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MLK
Increasingly, we seem to have no use for the middle ground; too many are eager to climb the peaks on either side and scream at each other across the divide.
So I tip my hat, with respect, to the late Martin Luther King Jr., a man who faced, with grace and restraint, true injustice — injustice compared to which so many of our modern grievances are revealed as petty and contrived.
RIP MLK
Published in History
The biggest contrast between the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the grievance industry that persists today is accountability. MLK was willing to accept jailing as a means of underscoring the injustice of the jailing. Grievance mongers of today want to engage in violence and destruction and escape any consequence, because “civil disobedience”. It does no honor to MLK for those who claim to “follow in his steps”, to not follow in his steps. If jailing for firebombing and trashing buildings is morally indefensible, accept your jailing and let your fellow Americans consider whether such actions are unjust and modify or remove the punishment for these acts. Do not presume to the mantle of King when what you do bears no resemblance to what he did.
I find it hard to believe all the hagiography about Mr. King. Almost all his acolytes have been race hustlers. I suspect that this was his aim as well.
A friend of mine just posted this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., and I like it: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?'”
Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” (1849) was an inspiration to both Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi.
I think Thoreau’s essay gained a special prominence during the Nuremberg trials, when so many Nazis sought to excuse their actions by saying they were just “following orders.”
A great post. Thank you.
Jailing? He was willing to accept being murdered!