Martin Luther King was, as seen through the eyes of my youth, a “bigger-than-life” figure who I was taught to admire and I guess, to a great degree, I still do. I’ve been asked one hundred times or more in my lifetime to name my heros and King always seemed to make it to the top.
As I have aged, matured and become much more conservative in my outlook, lifestyle and political views,the status I have bestowed on King for a lifetime now fall into question. Why? Even in my youth I always questioned why American Black Muslims always surrounded him. Even in his famous “I Have Dream” speech from our nation’s capital standing before hundreds of thousands of Americans there they were, an omni-presence in the background – protective? Foreboding? I was never quite sure. Although King preached constantly of “unity”, “tolerance” and “peace” here were these radical anti-white’s by his side.
As I further examine his “record” he was, by all measures, a liberal, a Socialist and if he were alive today I ask; would he be at the forefront of the “radical left” – Obama, Pelosi. Shumer, Reid et al – “leading the charge” for ObamaCare (an oxymoron of a term if there ever was one), welfare, “immigration reform” etc.? I think the answer is “yes”.
In a recent National Review online blog they did bring forth one interesting, and disturbing quote from King that was a part of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech – Johnson had just defeated Goldwater (Johnson, had just, by the way, “snubbed” King by not congratulating him on the Nobel Prize so as to not anger “southern whites” so close to the election) and here is what King had to say:
“One passage, however, I regard as beneath him — and beneath the occasion of the speech. Johnson had beaten Goldwater the month before, in a landslide. And, in Oslo, King said,
“Another indication that progress is being made was found in the recent presidential election in the United States. The American people revealed great maturity by overwhelmingly rejecting a presidential candidate who had become identified with extremism, racism, and retrogression. The voters of our nation rendered a telling blow to the radical right. They defeated those elements in our society which seek to pit white against Negro and lead the nation down a dangerous Fascist path.”
An older MLK might well have been ashamed of that rhetoric, National Review went on to say, or at least regretted it. For one thing, Goldwater’s view of government and economics was the opposite of fascist: was the classical-liberal view.
So on this day to honor King I have to wonder how would he have viewed Conservatives of today …?
