Of course this will enrage many of us who know better but in truth we who know better need not be bent out of shape by this attempt by those on the Right to revise history so as to make it shine on their current hateful conduct for this whole scene is nothing more than a simple case of rhetoric versus reality; the rhetoric of those of the Right claiming Dr. King as their own and the reality that was his life.
Let us therefore take a moment to compare the two right now; rhetoric versus reality. The Republican Party says that Dr. King was a Republican and would be a Republican today. Really? While Dr. King of course is no longer alive to speak for himself in this regard we can get a fairly good idea of where he would stand in relation to the Republican Party of today by comparing the positions & policies the Republican Party holds today versus the positions & policies Dr. King held and fought for in his lifetime:
1. Civil Rights.
The Republican Party and the Far Right thinks that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an overreach of Federal authority; that people have the individual right, according to the US Constitution, to discriminate along the lines of race if they so choose and that all questions pertaining to civil rights & discrimination should be left to the states, rather than the Federal Government, to deal with. Dr. King, from the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 to the rest of his life led countless demonstrations at the cost of many lives (ultimately including his own) to overturn legal apartheid. He correctly believed that discrimination along the lines of race was a violation of the spirit of the Constitution and an immoral indignity against the rights & liberties of individuals and that therefore not only was the Federal Government right to enforce anti discrimination laws but that it also had a duty to do so since the states had remained hostage to regional prejudices for over a century and thus been unwilling to do so themselves. Hence, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made American apartheid a violation of Federal Law.
2. Voting Rights.
The Republican Party is opposed to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and with the blessing of the US Supreme Court is now actively engaged in voter suppression across the land through the racially discriminatory imposition of Voter ID laws, voter intimidation, and the like. Dr. King led the Selma to Montgomery March in March of 1965 to secure passage of the Voting Rights Act that summer because he rightly recognized that the right to vote is inviolate in a free society and that its arbitrary denial along the lines of race undermines the key pillar of democracy by making the people powerless insofar as they will be denied a say in who represents them in public office.
3. Labor/Unions
The Republican Party is anti Labor and it is anti Union. It is engaging in a ceaseless war to undermine a person's right to collectively organize, bargain, strike, and protest for higher wages and better working conditions. Dr. King was 100% on the side of Labor and Unions. He interrupted his preparations for the upcoming Poor People's Campaign in Washington DC to publicly support striking garbage workers in Memphis TN who were being brutalized by the city leaders because they had dared to Unionize and strike in order to get higher wages and better working conditions. It was in Memphis TN that Dr. King was assassinated at the age of 39 on the night of April 4, 1968. He took a fatal bullet to his head while supporting those rights that the Republican Party is so opposed to today; the right to Unionize & bargain for higher wages and better working conditions.
4. The Poor
The Republican Party hates the poor and through its opposition to raising the minimum wage, cutting food stamps, and extending unemployment benefits, its bestial treatment of the weakest & least fortunate among us knows no bounds. Dr. King on the other hand was at war with poverty all of his adult life and never wasted an opportunity to highlight its corrosive effect on the human soul from the poorest slums in the Deep South to the most oppressive ghettos in the North. He died while deep in preparation for a Poor Campaign in Washington DC scheduled for May of 1968 to highlight America's inexcusable tolerance of poverty to the world.
5. War
Not only does the Republican Party love war, it believes in preemptive war; striking at nations that pose no immediate threat to America or its interests. For proof we only need to look at President Reagan's invasion of Grenade in the Fall of 1983 or President George W. Bush's uncalled for & disastrous war in Iraq that he started in 2003. Being a man of peace Dr. King opposed war; especially when the resources to fight wars drained the resources necessary to fight injustice and poverty here at home. In speaking out against the Vietnam War on April 4, 1967 (one year to the day before he was killed) Dr. King said the following:
"A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslem-Christian-Jewish-
Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : 'Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.'
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The 'tide in the affairs of men' does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: 'Too late.'"
All of the above positions held by the Republican Party and the Far Right today are thus diametrically opposed to everything believed in and fought for by Dr. King. I won't even go into how he would have reacted to the GOP's turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the racist hatred being directed at our first African American president, Barack Obama, in the form of comparing him to an African witch doctor, hanging him in effigy from a tree, calling for the murder of him and his wife & children, and waving a Confederate flag in front of the White House. Does anyone in their right mind think that Dr. King would have anything to do with a political party that not only tolerates but encourages such conduct?
Does anyone believe for a minute that he would not call out the madness of African American Republicans/Conservatives who have crazily cast their lot with such hateful individuals just as those bought off African Americans of Dr. King's time publicly sided with those southern segregationists who brutalized & murdered the Civil Rights warriors back then? Some things are so utterly ridiculous that again we need only compare the rhetoric to the reality to prove the absurdity of such blatant falsehoods for in such a contest reality always wins.
So in closing I ask you to remember the words of the late, great African American post Carl Wendell Hines who in his 1971 poem "Now that he is Safely Dead" prophetically foretold of the day when the enemies of Dr. King would seek to hijack his legacy and claim it as their own when he was no longer here to call them out on their unjust theft and disgusting distortion of who he was & what he stood and fought for in life.
"Now that He is Safely Dead."
"Now that he is safely dead,
Let us Praise him.
Now that he is safely dead,
Let us Praise him.
Build monuments to his glory.
Sing Hosannas to his name.
Dead men make such convenient Heroes.
They cannot rise to challenge the images
We would fashion from their Lives.
It is easier to build monuments
Than to make a better world.
So now that he is safely dead,
We, with eased consciences, will
Teach our children that he was a great man,
Knowing that the cause for which he
Lived is still a cause
And the dream for which he died
Is still a dream."
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