Michael Luther King was born on April 15, 1929. Nowadays, in order to provide their citizens with a three-day week-end, many municipalities and states commemorate the life of this man--who later changed his name to Martin--on the Monday nearest to his birthday. So it is today we observe the semi-holiday of one of America's greatest figures, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and martyr to the cause of human rights.
Few of us, I wager, commemorate "President's Day" by imitating Washington's nobility or Lincoln's patient compassion--let alone Christmas by emulating the behavior of its natal figure--so it's no wonder that for many Americans, Martin Luther King Day has become little more than an extra day off work. Either that, or time for media pundits, politicians, academics and the myrmidons of the "diversity" industry to mouth bromides about "peace" and "tolerance" and "respect" for the "Other's" own "special identity." (The quotation marks seem necessary.)
Of the two, I think lazing in front of the flat-screen with remote in hand seems less harmful to the legacy of Dr. King. After all, it was--as many right wing observers note--the civil rights leader himself who stated in his 1963 "I Have a Dream" oration:
I have a dream that one day my four children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character.
Multiculturalism, identity politics, essentialism, resentment, segregated college campuses, the self-loathing misogynistic culture of Hip-Hop--all this, and more, is antithetical to King's vision. Antithetical because at their base lies tribalism, the reactionary mindset that lures mankind back to the primitive cult of blood and soil and biological determinism. All of man's advancements--from a vision of an ethical god to the supremacy of law over patriarchal custom--have come contra tribalism. Many, if not most, of man's defeats have occurred when the bigotry of tribalism has extinguished the light of civilization and human rights.
King knew this threat all too well, yet maintained faith that justice would always prevail.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
As indeed, the assassin who took his life in 1968 has not--and could never--have the final say in the legacy of this true American hero.
Who speaks, who acts, and who doesn't was vital to King's vision of human rights. From his 1963 letter rebuking the pastors of Birmingham for their objections to his activism ("Was not Jesus an extremist in love?") to such oft-quoted statements as "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter," King enjoined his listeners to abjure cowardice, expedience and vanity to follow the call of conscience. Fifty years ago, American liberals did just that: riding, for example, with the Freedom Riders, or working for voting rights in the South. Many lost their lives: just recently, we read about how Mississippi authorities re-arrested Edgar Ray Killen for the 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.
Today, however, in the greatest civil rights issue to confront America since the 1960s, the Left remains silent, or even hostile. I mean, of course, Iraq. Before our eyes, we see people struggling to achieve self-determination and freedom beset by the same reactionary tribal forces that Killen and his night-riding terrorists represented forty years ago. Only this time, it is largely the neo-conservative right, joined by some courageous liberals--as well as American soldiers of every political persuasion--who are answering Dr. King's call to conscience. The left has simply checked itself out of the fight.
Is this war any different than other struggles for human rights? On a lonely road in Iraq last March, terrorists ambushed and murdered Americans Fern Holland, Robert Zangas and their Iraqi translator Salwa Ali. Their crime was to attempt to establish women's centers in the central part of the country. Their lives were spent in the identical cause that Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman--as well as Medgar Evers and so many others--gave theirs, as well: democracy. When paramilitary death-squads target and assassinate Iraqis who were cooperating with the government, is that not similar to an old-fashioned lynching? When gunmen stalk the Iraqi countryside, murdering civilians in the name of "defending their homeland," can we not see a modern-day Ku Klux Klan? When a car bomb explodes, killing innocent Iraqis--do the victims not join hands across the years with the four teenage girls killed in the Birmingham church bombings?
As Dr. King once stated,
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
On a personal level, of course, it doesn't matter who speaks out for democracy and human rights in Iraq--the issue is larger than any single one of us. And it is true that reasonable people can differ reasonably on many issues involving this war. Still, for many of us who hold within our hearts a combination of fear and hope for the future of the Iraq, we can think of no greater tribute to Dr. King than to stand beside those tortured people--and the Coalition soldiers who seek to protect them--as they struggle toward a better future. On this Martin Luther King Day, then, let us pray for the Iraqis and our soldiers, and so honor the legacy of the the man whom we reflect upon and honor.
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