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Martin Luther King, Jr. Remembrances
There are, of course, a multitude of memorials to the life of Rev. King, as there should be on the day set aside to recall what he did for America and, not to put a damper on these occasions, to mourn at what he would think if he could see what has been done to his dream of being judged by the content of his character and not by the color of his skin. I thought I would set out below links to some of the most thoughtful of these writings and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
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Heaven forbid that people do things they want to do.
If some like to congregate with others socially, how is that anyone else’s business? This is the evil of socialism and communism. They start by saying nice things like, don’t be racist, let’s make laws forbidding racism. They end by telling you whom you should have for friends.
Different races have different cultures. In the melting pot we used to admire, people’s cultures tended to merge. But with affirmative action and other racist policies, we have discouraged melding our cultures together and have encouraged separatism.
Progressives don’t stop at crushing our cultures, they want to control your personal behavior. Just this week I noticed that some progressive celebrity or someone I’ve never heard of explain to us that refusing to date a fat person is bigotry. That is the most personal choice anyone can make and they want to tell us what our choices of partners should be.
Well, I won’t have it. I’m not dating any fat women. I’m also married, but if I were single, I promise you that I won’t be dating any fat women. I’ve heard similar remarks, less prominent still, saying the same thing about perverts. If you won’t date a person because they are “transgender” then you are a bigot.
Okay, I’m a bigot. If that’s what we’re turning the word into, then I will proudly wear that badge. I will not allow anyone to choose my friends for me, either socially or sexually.
The Jim Crow laws that Jerry says weren’t so bad didn’t allow discrimination. They mandated it. In states that had these laws, it wasn’t your prerogative to have a business that whites-only or had separate sections for customers based on race. It was required. That’s telling people what to do.
Arguably Podhoretz received more abuse from his fellow intellectuals in his life (“Making It”. “Breaking Ranks”) than he did from blacks growing up. And then he could write of his “Love Affair with America” inspired by his experiences with ordinary Americans.
To me you sound like a Leftist playing the victim card: Suffered official discrimination your whole life? In Arizona? Are you kidding me? I lived in Arizona. I never saw Official discrimination based on race there, nor experienced it.
I don’t know anything about real atrocities? The book that made the greatest impact on my teenage mind was “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch” and Solzhenitsyn has had more of an impact on me than anyone other writer in the world during my lifetime. I have read extensively about the Japanese depredations in China that were hardly as horrendous as Mao’s. And the Holidomor. I’ve visited the Nazi death camps.I grew up with Japanese who had been driven out of California(why doesn’t California offer reparations to the Japanese they persecuted and incarcerated?).
And I still find Jim Crow horrendous in the context of American liberty. American slavery I would compare to the gulags. Perhaps you’ll tell me that the gulags weren’t so bad. After all, some like Solzhenitsyn did survive them, right?
@Jerry Giordano
I should add that I do strongly suspect that Jim Crow was worse than the discrimination you have suffered your whole life in Arizona.
As one whose early years were spent in Jim Crow South Louisiana I appreciated your putting in words what I have been thinking as I read some of these comments to the effect that segregation wasn’t really all that bad. Inexplicable!