Free Republic

<p>While President Obama vacationed in Martha's Vineyard, the Oval Office got a makeover, but one quote on the new carpet is wrongly attributed.</p>

A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige. President Obama's new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King. Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep...

The news of Barack Obama's new Oval Office rug containing a favorite quote used by Obama that he attributed to Martin Luther King was taken from a sermon by 19th century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker has taken an interesting twist with research by Freeper Enchante (and Hot Air)showing that in 2008 Obama stopped using the quote in stump speeches after his presidential campaign was informed its origin by Unitarian Rev. Matt Tittle:In April, during the presidential primary season, I perked up from the usual din of campaign rhetoric when I heard then-candidate Barack Obama say (referring to Dr. Martin Luther...

In talking about the new rug in the Oval Office on Wednesday, we mentioned several historical quotes woven into the rug, including one from Martin Luther King Jr.: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." A number of listeners pointed out that King was in fact echoing the words of 19th century abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. NPR's Melissa Block talks to Clayborne Carson -- a professor of history at Stanford University and director of the Martin Luther King Junior Research and Education Institute -- about Parker, and about King's use of favorite...

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King. Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington. For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you're fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the...