Open Happy Birthday Thread: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

How much better "Race Relations" would have been if Dr. King were allowed to finish his mission.

Seeing how those who came after him have so brutally twisted his vision into something it was never meant to be, I imagine that Dr. King –wherever he is now — is either very frustrated, or very relieved to be out of the fight.

Compare Dr King's vision of the importance and dignity of the individual to Obama's vision of society as a piggy bank for thugs, cronies, bribery, and arm-twisting to see just how far we've fallen from the dream of a color-blind society.

On the other hand,

Some guys have all the luck:

SEN. BEN NELSON IN NEGOTIATIONS WITH PIZZA HUT OVER NEW TOPPING

http://naturalfake.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/sen-b...

Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. helped to begin a dynasty in the fight for the respect and dignity for each American. Here is the website of his niece, Alveda King. She is a conservative and very involved in the pro-life movement. She is the daughter of another assassinated civil rights leader, Reverend Doctor A. D. Williams King.

http://www.kingforamerica.com/

p.s. if you're on facebook, she had great post on there as well.

He would be truly ashamed to see how his work has been twisted into the nanny state of today.

Content of character – those that have it cannot tolerate the current mess, and those who don't are running amok. It's fairly clear who is whom.

A "republican" who was bitterly against the Vietnam War, mind you…

He was a Republican, until he got arrested, and it took a call from President Kennedy to get him out…he then changed his party to democrat….sad!

Coming from a plagarizing, adulteress communist it seems kind of like bull shit.

My only comment about MLK is that I wish the left and the Dems would live up to the "content of character " he spoke about as much as they say they do. If they did, then they wouldn't still be living with their bigotry of low expectations when it comes to blacks and other minorities.

J.C. Watts, former rep of OK, told Hannity a couple of years ago that the Dems don't recognize minority achievement unless it is given to them by government. That about sums it up.

thanks for this, I'm going to look her up on FB as well

That's truly subjective. Thanks anyway.

Yes, yes I do holler "Go Brown"
Because I do believe that content of character DOES matter, I will holler for Scott Brown all day long.

heh, heh, heh

Happy Birthday Dr.King,,,We were well on our way to becoming a color blind society until this huckster in the WH came along.
Someone forgot to tell little barry obama that he was also supposed to judge people based on the content of their character rather than on the color of their skin.
we'll keep working on attaining your dream.

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A truly great American. Some one who demanded Americans live up to the ideals of America.

"Abraham Lincoln freed the black man. In many ways, Dr. King freed the white man. How did he accomplish this tremendous feat? Where others — white and black — preached hatred, he taught the principles of love and nonviolence. We can be so thankful that Dr. King raised his mighty eloquence for love and hope rather than for hostility and bitterness. He took the tension he found in our nation, a tension of injustice, and channeled it for the good of America and all her people."

Ronald Reagan's address on the anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King (1983-01-15)

If I could go back in time and shoot 3 people: James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald, and John Wilks Booth.

I've heard her talk a couple of times on the radio, and she's very clear-minded on the issues and very civilized in her statements. An excellent inheritor of the King legacy.

If you want to go with that line of thinking, why do we get Christmas and New Years off?

theres a movie in this.

I stand by what I posted. I think the men I mentioned above deserve to be recognized with a holiday, no disrespect intended to MLK. Don't know what that has to do with Christmas or New Years.

A courageous and inspirational man for many generations to come, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

On Roger Ebert's website (http://www.rogerebert.com), he has written an open letter to Rush Limbaugh, in which he believes Limbaugh should be "horse-whipped" for insulting the office of the President by suggesting that Obama is keeping some of the Haiti relief money for himself.

Never mind the fact that Limbaugh never said anything of the sort. After eight years of bashing President Bush (and even going so far as to insult his daughters), NOW Ebert is worried about insulting the office of the President? Too little, too freaking late, Roger.

Would that all politicians had a vision such as his. The work he did, against such a brutally odds, was truly remarkable. He was a truly great man.

There has been no single issue that we've wrestled with more in our history than the issue of race. It has infiltrated virtually every aspect of the American life, and was the primary cause of our civil war. Even after the proclamations and amendments were in the books in the 1860's, race relations once again plummeted into the great moral abyss for another 100 years. From the earliest slave ships to Rodney King, this issue, for good or ill, has served to be one of the most divisive issues among our population. That we would have a nationally recognized day to honor this struggle… to celebrate our triumphs over it, and recognize how far we still have to go, doesn't seem outlandish at all; it seems absolutely appropriate. That we would choose Dr. King as the conduit for this issue, and as the figure upon who to remember and recognize this struggle, stems from the following reasons. No other figure spoke in such a publicly compelling way about the issue of race relations than Dr. King did. He was an African-American figure who in many cases, was the first to present this issue in a compelling way to whites who were previously uninterested in, or in disagreement with racial equality. He changed the public opinion in a ways that citizens before him had not been able to do for centuries. His public presence throughout the struggle signified his personal commitment to this issue; he didn't do his work from behind a desk… he was on the front lines. That he unfearingly faced hatred, violence, and death-threats with non-violent, peaceful elegance, was also a testament to his character. Finally, that he gave his life (something he predicted would happen) in the search for racial justice, pretty much seals the deal for recognizing his historical importance in affiliation with this, the most compelling issue in our history.

No one can convince you of anything, only you can do that. It's just the way we are. If you really want to be convinced, use the internet and google Dr. King. Read about the history of the time. It was a time when America was not far from another Civil war. I can't convince you and I wouldn't try. It's like curiosity, you either have it and go in search of answers or you don't. Just my opinion.

I, too, have a theory about streets named "Martin Luther King Blvd" but you and I both know that that and a paid holiday have nothing to do with what he stood for and worked so hard to achieve.

Our political organization was born within the Christian experience. This country's birth wasn't cocooned in Judiasm, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or Spiritualism. Today's shifting demographics don't mean that it makes any sense to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Secondly, if almost everyone in a nation wants to collectively create an experience for religious or any other reasons, it is not written anywhere that that holiday has to have anything to do with national history.

No, I disagree. We are far from being a color blind society re blacks and whites. Blacks get some of the worst media PR possible based upon the crimes they commit, the charlatans of their race and much of their vile music. Until that ceases, change will be very gradual.

His reputation has been very inflated over the last few decades by the politically correct press. In reality, his legacy has perhaps done more damage to the States than good. Rights have been increasingly taken away from one group of citizens and given to another.

He confused the unessential with the essential sometimes, and so was wrong about Vietnam but right about his faith (I say that as a Theravadan Buddhist, BTW**), which showed him the the need to love your enemies, even if you do not like them, as well as how to do it: For just a little while there, it became clear to a surprising number of people that it is done by unclenching our fists, each and every one of us, one by one.

The fruits of this still live on in the South. He wasn't destined to make as much progress elsewhere, I guess.

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**We put it this way, as the first six verses of the /Dhammapada/:

Mind precedes its objects. They are mind-governed and mind-made. To speak or act with a defiled mind is to draw pain after oneself, like a wheel behind the feet of the animal drawing it. 1

Mind precedes its objects. They are mind-governed and mind-made. To speak or act with a peaceful mind, is to draw happiness after oneself, like an inseparable shadow. 2

I have been insulted! I have been hurt! I have been beaten! I have been robbed! Anger does not cease in those who harbour this sort of thought. 3

I have been insulted! I have been hurt! I have been beaten! I have been robbed! Anger ceases in those who do not harbour this sort of thought. 4

Occasions of hatred are certainly never settled by hatred. They are settled by freedom from hatred. This is the eternal law. 5

Others may not understand that we must practice self-control, but quarrelling dies away in those who understand this fact. 6

How do you spell plagurist? MLK. How do you spell every crime ridden crack ho street in every major american city? MLK. How do you spell scum bag jerk racist? MLK. Do some research why are the FBI files not released? Something to hide maybe?

I haven't met very many people in this world who don't have flawed characters, myself included.

I think calling Civil Rights Day is a very reasonable position. But human nature tends to want to focus on specifics. For example, how many Revolutionary war generals can you name? I can do three, and that's counting Benedict Arnold. (The other is Nathan Green.) And I've read several books on that time period.

So it's not surprising one figure was picked.

No problem. I didn 't get you wrong. I was just answering you. I don't think that there are ultimately necessarily any paramaters that anyone can lay down and claim that because of this logical reason or that logical reason that present or future generations should or should not observe a national holiday.

This situation is kind of like art in general. As an artist you can break any rule that anyone makes up, if you can figure out how to.

My complaint is the MLK day was created by Congress. I would love to put it up to a vote.

If I had a vote on it, I'd vote yes. The Civil Rights era in American history was significant enough in my opinion in order to have some sort of special designation.

I believe the reason the process for amending the constitution are in the constitution because many Americans (though not a majority) did not want slavery in 1776. But it was the only way to bring the south on board for the revolution. So they made sure there was a way to rectify it at a later date. Although, as we all know, it ended up as war.

To me, the Civil Rights era signifies America finally coming to terms with it's ideals, all people are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And in a nation of Jim Crow laws, those sentiments were meaningless. America is more important than the color of ones skin, or one's gender, or anything else.