[Support Free Republic]

Your Donation Helps Counter These Guys
	Donate Here By Secure Server Or mail checks to FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794 or you can use PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com
STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD

[zarf]

Dr. King’s legacy is about universal ennoblement, the dignity of body, mind and spirit that is the God-granted gift of all Creation

What the author doesn't remind us is that these ideals are are enshrined in Americas founding documents. Americas cause is a universal one.

The greatness of Dr. King is that he recognized that and forced America to live up it's own ideals.

[canuck_conservative]

"Jewsweek"?

Hip title.

[Man of the Right]

MLK was a great man and generally a positive role model for African-Americans if one treads lightly on the plagarized Ph.D. dissertation and the adultery.

My beef is where he ranks in the pantheon. If the founder of the country (George Washington) and the remaker of the country (Abraham Lincoln) don't rate a holiday collectively, let alone individually, how does King rate? Does Cinque de Mayo became a federal holiday when Hispanics outnumber blacks later this decade? Or does Pearl Harbor Day (honoring the brave Japanese airmen) when Asiatics outnumber both?

My personal opinion is that observance of King Day will continue to decline until it is eliminated as a Federal holiday. On merit, King day is an ethnic holiday comparable to Columbus Day in importance.

Jan. 20 means no mail delivery and the banks are closed. Just about every one else works.

[copycat]

Dr. King laid the ideal out for all to see...that a man should be judged NOT by the color of his skin. This statement of the moral truth cannot be refuted and is apparent to those of every political stripe.

[Old Professer]

The man was a philanderer, a plagiarist, a rabble-rouser and a saint in less-than-equal parts; from his mouth pearly platitudes poured forth, in his wake riots ravaged entire communities and caused great consternation; surely he deserves to be remembered.

[per loin]

We should judge Michael King (his real name) by his character. He was a thief, both through his extensive plagerism and his embezelling to fund his drinking and whoring. He was a liar about his communist associations and backers. He was a man who physically beat up women, as attested by the Rev. Ralph Abernathy. On the other hand, he gave good speaking performances, but Snoop Dawg also gives good performances.

[mhking]

Race-baiting posts alert!

Black conservative ping

If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)

Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.

[Mr. Jeeves]

MLK may look like a saint next to Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, but objectively he was a deeply flawed man, his contributions of middling importance in American history compared with men such as Washington and Reagan.

[O.C. - Old Cracker]

Okay, I'll admit that Dr. King was a positive force in American history. But you know what, so was George Washington. Who, lest any of you have forgotten, is recognized as the father of this great nation. I could offer up a long list of honorable men in our nation's history that deserve individual recognition in the form of a holiday, but for the sake of argument, President Washington will more than suffice.

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.

[doug from upland]

Despite his failings, the memory certainly should be honored. He protested non-violently, unlike the WTO crazies in Seattle. He helped right a terrible wrong in this nation that truly has given us a black eye. Finally, this nation could be true to its beliefs. We conservatives believe that everyone should be judged as an individual. That's what he advocated. Unfortunately, the race-baiting poverty pimps have totally perverted the message.

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.

[Alberta's Child]

I've always been of the opinion that no person should have a national holiday until a generation has passed since the person's death. This would greatly reduce the politically-motivated clamoring on one side or the other, and would allow the person in question to be viewed in a proper historical context.

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.

[GunRunner]

As much as I hate to admit it, King would not be on our side if he were alive today. If he had lived to see 2003, he would have been pro-abortion, pro-affirmative action, pro-Palestinian (even though he once proclaimed himself pro-Zionist), and a Democrat. He would have attacked Ronald Reagan and the Cold War tactics of the 80's. He would have supported Bill Clinton in '92 and '96, and Al Gore in 2000. He would travel around with Jesse Jackson with Rainbow/PUSH-NAACP types, and he probably would have joined the protesters yesterday on the mall to support Hussein and would have labeled W. as a warmonger. Reality hurts.

[bigunreal]

MLK Day was the ultimate quota gift bestowed upon one particular racial group by a guilt-ridden white majority. For Americans to honor this very flawed individual, when monumental historical figures like Jefferson, Edison, Jackson and Ford, not to mention previously honored legends Washington and Lincoln, do not have such an honor attached to their names, is politically correct madness. The message we sent out, when MLK was granted a federal holiday, was that Martin Luther King was the greatest American who ever lived. Not even professional race baiters can say this with a straight face. We are headed for serious racial strife down the road, as our immigrant population swells and has difficulty understanding, as they surely will, exactly why this one particular minority group is constantly demanding more special benefits, even as they already enjoy more than any minority group in the history of the world. We cannot preach racial harmony and the virtues of integration to every other ethnic group in the country, and stress the irrelevance of race to them even during Black History Month, while at the same time building up the "self-esteem" of this one special ethnic group by lecturing them on how wonderful they are because of their skin color. Sooner of later, young Koreans, Vietnamese, Iranians and Pakistanis are going to demand their own share of the non-white treasure chest. The question is, will any white leaders ever have the courage to stop apologizing for nothing and start demaning that this one particular racial group live by the rules that all the rest of us have to follow?