’s life and have forever encouraged others to do so. I have hosted Dr. King’s widow in my pulpit and in my home, was privileged to have Daddy King preach in my synagogue, and I have chaired interfaith services in his memory in three cities.
I celebrate Dr. King not only out of empathy to the African American cause, but because Dr. King’s legacy is about universal ennoblement, the dignity of body, mind and spirit that is the God-granted gift of all Creation. Thus, the following column is not intended to preach to us liberals, but to the most conservative folks among us.
This is what I want to say to the most conservative elements of the national and local community:
If you think, however questionably, that African Americans are ignorant, uppity, intimidating, scrounging for a free lunch, hateful of white folk, immoral . . . then you could do a lot worse than Dr. King as the sine qua non African American role model. In fact, you should encourage that Dr. King’s legacy, and not someone else’s, should be the primary guiding light of African American self-determination. You should do everything in your power to acknowledge Dr. King as the yardstick by which African American parents should measure their children’s achievements and by which the quality of men and women who contend for leadership of the African American community should be judged.
After all, otherwise you might one day wind up with demands for holidays honoring far less illustrious role models, like Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, convicted murderer Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown), Snoop Dogg or P. Diddy. And, for God’s sake do not forget that Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIGG are already dead and just aching for martyrdom to consecrate their memories.
Make, as I have, an extensive study of Dr. King’s utilization of Biblical passages in his pronouncements. I have never seen a single passage twisted for venal, violent or self-enriching purposes. Can we say the same of Jesse Jackson?
Then, force yourself to read Dr. King’s I Have a Dream soliloquy. Do you see an appeal for African American dominance over white America? Do you see an exhortation to take anyone else’s piece of the American pie, or to “take” anything at all? Do you see anything about African Americans deserving a free lunch or shunning the societal mainstream to establish a belligerent separatist nation? Do you see anything but a call for equal opportunity and interracial harmony? Can we say the same of Louis Farrakhan or the sordid legacy of H. Rap Brown?
And, then also admit that Dr. King’s legacy is the very antithesis of the sloth, ignorance, crack, cop-killing, and “bitches and ‘ho’s” preached by the prophets of hop-hop and rap.
Anyone who tries to dictate to another person whom his/her role model should be is presumptuous. Yet, we have the right to editorialize and not capitulate to, “Hey, whoever turns you on.” White Americans have every reason to be reminded that Thomas Jefferson, even though he owned slaves and was quite a lady’s man, deserves our adulation over vipers like David Duke. And, African Americans have every reason to be exhorted that Dr. King, for all his frailties, deserves to be celebrated as a role model over Jesse Jackson and Snoop Dogg.
Personally, I see Dr. King’s legacy is an ideal to which all honorable people should aspire. But, to the most conservative among us, I would leave the following admonition:
A holiday to commemorate the legacy of Dr. King is the most desirable of all alternatives, if not for yourselves, then for African Americans. At least Dr. King tried to steer the ship of state out of disaster, rather than into it. If Dr. King is not exalted as a role model, which far less worthy model might be ordained to take his place? As far as I am concerned, we would be hard pressed to do better. If you are a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, at least admit that we could do a lot worse.
Shut 'em down...
Birth of Tha SYNDICATE, the philosophical heir to William Lloyd Garrison.
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.
How many Americans, black or white, do you think will stop to think about Dr. King on January 20? They'll take the day off from work or school and satisfy whatever personal desire floats through their mind. The holiday is a political bone that our fearless leaders in Washington threw the blacks to give them a feeling of importance, nothing more.
The blacks can have MLK Day, but I want George Washington Day, Theodore Roosevelt Day, Neil Armstrong Day (first man to step onto the lunar surface), Abraham Lincoln Day (the blacks should clamor for this one), George Patton Day, Robert E. Lee Day, Ulysses S. Grant Day, Albert Einstein Day, Ronald Reagan Day, Orville and Wilbur Wright Day, Alexander Graham Bell Day, Thomas Jefferson Day, and the list goes on and on and on and on and on.
My conclusion is that white Americans don't need to commemorate its heroes, because if we took a day for every worthy candidate, we'd never get any work done. We also don't need to change our group's label every generation, i.e. Negro to Black to African American. When blacks get tired of shoving their fists in the air and reminding us all of their skin color, then maybe we'll be able to get along.
They call it "Civil Rights Day" or "Human Rights Day" around here. It is growing in popularity.
As far as the man--MLK--is concerned: America doesn't have royalty, and America doesn't have saints.
King was an important but flawed human being. I'd say that he or someone like him was necessary for the time.
That's pretty much it.
Birth of Tha SYNDICATE, the philosophical heir to William Lloyd Garrison.
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.
The importation of slaves remained legal until 1808, but the scale of importation between the invention of the cotton gin and 1808 seems to have been rather limited (it was mostly because of South Carolina and Georgia that the slave trade was not already banned by the Constitutional Convention). The great majority of the ancestors of today's black Americans were already in the U.S. in 1793 (which is less typically true for white Americans).
Conservatives who judge people based on their skin color do so as the result of a character flaw. It's a shame. Leftists who judge people based on their skin color do so as the result of ideology. It's disgusting.
Precisely. My father traced our lineage here to 1798. It could precede this, and he's still checking.
For those who tell me or those who look like me to "go back to Africa," I say that if that person's or persons' lineage here in this nation is after 1798, they should go "back" to where they come from. In other words, I was here first.
Birth of Tha SYNDICATE, the philosophical heir to William Lloyd Garrison.
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.
The man was a giant in that he recognized, as few ever have except maybe Lincoln, the universality of the ideals that are imbodied in our founding documents and the importance of living up to those AMERCIAN values for the benefit all mankind.
He also advocated peaceful change.....a critical factor in maintaining our constitutional order.
Au contraire. It's disgusting no matter what the ideology of the racist.
Racism and discrimination (by all races) is evil. He helped change America's conscience, and we are far better for that. That having been said, I no longer have "white guilt" as I did in my youth. We are not responsible for the sins of our fathers. My father, had no sins relative to slavery. One grandfather came here from Ireland and the other from Germany in the early 1900s.
I know what is in my heart. I look at individuals. I will call black criminals the thugs they are without feeling a tinge of racism. Scum are scum, no matter their race.
At the very least, Martin Luther King should not have been honored with a national holiday until his FBI files were open for public scrutiny. Perhaps a "Civil Rights Day" would suffice in the meantime.
Other people on this thread have listed names of Americans in history who are "more deserving" of a national holiday, and yet nobody has mentioned Frederick Douglass as one of them. I consider Douglass to rank among the greatest Americans of all time -- other than Douglass, I don't think there was anyone other than Washington, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt who occupied a position in this nation's history that defined what this nation would become.
Total slave population (per US census):
1790: 697,681
1800: 893,602
1810: 1,191,362
1820: 1,538,022
1830: 2,009,043
I don't think he plagiarized it.
What an excellant quote. Who said it? BTW; check out my home page,I've got quite a few there, some you might like.
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