|
Jewish World Review Jan. 18, 1999/26 Teves, 5759
Paul Greenberg
Martin Luther King:
(JWR) --- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com) HISTORY IS UP TO ITS OLD TRICKS AGAIN. The dangerous radical of one generation is becoming
the conservative icon of another. The idea of freedom asserted in one era is disdained in
another. The people grow confused and want to turn back, for the wilderness appears
impenetrable, freedom a fraud and the fleshpots of Egypt alluring. The prophet is no
longer what he once seemed.
And so Martin Luther King Jr. emerges as an American conservative, the definition of
which is someone dedicated to preserving the gains of a liberal revolution of another age.
Booker T. Washington underwent the same transformation in history.
After all, what could have been more conservative or more American than Martin
Luther King's now-classic speech before the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963? It
sounded conservative even then to those with ears to hear and minds to comprehend, for
it was rooted in traditional values.
"I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the
moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have
a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream
that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by
the color of their skin but by the content of their character.''
Is any passage more frequently cited against the quota system called Affirmative Action
that has replaced the dream of equality? Is any passage so clear a call for what is most
missing in American politics today -- character?
So does the revolutionary of one age become the conservative of another. Call it
progress.
Nothing was clearer about Dr. King's dream than the transformation of political struggle
into morality tale. Which explains his effectiveness. He appealed to a common moral
ground. He understood that victory consists not in vanquishing the enemy, but winning
him over -- making a friend of an enemy.
Martin Luther King understood that he had an ally in the heart of his adversary, and he
would never stop appealing to it. He would not adopt the ways of the oppressor in order
to win a hollow victory; he knew that means can corrupt ends. As he told his followers
in front of the Lincoln Memorial on that day he made historic:
"In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness
and hatred. ... I am not unmindful that some of you have been the veterans of creative
suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.''
To hear his voice again, and to try to compare Dr. King's words with the already
forgotten agitation of the Million Man March, is to understand the difference between
ideas that endure and slogans that are uttered in a day and disappear in a day.
Martin Luther King's ideas were rooted -- in the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution, in the Bible and its moral imperatives. He knew the power of the old ideas
he was bringing to bear anew. A preacher's child, he had grown up with them.
Martin Luther King was a child of the Bible Belt, and a product of the black church --
surely one of the most revolutionary and conservative institutions in American history,
and still one of the most potent and promising even its now weakened state.
No, that Baptist preacher out of the South did not entered this struggle with empty
hands; he was the prophet armed with weapons far more powerful than physical ones.
Dr. King was not out just to conserve certain ideas, but to use them, to make them take
flight again, to bring them to life. He would use those ideas to shame those who dared
call themselves conservatives while denying every uplifting precept of the Bible and
Constitution and their own rearing.
If his arguments didn't work on his enemies, Martin Luther King was prepared to love
their enmity to death. He understood that he had an ally in the heart, and mind, of his
adversaries. And he never stopped appealing to both.
When the dragon's teeth were being sown for what Walker Percy would call "this
awfully interesting century,'' a Russian anarchist by the name of Kropotkin was told that
American Negroes had a conservative leader -- one Booker T. Washington. "And
what,'' Pyotr Alekseyevich asked with a bitter laugh, "do they have to conserve?''
It was a good question, a bitter question with an ironic thrust. But as it turned out, black
Americans had quite a bit to conserve. So do we all: the words of the Declaration of
Independence, with their universal promise. The rule of law. The Bill of Rights, including
the right of peaceable assembly. The chance for an education -- a real education and not
the placebo too often sold to the children of the poor and despised, isolated in our slums.
When the revolution that Citizen Kropotkin had welcomed came to his homeland, Russia
was cast into the darkest of darknesses. All rights would be lost, and they would not be
seen again for most of this dark century. Kropotkin's jeer still echoes with irony, but now
it is an unintended irony.
The revolution that Martin Luther King Jr. led could not have succeeded if he had not
managed to unite so many Americans -- of every race, religion and political persuasion --
behind his demand for simple justice. His was an appeal not to ideology, but to
conscience. He searched for common ground, for a moral basis for political policy, and
found it.
"Black and white together,'' the demonstrators used to sing. You don't hear that song
any more. Which may explain why the civil rights movement stopped moving. It became
infected with the same racial myopia (Black Power!) that it had once fought.
Segism of a different color, an equal but opposite reaction, would make a comeback in
American history. A new black intelligentsia would appear that knew not Martin. His
would not be the name embroidered on the baseball caps of another generation. The
legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. would give way to the frustrations of a Malcolm X, or
the demagoguery of a Louis Farrakhan.
What happened? Maybe the character of the enemy, or at least its tactics, changed.
Martin Luther King Jr. did battle with "a darkness that could be touched,'' to borrow a
phrase from the Book of Exodus. The darkness of those years was as undeniable as the
Jim Crow laws, the separate water fountains, the back of the bus. ... In those days, the
enemy was as loud and snarling as Bull Connor's police dogs, as unmistakable as the
violence of the mob, as transparent as Southern governors playing the race card.
Today's darkness evades touch. It goes to and fro in the land, and walks freely up and
down in it, recognizing no racial or political boundaries. It ensnarls the courts in endless
disputations that defeat good will and destroy learning. It substitutes bureaucratese and
educanto for simple justice and individual opportunity. It resegregates by Race and
Gender and Ethnicity and Language and Minority and Majority, and generally makes
many out of one, reversing that most American of mottos, E Pluribus Unum.
The darkness has learned how to use the law to reconstruct barriers between
Americans and re-establish racial and ethnic divisions in law and policy -- in the name of
progress and justice.
But the light can be blinked only so long. Americans grow impatient with new
rationalizations for old injustices; the new segism is proving as brittle as the old. John
Marshal Harlan's old ideal of a color-blind Constitution is being rediscovered by the
courts, the politicians, the people.
The, yes, radically conservative ideas of Martin Luther King are being seen as liberating
once again. It turns out that all Americans have a lot to conserve, and we may even be
starting to realize it. Our own Kropotkins begin to lose favor.
One can tell a lot about an age by the heroes it chooses. While the Malcolms and
Farrakhans come and go in favor, Martin Luther King Jr. remains. And his continuing
presence in the American pantheon affords
The radical as conservative?
To see and hear Martin Luther King on the old television tapes describing his American
dream is to realize how easily his ideas could have come from a conservative tract, if
only conservative tracts were better written:
King
1/11/99: Why America is apathetic about Bill's date with destiny
1/06/99:The year of Moronica
1/04/99:Clinton’s janitorial crew of two
12/29/98:The Senate will be on trial, too
12/29/98:A look down the avenue
12/24/98: IT'S STILL A WONDERFUL LIFE
12/22/98: The surreal impeachment
12/17/98: Another moment of truth approaches
12/15/98: The President's defenders: witnesses for the prosecution
12/10/98:The latest miracle cure: CensurePlus
12/03/98: Sentences at an airport Sentences at an airport
12/03/98: Games lawyers play
12/01/98: Ms. Magoo strikes again, or: Janet Reno and the law
11/26/98: The most American holiday
11/23/98: Same game, another round
11/20/98: EXTRA! RULE OF LAW UPHELD
11/18/98: Guide to the perplexed
11/09/98: A vote for apathy
11/03/98: Global village goes Clintonesque
11/02/98: Farewell to all that
10/30/98: New budget, same swollen government
10/26/98: Of life on the old plantation -- and death in the Middle East
10/22/98: Starr Wars (CONT'D)
10/19/98:Another retreat: weakness invites aggression
10/16/98: Profile in courage
10/14/98: A new voice out of Arkansas
10/09/98: Gerald Ford, Mr. Fix-It?
10/07/98: Impeachment Journal: Dept. of Doublespeak
10/01/98: The new tradition
9/25/98:
Mr. President, PLEASE don't resign
9/23/98: The demolition of meaning
9/18/98: So help us G-d; The nature of the crisis
9/17/98: First impressions: on reading the Starr Report
9/15/98: George Wallace: All the South in one man
9/10/98: Here comes the judge
9/07/98: Toward impeachment
9/03/98: The politics of impeachment
9/01/98: The eagle can still soar
8/28/98: Boris Yeltsin's mind: a riddle pickled in an enigma
8/26/98: Clinton agonistes, or: Twisting in the wind
8/25/98: The rise of the English murder
8/24/98: Confess and attack: Slick comes semi-clean
8/19/98: Little Rock perspectives
8/14/98: Department of deja vu
8/12/98: The French would understand
8/10/98: A fable: The Rat in the Corner
8/07/98: Welcome to the roaring 90s
8/06/98: No surprises dept. -- promotion denied
8/03/98: Quotes of and for the week: take your pick
7/29/98: A subpoena for the president:
so what else is
new?
7/27/98: Forget about Bubba, it's time to investigate Reno
7/23/98: Ghosts on the roof, 1998
7/21/98: The new elegance
7/16/98: In defense of manners
7/13/98: Another day, another delay: what's missing from the scandal news
7/9/98:The language-wars continue
7/7/98:The new Detente
7/2/98: Bubba in Beijing: history does occur twice
6/30/98: Hurry back, Mr. President -- to freedom
6/24/98: When Clinton follows Quayle's lead
6/22/98: Independence Day, 2002
6/18/98: Adventures in poli-speke