MLK Holiday

from Save America Now (http://www.amazon.com/Save-America-Now-Revolution-Freedom/dp/1616235756/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253568697&sr=8-3):

General Colin Powell read my email to Barack Obama and sent me a personal letter on October 26, 2008. He made no defense for Obama’s misstatements and lies. He made no comments about the specific details in the email to Obama. Instead, General Powell’s letter to me included these two comments:

“The email is the usual anecdotal, out of context attacks, rather than a serious attempt to help the American people understand the issues.”

“Yes, 95 percent of blacks will vote for Obama. Maybe you should be asking why?”

Since when is character not an important issue? The presidential election is an interview process for the most important job in our country; to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The election process is an interview. Since when isn’t character an important issue in an interview process?

“Martin Luther King spoke about the day when people would be judged by their character, not their color. Well, we also need to be free to judge people on their competence and on results, and it’s high time that America’s blacks started saying this out loud…” (Prelutsky).

When General Powell announced his endorsement for Barack Hussein Obama, he also spent time disparaging Sarah Palin. While he said in his letter to me that attacks of Obama’s character and experience were “anecdotal,” he went on the attack of Sarah Palin about those same “anecdotal” items. So it seems that to me that General Powell practiced a double standard: one for the black candidate that did not include scrutiny of his experience and character and then one for the white female candidate that did. That double standard is racism. It is not equality.

It appears to me that General Powell and the liberal media/entertainment/education cartel did not want America to focus on what should be the number one issue in hiring someone—character. Instead, they did exactly the opposite of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream. They did not let America judge Obama on his character. They helped distract us.

Can you imagine if 95 percent of whites had voted for McCain? All the media and General Powell would have screamed that it was based on race. So why did 95 percent of blacks vote for Obama? Why did Powell really switch a lifetime relationship with the war hero McCain to endorse the inexperienced and unethical Obama? And why is it acceptable if 95 percent of blacks to vote for the black guy but it is racism if 95 percent of whites to vote for the white guy?

Well, racial discrimination is alive and well in America. It is being fostered by white and black liberal tyrants for their own political power in the name of “political correctness” and “social justice.”

Political correctness is just a means to secure power for the exploiters.

In July, 2009, Barack Obama again revealed his real self. Responding to a question from his media pals at a press conference at the White House, Obama made a comment concerning a white officer of the Cambridge police force. The officer had arrested Professor Gates, a black professor at Harvard, for disorderly conduct. Gates is a close friend of Obama and was also previously affiliated with Acorn. Obama jumped to the immediate conclusion that the officer reacted “stupidly” despite the admission by Obama that he was not really familiar with the facts. All evidence shows that the white officer acted correctly and it was the black professor who acted wrongly.

Two days later, after an uproar by millions of Americans, especially law enforcement, Obama still refused to apologize for his comment even though all evidence showed that the professor was the wrong doer and that he even used the race card. Instead, Obama invited the professor and the officer to the White House for “a beer” and proclaimed that this was a “teaching moment.”

Huh? What does that mean? Teaching moment for whom? It was Obama who jumped to an incorrect conclusion. It was the black professor who used the race card and yelled obscenities at the officer.

Rather than accept responsibility, Obama acted like he was a mediator between Gates and the officer. He deflected the criticism towards himself and once again the media let him do it.

This was reminiscent of the spring of 2008 when Obama refused to fess up to his 20 year affiliation with Reverand Wright. Instead, Obama went on television to deliver a monolog about race. It was a one sided presentation, not a dialog, that shot a shiver up the leg of Chris Matthews. It was another “teaching moment” where Obama portrayed himself above the fray of a black vs. white situation even though he once again was the cause of the situation.

Rather than accept responsibility about his affiliation with Reverend Wright, Obama deflected the criticism towards himself and once again the media let him do it.

Obama has been using the race card his entire life. Just like Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Reverend Wright, he exploits an intolerance or hatred for the white race. That intolerance is racism. They are all racists. None of them believe in equal opportunity. They want affirmative action. And the media is letting them all do it in the name of political correctness … social justice.

That is not equality. That is racism. They are racists.

Liberals promote political correctness to keep minorities dependent on them while moderate conservatives allow them to get away with it.

Yeah, where’s Nana’s Day ???

King's God: The Unknown Faith of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Why do conservative Black ministers and churches still play along with the "King was a good born-again who has been misused by liberals" line? It is unconscionable.

In Houston, there has to be not one but two MLK parades.

And have been for about the last 10 yrs, maybe even longer.

The reason, Power, Prestige and Egos!

Houston's two large African-American organizations that sponsor the parades can't come together, even for MLK Day.

The rhetoric over the years about which organization puts on The "official" parade is still hotly contested.

How long until they start demanding “Malcolm X Day.”

Click each of these:

Or better yet, if there are no holidays to honor any other American citizens

Well, we did have George Washington's day and Abe Lincoln's day as holidays, until they made it more convenient to just call it President's day, that way we don't have to remember those white racist presidents names.

They will try to create an Obama day and “segregate” him from “presidents” day.

The polls that are coming out about Obama from the media like CNN, Gallup/USA Today, and AP are bogus. Once again, the media are trying to influence public opinion rather than report on it. To “somewhat approve” of Obama’s performance is not an endorsement. Look closely at how the media is asking the question, “do you somewhat approve of the job being done by the president?” The question should be “do you approve or disapprove?”

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 27% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11 (see trends).

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. Overall, 46% of voters say they “somewhat approve” of the president’s performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.

Most voters continue to favor repeal of the health care law passed by Congress last year.

Martin Luther King was a great man.

Blah, blah, blah

Eh ???

Is it racist to say I wish he had been born in June?

“Or better yet, if there are no holidays to honor any other American citizens”

To honor this type of person with a national holiday is a disgrace. For all we know about this man, he cheated frequently on his wife and surrounded himself with communists. It was only his death that made him a saint worthy of an entire day of adulation.

I’m convinced that if he had lived, he be right there with Jackson, Sharpe, and the other race hustlers and be a full supported of affirmative action and all the other handouts that have so severely crippled the minorities in this country.

MLK claimed to be working for liberty. and notwithstanding the egregious racial bigotry of his time, he should have completely rejected the murderous tyranny of Marxism and communism as an unacceptable palliative in ANY context.
I wish to make it clear that I think that Martin Luther King was a man of enormous courage, charisma, and intellect that profoundly altered the course of American history and made it a better country in so far has its promise of justice for all is concerned.

This does not mean that his legacy to the Civil Rights movement has been one of unalloyed good. I believe much of his bequeathment resulted in an over reliance on big government statist solutions to problems within the black community that require individual initiatives to correct. Martin Luther King’s frequent references to this nation’s founding documents are well known. His reflections on Communism are much less well known and undoubtedly contributed to his general philosophy. We owe it to ourselves to examine the effects of this legacy and contextualize it so has to solve the problems facing the black community today.

While King himself was not a communist, he did business with communists and was influenced by them. This delicate subject, made more so given the martyrdom and subsequent lionization of King, should nevertheless be broached as a means of providing insight into some of the darker forces that worked their way into what was essentially a pro American, conservative, Christian civil rights movement.
King surrounded himself with communists from the beginning of his career. His closest advisor Stanley Levison was a Communist. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, formed in 1957 and led by King, had Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth as Vice President who was at the same time president of the Southern Conference Education Fund, an identified communist front according to the Legislative Committee on un-American Activities, Louisiana (Report April 13, 1964 pp. 31-38). The field director of SCEF was Carl Braden, a known communist agitator who was also involved in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which counted Lee Harvey Oswald, the communist assassin of President Kennedy as a member. King maintained regular correspondence with Carl Braden. Bayard Rustin, a known communist, was also on the board of SCLC.
Dr. King addressed the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tenn., 1957, previously known as the Commonwealth College until the House Committee on un-American Activities sited it as a communist front (April 27, 1949). HCAA found that Commonwealth was using religion as a way to infiltrate the African-American community by, among other techniques, comparing New Testament texts to those of Karl Marx. King knew many communists associated with the Highlander school.
King hired communist official Hunter Pitts O’Dell, 1960, at the SCLC. The St. Louis Globe Democrat reported (Oct. 26, 1962) “A Communist has infiltrated the top administrative post in the Rev. Martin Luther King’s SCLC. He is Jack H. O’Dell, acting executive director of conference activities in the southeastern states including Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.” Dr. King fired O’Dell when this became public but subsequently rehired him to head the SCLC New York office.

King himself expresses a Marxist outlook in his book “Stride Toward Freedom” when he stated, “in spite of the shortcomings of his analysis, Marx had raised some basic questions. I was deeply concerned from my early teen days about the gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, and my reading of Marx made me even more conscious of this gulf. Although modern American capitalism has greatly reduced the gap through social reforms, there was still need for a better distribution of wealth. Moreover, Marx had revealed the danger of the profit motive as the sole basis of an economic system”

King, unfortunately, didn’t understand that it was Capitalism and freedom that was responsible for the successes the African-American community already had achieved in his day and the key to future success. By “better distribution of wealth” King meant state control over the economy. His contempt for “the profit motive” was unfortunate given that African-Americans should’ve been encouraged by their leaders to seek fair profit to the best of their ability. King’s leftist ideas contributed to an opening of the floodgates to such radicals as Stokley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, the Black Panthers, as well as the burning and looting of African-American neighborhoods, the institutionalizing of poverty perpetrating welfare, the destruction of the family, drugs, violence, racism, and crime.

In “Stride Toward Freedom” Dr. King states “In short, I read Marx as I read all of the influential historical thinkers from a dialectical point of view, combining a partial yea and a partial no. My readings of Marx convinced me that truth is found neither in Marxism nor in traditional capitalism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically capitalism failed to see truth in collective enterprise and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise. The Kingdom of God is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both.”

King, like Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, had “a dialectical point of view.” The goal of the dialectic is authoritarianism. A nation, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, cannot be half free and half slave. By advocating socialism, King chose an imperious stand toward his own people in contrast to a stand for genuine freedom, self-rule, self-sufficiency, private ownership, and the accumulation of capital. King did not advocate the American system of free market capitalism. Instead, he stood for a system that has stunted the growth of African-Americans as well as the rest of us.

All Marxists believe in Hegelian Dialectics. This is a belief that “progress” is achieved through conflict between opposing viewpoints. Any ideological assertion (thesis) will create its own opposite (antithesis). Progress is achieved when a conclusion (synthesis) is reached which espouses aspects of both the thesis and antithesis.
For example, Hitler had a dialectical point of view. He rejected Marxist class warfare, but embraced the basic socialist idea of the insignificance of the individual compared to the collective state.

This belief in dialectical progress is why liberals pit the rich against the poor, old against young, black against white, men against women, gay against straight, ad nauseam.
This issue is somewhat clouded by what Dr. King wrote in his 1957 book “Stride toward Freedom: the Montgomery story”, in which he wrote the following devastating critique of the sort of communism practiced in the Communist super state of the Union of Soviet Socialist republics.
“During the Christmas holidays of 1949 I decided to spend my spare time reading Karl Marx to try to understand the appeal of communism for many people. For the first time I carefully scrutinized *Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto. I also read some interpretive works on the thinking of Marx and Lenin. In reading such Communist writings I drew certain conclusions that have remained with me as convictions to this day.
First, I rejected their materialistic interpretation of history. Communism, avowedly secularist and materialistic, has no place for God. This I could never accept, for as a Christian, I believe that there is a creative personal power in the universe who is the ground and essence of all reality-a power that cannot be explained in materialistic terms. History is ultimately guided by spirit, not matter.
Second, I strongly disagreed with communism’s ethical relativism. Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything-force, violence murder, lying-is a justifiable means to the ‘millennial’ end. This type of relativism was abhorrent to me. Constructive ends can never give absolute moral justification to destructive means, because in the final analysis the end is pre-existent in the means.
Third, I opposed communism’s political totalitarianism. In communism, the individual ends up in subjection to the state. True, the Marxists would argue that the state is an ‘interim’ reality which is to be eliminated when the classless society emerges; but the state is the end while it lasts, and man is only a means to that end. And if man’s so-called rights and liberties stand in the way of that end, they are simply swept aside. His liberties of expression, his freedom to vote, and his freedom to listen to what news he likes or to choose his books are all restricted. Man becomes hardly more, in communism, than a depersonalized cog in the turning wheel of the state.
This deprecation of individual freedom was objectionable to me. I am convinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God. Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as means to the end of the state; but always as an end within himself.”
Martin Luther King Jr., *Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story* (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 92-93

Don’t forget that the above was written in 1957, a period in which the oppressions of the Soviet Union are painfully evident, evidenced by the brutal repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. At the time Stride toward Freedom was written, domestic attitudes toward communism could not have been more hostile. Toward the end of Dr. Martin Luther King’s life, the counterculture revolution of the sixties and the leftist tinted civil rights movement made favorable considerations of communism generally more palatable.

While Martin Luther King Day should be one of reflection and appreciation for what has been accomplished, and a reckoning of what still needs to be done, it should also be a day of understanding, in terms clear of emotionally driven rhetoric, where the civil rights movement went wrong. A major key to this understanding, I would contend, is the destructive effects that communist ideas and outright infiltration has had on the African-American community. Communists tried to use African-Americans as cannon fodder by stoking hatred and racial division. A predominantly white left-wing establishment promoted Black communists in order to preserve an informal system of oppression.

The fact is that he WAS a socialist and that goes to the heart of what went wrong with the civil rights establishment after the legal battles against codified discrimination were won.

I am a black man who has been getting calluses on my dome from butting heads with those in my community who refuse to relinquish big government statist solutions for the problems plaguing the black community in favor of free market solutions that are far more appropriate today. These forces frequently cite Dr. King and use his exhortations to government to lead the way. They specifically cite his socialist outlook as justification for their continuance. The two parent black family was destroyed by LBJ’s welfare state. That was the worst cultural calamity to EVER befall the black community in the US, and the most destructive force in its cultural life notwithstanding the imposition of Jim Crow law via the Supreme Court’s Plessy v Fergueson decision. MLK was a leading proponent for expanding the welfare state, whose baleful effects were just beginning to be seen in the black community.

MLK was a man of enormous charisma and courage and certainly a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement. There is much about him that I admire. An assessment of his life could creditably yield the adjective of great. Despite that, he does not deserve to be the ONLY American with his own holiday named after him. That honor should be reserved for only one person in American history, the greatest of all Americans, George Washington. More so than any other SINGLE figure in our history, he was the “indispensable man.” Without his courage, acumen, honor, and integrity, the US would simply not exist, and if it did, it probably would have been as a monarchy and certainly not as a constitutional republic.

It is my opinion that the greatest political philosophers for liberty in the history of mankind were those men that this nation was blessed to have at its inception the Founding Fathers. Notwithstanding this opinion, I am constantly being exhorted by leftist deconstructionists to never forget that many of them were slaveowners, sexist, and slaughterers of innocent Indians. None of this changes the totality of my opinion of them in the great good they accomplished by founding this nation.

I simply say that a similar yardstick should be applied to Martin Luther King in the impact that his legacy has on the modern-day civil rights movement.

MLK’s birthday holiday was a sop to PC and a reflection of the DemocRAT Congress that voted it. The depth of MLK’s association with the most anti-freedom ideology (Communism) of our time will prove to very discomfiting when it is fully revealed. Additionally, MLK’s legacy to the modern day civil rights movement is a socialist bequeathment that of looking to big government solutions for many of the behavioral problems in today’s black community. MLK continues to cast a long shadow over most of the modern day civil rights establishment and black politicians who largely reject free market, educationally based solutions to the unique problems plaguing the black community.

Your piece is thoughtfully written and beautifully said.

Your response was absolutely eye opening. Let me point out a couple of your comments that really make important points.

1. While Martin Luther King Day should be ... a day of understanding, in terms clear of emotionally driven rhetoric, where the civil rights movement went wrong. A major key to this understanding, I would contend, is the destructive effects that communist ideas and outright infiltration has had on the African-American community.

2. I am a black man who has been getting calluses on my dome from butting heads with those in my community who refuse to relinquish big government statist solutions for the problems plaguing the black community in favor of free market solutions that are far more appropriate today. These forces frequently cite Dr. King and use his exhortations to government to lead the way. They specifically cite his socialist outlook as justification for their continuance. The two parent black family was destroyed by LBJ’s welfare state. That was the worst cultural calamity to EVER befall the black community in the US... MLK was a leading proponent for expanding the welfare state, whose baleful effects were just beginning to be seen in the black community.

3. MLK was a man of enormous charisma and courage and certainly a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement. ... (but) he does not deserve to be the ONLY American with his own holiday named after him.

4. MLK’s birthday holiday was a sop to PC and a reflection of the DemocRAT Congress that voted it. The depth of MLK’s association with the most anti-freedom ideology (Communism) of our time will prove to very discomfiting when it is fully revealed.

Thank you DMZ Frank. Are you aware that Arizona was the only state to not implement the MLK holiday ... then the federal government threatened to withhold funds to Arizona which made it comply. It seems that Arizona may be the only state that really gets it about our democracy. Stop illegal Immigration. Stop Obamacare. Less government. No MLK holiday. Arizona seems to get it.

If Lincoln was such the emancipator, why the hell didn’t he buy ‘em all a ticket back where they came from? Then, they could just swim over the Rio Grande like all of our other welfare recipients.

Wasn’t there a statewide vote on MLK day in AZ, the only state that ever actually VOTED on it, where it was defeated? Also, I recall there was a ton of pressure to pull the Super Bowl from that “racist” state??...magritte

There is a problem with the premise:

George Washington’s birthday is a federal holiday.

http://www.opm.gov/Operating_Status_Schedules/fedhol/2011.asp

Columbus and Christ were not American citizens.

Kenyan?

Down here in the “beknighted” State of Alabama, we also celebrate on this day the birthday of General Robert E. Lee, if we so choose.

And I do, although I don’t get a day off for either of these gentlemen.