On the night of April 3rd, 1968, in what would tragically be the final speech of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said the following:
Today, forty five years after Dr. King uttered these words, far too many Americans do not understand the true meaning of our flag. They do not grasp the uniqueness of what it is to be a real American patriot. To them freedom applies only to themselves. To them the benefits of our Democracy is theirs to enjoy alone though they expect everyone else to gladly fight along with them to preserve their rights even though they would deny those same rights to others.
They have the audacity to actually question the patriotism of those of different races, creeds, genders, and sexual orientation who to dare fight for those very freedoms and opportunities that they regard as their birthright. They behave as though such rights are theirs to give and accuse those who are not satisfied with the pace of expanding the reach of Liberty with being ungrateful; as if those who are denied those rights they are entitled to at birth, should show gratitude towards who those who had no right to deny them these rights they are now enjoying in the first place.
These white people in the Republican Party and of a Conservative mindset are always railing against us African Americans of being lazy and greedy. They use the term Affirmative Action as the rest of us use an expletive, forgetting of course that they themselves are the beneficiaries of the greatest, most generous Affirmative Action program in the history of this nation; that Affirmative Action being their white skins.
If you are born white in general and a white male in particular in this country, no one ever questions whether or not you will have the chance to rise from poverty, to get a good education, to work at a well paying job, or even become President of the United States. If you are born white and male in this country then you don't have to worry about your rights being denied at all. You don't have to worry about your legitimacy and your qualifications being questioned for a certain university or a particular job because of the way you look.
If you are white in America then you don't have to worry about being followed around by the proprietor of some store assuming you're a criminal who's about to rob the place. If you're white in America you don't have to worry about being stopped by the police while walking through a good neighborhood who suspect by mere dint of your skin's pigmentation alone that you've committed or are about to commit, a crime. If you're white in America you don't have to worry about being shot by a self appointed neighborhood vigilante even if you are wearing a hoodie and what's more you can be walking around carrying a gun, to say nothing of a bag of skittles, and still have little to be worried about.
If you're white in America, no one automatically assumes just by looking at you that you're uneducated, illiterate, on Welfare, a drug addict, or an ex con regardless of what kind of clothes you're wearing. It has always been that way in this country but only now things are really beginning to change. More and more people are waking up to the fact that this state of affairs runs counter to the true meaning of this flag; that it just isn't right.
Yet these folks in the Republican Party and the Far Right I've mentioned above are now raising hell because all of a sudden they have to share their freedoms, rights, and liberties with everybody; freedoms, rights, and liberties that they never had any right to hoard for themselves in the first place. They are screaming at the top of their lungs that their rights are being taken away. That they're going to take "our country back!" Excuse me but this country doesn't belong just to them. It never has. It has always belonged to all of us have played a key role in sustaining it, protecting it, and making it great. These people don't get to claim exclusive ownership of that which they hijacked stole and wrongly denied to others.
This discrepancy was pointed out in a speech President Abraham Lincoln gave at the Sanitary Fair in Baltimore MD on April 18, 1864 when he said the following:
"The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same name———liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable names———liberty and tyranny.
"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty."
Needless to say, the wolfs of President Lincoln's time are the Republicans, Tea Party members, Libertarians, and Conservatives of today. They are the ones raging because they are not being allowed to exercise what they believe is their right to deny rights to others because they happen to dislike the color of their skin, their gender, their religion, and their sexual orientation. They assert their right to do to others as they please while at the same time claiming that others do not have the right to do to them as they please because it would be a violation of their rights.
This is the root of their problem. They are finally being forced to play by the same set of rules as everyone else and they are collectively throwing a national temper tantrum as a result. All it really proves is that these people never really cared about this country or its flag in the first place. I mean the heart of true Americanism is generosity and tolerance. Without both of these things you can't say that you are really a patriot for these are the foundations of our freedom; these traits are what makes us unique among all the nations in the world.
Our flag has meaning that is true but that meaning only counts for anything if it has the same meaning for everybody. As Jackie Robinson himself once said "There's not an American in this country free until every one of us is free." That is what these Republicans/Conservatives refuse to see and find impossible to accept and so therefore if anyone's patriotism is to be rightly questioned it is theirs because the rest of us, through our embracing of diversity and fair play are living the true meaning of the American flag while they, through their hostility to diversity and opposition to fair play, are not. It's as simple as that.
"All we say to America" said Dr. King is 'Be true to what you said on paper.' If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right."
Today, forty five years after Dr. King uttered these words, far too many Americans do not understand the true meaning of our flag. They do not grasp the uniqueness of what it is to be a real American patriot. To them freedom applies only to themselves. To them the benefits of our Democracy is theirs to enjoy alone though they expect everyone else to gladly fight along with them to preserve their rights even though they would deny those same rights to others.
They have the audacity to actually question the patriotism of those of different races, creeds, genders, and sexual orientation who to dare fight for those very freedoms and opportunities that they regard as their birthright. They behave as though such rights are theirs to give and accuse those who are not satisfied with the pace of expanding the reach of Liberty with being ungrateful; as if those who are denied those rights they are entitled to at birth, should show gratitude towards who those who had no right to deny them these rights they are now enjoying in the first place.
These white people in the Republican Party and of a Conservative mindset are always railing against us African Americans of being lazy and greedy. They use the term Affirmative Action as the rest of us use an expletive, forgetting of course that they themselves are the beneficiaries of the greatest, most generous Affirmative Action program in the history of this nation; that Affirmative Action being their white skins.
If you are born white in general and a white male in particular in this country, no one ever questions whether or not you will have the chance to rise from poverty, to get a good education, to work at a well paying job, or even become President of the United States. If you are born white and male in this country then you don't have to worry about your rights being denied at all. You don't have to worry about your legitimacy and your qualifications being questioned for a certain university or a particular job because of the way you look.
If you are white in America then you don't have to worry about being followed around by the proprietor of some store assuming you're a criminal who's about to rob the place. If you're white in America you don't have to worry about being stopped by the police while walking through a good neighborhood who suspect by mere dint of your skin's pigmentation alone that you've committed or are about to commit, a crime. If you're white in America you don't have to worry about being shot by a self appointed neighborhood vigilante even if you are wearing a hoodie and what's more you can be walking around carrying a gun, to say nothing of a bag of skittles, and still have little to be worried about.
If you're white in America, no one automatically assumes just by looking at you that you're uneducated, illiterate, on Welfare, a drug addict, or an ex con regardless of what kind of clothes you're wearing. It has always been that way in this country but only now things are really beginning to change. More and more people are waking up to the fact that this state of affairs runs counter to the true meaning of this flag; that it just isn't right.
Yet these folks in the Republican Party and the Far Right I've mentioned above are now raising hell because all of a sudden they have to share their freedoms, rights, and liberties with everybody; freedoms, rights, and liberties that they never had any right to hoard for themselves in the first place. They are screaming at the top of their lungs that their rights are being taken away. That they're going to take "our country back!" Excuse me but this country doesn't belong just to them. It never has. It has always belonged to all of us have played a key role in sustaining it, protecting it, and making it great. These people don't get to claim exclusive ownership of that which they hijacked stole and wrongly denied to others.
This discrepancy was pointed out in a speech President Abraham Lincoln gave at the Sanitary Fair in Baltimore MD on April 18, 1864 when he said the following:
"The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same name———liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable names———liberty and tyranny.
"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty."
Needless to say, the wolfs of President Lincoln's time are the Republicans, Tea Party members, Libertarians, and Conservatives of today. They are the ones raging because they are not being allowed to exercise what they believe is their right to deny rights to others because they happen to dislike the color of their skin, their gender, their religion, and their sexual orientation. They assert their right to do to others as they please while at the same time claiming that others do not have the right to do to them as they please because it would be a violation of their rights.
This is the root of their problem. They are finally being forced to play by the same set of rules as everyone else and they are collectively throwing a national temper tantrum as a result. All it really proves is that these people never really cared about this country or its flag in the first place. I mean the heart of true Americanism is generosity and tolerance. Without both of these things you can't say that you are really a patriot for these are the foundations of our freedom; these traits are what makes us unique among all the nations in the world.
Our flag has meaning that is true but that meaning only counts for anything if it has the same meaning for everybody. As Jackie Robinson himself once said "There's not an American in this country free until every one of us is free." That is what these Republicans/Conservatives refuse to see and find impossible to accept and so therefore if anyone's patriotism is to be rightly questioned it is theirs because the rest of us, through our embracing of diversity and fair play are living the true meaning of the American flag while they, through their hostility to diversity and opposition to fair play, are not. It's as simple as that.
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