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Quote of the Day, from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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.
I was planning to share another King quote on this day in his honor, but after all the progress that America has made in moving toward his dream, lately we have taken some steps backward.
I don’t want to leave it there, though, so here’s the other quote:
Published in GeneralNothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I almost included this as a foil in the OP, but I did not want to sully the words of Dr. King with this pseudo-intellectual drivel.
Notice the degeneration of King to Cornel. I one interpretation, being a good man is everything and in another being black is all important.
Martin Luther King’s dream is deader than he is.
Indeed it is. Instead of a color-blind America, we have become a color-focused America. Every action, every law, is judged in part on how it will directly or indirectly affect people of various colors and ethnicities. Voters are categorized, polled, and pandered to by race. All aspects of society are sliced, diced, and analyzed from a racial perspective in an effort to eradicate “inequality.” MLK’s dream speech helped drive the successful civil rights movement, but its core objective has been twisted and perverted over the decades into almost the exact opposite of what he stated.
Thank you, Paul. It is amazing how things have changed just during my lifetime.
This is an entry in the Quote of the Day Series. We still have an opening on January 29th, as well as all of February to fill. Any takers?
There is a certain kind of person who uses “my dear brother” as his warning that he is about to slide the stiletto between your ribs.
No it is not. I still share this dream, as do, I believe, millions of my fellow citizens. It is farther from being a reality than it was when King said it. It has, in fact, been betrayed by King’s successors. But the dream is not dead. To believe otherwise is to write off the lives of millions of people.
Another of his speeches…remarks, really…was given to kids in Philadelphia. It’s generally called the Streetsweeper speech, but the better title comes from his opening: What Is Your Life’s Blueprint? Stay in school, do the smallest job well…he even uses the word “unborn.” We’ve come a long way, baby.
I am sure I have bragged about this before, but my father was one of the white urban pastors from up north who took a bus down to march with Dr. King.
Dr. King said that to change your country, you must first love your country (close paraphrase). A great deal of the rancor we see today stems from a lack of the back half of that statement. Dr. King was under no illusions about America’s imperfections, but he both saw her potential & saw what the rest of the world looked like at the time. We are teaching our children suspicion and cynicism, rather than love and truth. This needs to change.
Indeed we have. People sometimes forget that his doctorate was in systematic theology and that in his “day job” he was Baptist minister. He gave some great sermons that had little to do with civil rights, such as The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life.
Andrew Klavan’s show it right on target today, focusing on Reverend King’s Christianity.
And I would say the dream is not dead. We have much work to do.
Yes, this is true. And we have been led for the last eight years by a black leader who sought to denigrate and lower our country.
Along those lines, from The Montgomery Bus Boycott:
I was there. I was inspired by his sermon. It was never a speech to me, as every phrase was met with a sacred response, “Yes, Jeeeesus,” or “Amen.” Whenever I think of it, I feel it as a prayer. And the dream is still alive.
How about anti-American, anti-white, anti-capitalist cunning?
Our departing POTUS is not a sincere, stupid naif. As his actions since Nov 8 extravagantly show, he is a sharp, dedicated, motivated man on a mission to destroy America. His dropping so many bombs into contemporary race and sex relations is the result of his desire to fundamentally change us. His laying so many traps for Mr Trump is the result of his desire to sow chaos and discord.
We ignore the uncivil, evil, anti-Western animus of the left at our own peril. Mr Trump’s victory is a leftist’s bullet ducked. Let’s not walk into their machine guns, shall we not?
I, too, share the dream, but I must respectfully disagree that it is further away than it was in 1968. I do think we have lost ground in the past 8 years, but almost 50 years ago where I lived, there was much fear and animosity toward full integration. Now I carry my mixed granddaughter in my arms and see people of all backgrounds smile at her and compliment her beauty. – Mrs. OkieSailor
I remembering reading an article years ago that pointed out Martin Luther King, Jr. had gone from primarily being referred to as Reverend to Doctor. As you point out, the doctorate was in theology, but I wonder if this shift was to deemphasize the religious aspect of his message.
King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail was inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” (1849). Thoreau inspired Mahatma Gandhi, who inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. Great ideas catch on.
What impresses me about Martin Luther King, Jr., is that in his writing and speeches, it is clear that he loved America and wanted blacks to be fully part of it, not a segregated group away from it. He was inspired by the aspiration to equality that is woven throughout the actual American dream, which is for justice for each individual, not a house in suburbia, although such prosperity naturally follows when people respect and like each other fully.