As a nation, we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. day a week ago. He paid the ultimate price for demanding racial equality when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
I often look at those rare souls willing to put their lives on the line for what they believe.
Soldiers accepting that death may be the cost to protect the country they love.
Men and women who don’t carry a gun, but all too often use what is seen as an equally potential life threatening measure in demanding their views be heard- free speech and peaceful protest .
Would I be that brave?
To speak out, regardless of the consequences?
Too many citizens are now forced to ask that question just by performing their jobs.
Others risk ridicule, retaliation and attacks for speaking out against certain candidates, viewpoints or policies. The age of a respectful debate and listening to different perspectives seems long gone.
Martin Luther King Jr. showed how powerful a peaceful coalition of words can be, especially when we realize they grew from his small-town parish pulpit.
And he showed how much fear, anger and ugliness could be generated by demanding equality.
His words were elegant and softly spoken, but his message was clear- the strongest, most incredible nation in the world needed to honor its legacy as clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence,
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Yet the more we try to make these words a reality the more strife and anger we see from those sure it will diminish or threaten their power, wealth, or jobs.
In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a powerful speech to the National Conference on New Politics. Sadly, his words forty-seven years ago are as true today as they were then,
“It is a time of double talk when men in high places have a high blood pressure of deceptive rhetoric and an anemia of concrete performance. We cry out against welfare hand-outs to the poor but generously approve… allowances that make the rich, richer.
The crowning achievement in hypocrisy must be given to those…. who were given land by our government when they came here as immigrants from Europe….are the same people that now say to black people, whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat; that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. What they truly advocate is Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor.
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people the giant triplets of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A civilization can flounder as readily in the face of moral bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar, it understands that an edifice which produces beggars, needs restructuring.
A nation that continues year after year, to spend more money on military defense then on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
No enemy has ever been able to cause such damage to us as we inflict upon ourselves.”
We stand on the precipice again. As the demographics of our country change, so do the perceptions of what we stand for, and the truths we once honored.
We were a country that believed in the words etched on the Statue of Liberty-
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched masses of your teeming shores.”
And acknowledged if not for these words, and actual practice, none of us would be here today.
When our forefathers enshrined the concept of separation of church and state in the first amendment of the constitution by proclaiming,
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of thereof.”
They acknowledged their ancestors came here to escape religious persecution. And yet some are demanding “Christian values” should govern books, education, personal rights.
When the preamble to the constitution,
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves, and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.”
Reinforces, we the people, means all the people.
When the closing statement in that powerful August 31, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. speech, just months before a gunman would end his voice forever,
“On some positions; cowardice asks the questions, is it safe; expediency asks the question, is it politic; vanity asks the question, is it popular, but conscious asks the question, is it right. And on some positions, it is necessary for the moral individual to take a stand that is neither safe, nor politic nor popular; but he must do it because it is right.
. . .can finally be answered unequivocally, that doing the right thing is all that matters.
-https://www.nwesd.org/ed-talks/equity/the-three-evils-of-society-address-martin-luther-king-jr/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tucson_shooting#:~:text=On%20January%208%2C%202011%2C%20U.S.,in%20the%20Tucson%20metropolitan%20area.
-https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution
-https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
-https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/#:~:text=Constitution%20of%20the%20United%20States,-First%20Amendment&text=Congress%20shall%20make%20no%20law,for%20a%20redress%20of%20grievances.
-https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/WhctKKZPKZXnFPcRvJjTkxbGVzbjPdsTDqmWCLvjfCwCsCXrcczvtCGSBwvRLmFxNZXDPBb
-https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/preamble