mj - the same one

2013-12-20 22:14:22 -0500

Fox Guest Likens Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson To Martin Luther King, Jr.



It seems just about anybody who’s a white conservative (Robertson, Glenn Beck, Mitt Romney) can be Martin Luther King, Jr. these days.



Which is odd . . . because, in a 1991 article in The Conservative Review, Dwight D. Murphey pretty much disparages him:



Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan’s gloriously talented wordsmith, had a column in The Wall Street Journal on November 21 in which she spoke of “seven unifying myths” that bind Americans together and that she felt should be taught to the children of all new immigrants. (In this, she used “myth” in its favorable sense.)

Although in her brief comment she did not mention Martin Luther King, Jr., the myth surrounding him must certainly be part of that to which she refers. There is no greater personification of the sanguine view of the civil rights struggle than King, who during the years since his death in 1968 has been elevated to what M. Stanton Evans calls “secular sainthood”.



- The aura that surrounds King sanitizes him in a way that the 1960s New Leftists would certainly have decried as a “cooptation.” The myth consists of certain discrete ideas:



- That King was a high-minded man of love and non-violence, giving expression to noble dreams of equality and justice.



- That at the same time he engaged in a whirlwind of activity that used “non-violent direct action,” also known as “civil disobedience,” as a legitimate and desirable lever in a victorious effort to move what had been an unresponsive and fundamentally unjust society.



- That accordingly he stood at the forefront of a progressive movement that has moved America toward its truest ideals.



With deep respect for Peggy Noonan, I beg to differ with such an image, either of the civil rights struggle in general or of Martin Luther King, Jr., in particular.



The problems with this particular myth are many: First, it was not freely adopted. It did not arise spontaneously out of the sensibilities of the American people. It has been foisted on us with well-nigh totalitarian ferocity and presumption . . .



Second, that part of the myth that holds that civil disobedience is a legitimate means to social ends in a free society should not be accepted as an innocent premise. Mass violations of law, even if ostensibly they foreswear the initiation of violence, play no part in the theory of a free society, which provides constitutional processes for legal and institutional change. “Civil disobedience,” applied on a mass basis, must be understood for what it is: a technique of revolution. (Witness Sorel’s favorite tactic, the General Strike.)



Third, it is a terrible mistake to think that direct action and legislation have been the most constructive way to ameliorate the condition of minorities in the United States or to improve the harmony of the races. The two great paradigms for such amelioration were put forward a century ago by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B DuBois. Washington called upon his fellow blacks to advance their position by hard work and earned respect. DuBois demanded social justice “now,” without such a foundation first having been laid. Coercion – through legislation or otherwise – is anathema to a free society. The slow growth of fraternity through mutual respect is far preferable to a forced fraternity. (And it is much more likely to be permanently successful.) Fourth, the specific facts about “non-violence” and of Martin Luther King’s own role are such that a myth can’t be based on them, but rather must be based on some near-total fabrication. King’s Personal Qualities Recent revelations, which have come to light despite years of effort by the myth-makers to keep them from being known, tell us that Martin Luther King, Jr., was far from being worthy of adulation. The unvarnished truth – dare we speak it! – is that he was a manipulator and a cheat.



~

Murphey then goes on to disparage MLK as a leader, culminating in his speech at the New Politics convention of 1967.

He ends his article with this:

~ If I would have us take down the pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr., from our schoolhouse walls, it is not because I seek to deprive Americans of any race of their heroes. We need the myths to which Peggy Noonan alludes – if not precisely the ones she has enumerated, ideals nevertheless. All races, all peoples, have plenty among them who do not deserve admiration; at the same time, all races, all peoples, have their magnificence. There are many among them who qualify as true heroes. There have been real heroes in the past, if only we will identify them; and there will be real heroes in the future. We can be thankful that it does not all depend on Martin Luther King, Jr., and his status as an “American myth.”



~



Strange that, in a little over twenty years, the rightwing conservative attitude towards MLK , Jr. has gone from one of disparagement and condemnation

of both the man and his legacy, to one of attempting to co-opt both at every turn . . . to the point that they will repeatedly, and loudly — and incorrectly — insist that King was a republican. (I have to wonder if they might try the same tactic in a few years with Nelson Mandela, given their recent condemnations of him as a communist.)



Well, I guess when you have no heroes of your own . . .



.

commented