Vietnam corrupted everything, since, like Iraq, both parties wanted in on it. So both parties tried to avoid hard questions afterward. The defenders of Vietnam were never convincingly laughed out of town. King's view of it was relegated to the fringe.

Then the recovery from Nixon and Vietnam also was derailed, during Carter, by the deadly economy, oil prices, and the Iran flap, legacy of another bipartisan foreign-policy disaster.

We could see the same dynamic now, since both parties are corrupted by their connections to Iraq and the financialization of the economy. The removal of caps on wealth has enticed the left into dreams of Warren Buffet or Bill Gates riches. No one cares about social questions, with the big golden ring beckoning.

Interesting - I didn't know of the `santaclausification` tag but it certainly fits.

I was thinking similarly only the other day after stomaching about two minutes of one of Hannity's rants - Hannity you may not realise is very fond of citing MLK as some sort of values hero - that he'd have been fully as hysterical about MLK then as he now is about Wright and Obama.

Because the tax rate on the wealthy has been lowered so much especially since the time of Reagan they have zillions of dollars to throw into the PR machine that makes it almost impossible for younger people to find out King's stance against racism, militarism, and materialism. The anti-racism piece is the only part Americans are allowed to find out about easily.

Last month, high school kids across America were learning about King’s life, listening to his speeches, studying “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” There are few people more known than MLK. And yes, his more radical political views are cleaned up as are all radical political views cleaned up for national consumption. Anyone who is revered and stands as a symbol will become a sanitized, santaclaused persona for public worship, but so what?

It seems that the characterizing of King as an angry radical civil rights Ché is no less a distortion than his biography as a non-violent civil-disobedience inspiring preacher who ended Jim Crow, a stain on this country worse than slavery considering the time frame. King’s story should be rewritten to portray him as the most dangerous man in America because of all that love he was spreading around? Does that make Jesus the most dangerous man in the world? And why the sudden interest in defiling King’s “dream” image?

Perhaps for some, it is politically expedient. Perhaps for some, a different black preacher who has become a political problem can be honored by association with MLK. Not only is that shameful; it doesn’t even follow since the two preachers were absolutely not preaching the same thing. Wright’s black liberation theology is an Africentric separatist philosophy, and would not fit into MLK’s dream. So, are we now going to throw MLK under the bus, too? And I hear Santa Clause was really just an angry drunk fat white guy.

I think it's a stretch to call King's "talking about the necessity to build an interracial movement for economic justice" as radical in a political sense or as an endorsement of any economic or governmental system warranting the label "democratic socialism." The other quotes don't make the case for saddling King with such a label either.

There's nothing specific to any economic system about wanting a fundamental commitment to love and justice, or a person-oriented rather than thing-oriented society. There's nothing specific to socialism about pointing out that poor Southern whites were encouraged to judge their economic wellbeing in relation to poor blacks rather than wealthy whites.

In point of fact, the views King acted on seemed to derive primarily from obvious sources: Christian teachings (turning the other cheek, eye of the needle, etc.) and Gandhi. And from Gandhi, King adopted nonviolent resistance, not Gandhi's economic views (self-reliance through home weaving etc.)

Besides, who is to say King's economic views were contemplating a justice not based on socialism, but something more like the sort of distributive justice described by John Rawls, which considered economic changes to be just if they would make the worst off person better off; this does not necessarily describe a socialist scheme since it leaves potential room for enormous inequalities. Would King have preferred socialism, or justice as Rawls defined it? My guess is King was focused on making it possible for everyone to live a secure, healthy, and happy life; it was that result that mattered, not the name of the system that achieved it.

It also seems clear that if anyone ever operated in the moral sphere, it was King. He was trying to get people to do the right thing because it was right. If they *wanted* to do what was right, nonviolent change was possible. Perhaps it's religious upbringing that makes me trace King's most central beliefs to biblical phrases. Those seldom fit political theories. Does "blessed are the merciful" go better with capitalism, socialism or communism? Couldn't "blessed are the peacemakers" play a useful role in any number of economic and political systems, including tyrannies? Whatever the system, individual men and women would still have to make moral judgments and enact them in behavior toward other individual people. The system is just so much hogwash unless people use the system to do good things for other people.

King wasn't a Santa Claus figure; neither was he trying to lead a socialist movement out of academe and impose a radical economic transformation on a reluctant nation. That would have been totally inconsistent with his clearly delineated approach. He took the deeply flawed world he was born into and tried to make it as just as possible as fast as possible *without recourse to violence.* That's a hard and very time-consuming way to get a socialist system in the United States, where few people are receptive to the idea. If socialism was a high priority for King, he would have had to adopt other methods to see it within a century.

In an academic context, there's no harm in projecting support for particular economic and political theories on King based on his longing for economic justice for all people. However, labeling King a democratic socialist in the middle of a presidential campaign could have unfortunate unintended side effects when there's a leading black candidate whose admiration for King is plain and whose rhetorical gifts are reminiscent of King's. The socialist labeling of King at this particular moment might provide fodder for attacks on Obama. Those will come from the right anyway, but it's best not to feed them material from credible sources.

I don't think the socialist label applies to King to start with. However, I was in no way privy to King's private thoughts and communications.

glaivester:

I'm perfectly willing to admit King's radicalness as long as we take away his holiday....

You conservatives really hate that holiday, don't you?

Because King was wrong on economics. Socialism is bad. The welfare state has had a lot of negative effects on the black family.

No, the black family already had plenty of problems before "the welfare state". It had to do with ripping them out of their homeland, removing them from their culture, enslaving them and not permitting slaves to marry so their children could be sold off.

Welfare does have some unintended consequences (BTW, most people on welfare are white) but they are very minor compared to the damage done by slavery, Jim Crow and the general racism of conservatives in America.

What is not remembered in popular history is that, during the civil rights movement, King was considered too moderate by the far more militant SNCC and CORE. People remember that three civil rights workers were killed in Mississippi, but not that they were CORE members, not part of King's moderate SLCC. And as SNCC and CORE people began to leave non-violence and move to self-defense, King became the standard bearer for non-violence. Thus the contributions of the more radical militants has been minimized.

None of this detracts from King's greatness and role in HELPING to move the movement on. But the collective memories should also include many hundreds of others.

don: thanks for your reply. so much to say, so few ways to justify my procrastination. i'll try to be brief, so pls don't interpret my brevity as electronic dismissiveness.

"But while King was as radical as Ghandi (very radical indeed) he can’t really be tagged as a communist activist."

as you go on to note, we can quibble about what is or is not socialism or communism, and king was accused of being a communist by his enemies (as was any civil rights organization, since even american racism was filtered through the prism of the Cold War. but the purpose of this post was to focus us on MLK's emphasis on economic justice, whcih was a shift for him after 1964.

"Unfortunately, what I see here is a political moment. I see no organic groundswell to heal race divisions, and until race became a political problem, the Obama campaign did not promote it at large. His campaign was not about race and didn’t want to be except where there were black and anti-racist white votes to be had."

there was no "organic groundswell," but clearly, it was just beneath the surface-- i'd argue that the lid has been kept on any such groundswell for the last three decades with dialogue killers like "the race card" and "pc." obama's "damage control" is not what caused his speech to be downloaded millions of times, to be the subject of three weeks of passionate articles and op-eds, and the subject of tens of millions of conversations nationwide. contrary to your critique of the speech, what obama did was use his moment of political vulnerability to create the space for people to engage the subject that has been the elephant in the room from the beginning of the campaign (and for two generations). As fo his campaign somehow switching its message to be about race when black votes were to be had, I suggest you ask tavis smiley if he feels that way-- obama shunned the state of the black union for two years in a row and that was part of what started the whole "is he black enough" nonsense at the beginning of the campaign.

"It’s hard to argue that the admonishment of The Speech to understand and transcend race differences was imperative and indispensable given that it was a one-off sermon from on high and part of a campaign spin to cover the Wright problem."

one-off speeches are not written and talked about non-stop for weeks-- the discussion of race has been so intense, black folks are confused and think it might still be february.

"Obama seems to insist everyone listen to his “we are family” answer as expiation. He creates a biography that he sells as a corrective to insurmountable historical divisions and uses family, friends and allies as fodder for that promotion."

this is a complete mischaracterization; he uses his own story as an example of america's potential , versus its all-too frequent reality of defacto segregation and polarized understanding. he is not "creating" something that is not his lived reality, nor is he "selling" something as a solution-- he clearly and explicitly acknowledges the hard work of breaking through the intellectual , philosophical and physical silos within which we reside. "uses," i assume, is a cheap shot about his grandmother... any fair-minded reading of that section reveals that he was not equating what wright said with what his grandmother said, but equating them as cherished and loved family members who deserve to be viewed in their totality. if you want to dismiss viewing people with warts and all as "promotion," well i can only hope you are able to release that level of cynicism in your lifetime-- what a heavy load to carry.

"It is well known that MLK took exception to the black power movement of Malcolm X and Malcolm X called his nonviolence foolish. The nationalist veins in the black struggle have been decidedly radical compared to King’s philosophy."

this takes us back to the original post-- what is "well known" is often a truncated, convenient version of reality. the quote that i referred to above was MLK's specific re-evaluation of his critique of black power... he had dismissed it early on, but later said, hey, i will not be used to criticize these "angry young men" when their anger is justified. he remained committed to non-violent direct action, but saw no problem with demands for greater economic and political power in the black community as long as these claims were advocated for in a non-violent manner. you must trace MLK's post-1964 evolution very carefully, and this reveals a process of of ever increasing radicalization in his alliances and objectives.

second, malcolm x predated the widespread use of black power as a slogan-- that didn't come until 1966 with adama clayton powell and stokely carmichael (kwame toure), while malcolm was assassinated in 1965. but to your point, malcolm x called men demonstrating for equal rights that refused to defend themselves and women and children foolish, though he never advocated or participated in any violence-- he believed that self-defense was constitutionally protected. but again, his evolution was profound between 1963-1965 and he made peace with king and non-violent direct action as a strategy. their alliance was imminent and only derailed by assassin's bullets.

third, even the term radical is subject to debate. while many in the civil rights era, like the black panther party, chose more threatening methods to achieve their objectives, their objectives themselves were less radical than MLK's post-1964. MLK was calling for a complete economic redistribution of wealth towards the end of his life, something far more radical than much of the panthers 10-point program. this is the heart of the original post-- while i would not saddle king with labels of convenience like "socialist," he was deeply committed to a democratic process that involved both political and economic equity, and this was a more sophisticated read on the american power structure than many other allegedly more radical groups espoused.

I don’t think Obama would agree, publicly, with Wright that President Clinton, for example, “rode us dirty” though he might intimate as much to certain audiences.

what wright was saying in colloquial terms taken from popular music (more of a tasteless attempt for an older generation to show the younger folks he's hip to the present than about racial dogma), is that clinton (who he praised in other speeches), instituted policies that damaged the black community (the crime bill and welfare deform) while professing to be the best friend black people ever had in white house. its a policy analysis, no matter how lewd and crude. would obama agree-- he is centrist on crime and welfare, so i think his record indicates that he would disagree, no matter what audience he was in front of. hi critique of clinton has been limited to foreign policy and nafta, with only a little bit on laws like mandatory minimum sentencing and 3-strikes laws.

I suspect that Wright is preaching more out of love than hate, but it doesn’t matter. It is not the “angry black man” that some see; it is the radical, un-American advocating black primacy instead of national colorblind unity. As long as his message is broadcast nationwide it can only be divisive.

there is nothing unamerican about rev. wright. he said the same exact thing that ambassador peck and ron paul said (9/11 was blowback); he said the same thing that white reporters gary webb and robert parry and senator john kerry said (the cia turned a blind eye on drug dealing in the u.s. that profited their contra allies); he said the same thing dr. alan cantwell, a white scientist said (aids was man-made), and every other statement about u.s. history and foreign policy was factually accurate. he ran with circumstantial, dubious or unsubstantiated facts in the case of the government intentionally unleashing drugs and aids on the black community (i think these claims are irresponsible), but they are based on the work of these white men-- which brings us back to your suppostion... is it not that an "angry black man" is saying these things if white men have said the same things? sure, you could argue that the presidential campaign is why this has been amplified this way (though not in the case of ron paul), and this certainly plays a role, but so does the threat that black humanity seems to still represent to large swaths of the american population.

and national colorblind unity is a tragic objective for us to have, and if anything comes out of this renewed discourse, i hope it is that "color-blind" and "post-racial" are murdered. this harkens back to the american melting pot myth, which demanded assimilation and silence as the price for opportunity. i want to see and respect and love people for who they are, including their culture or color or however they identify themselves in addition to their american-ness. i
do not wish to be blind to parts of who they are-- their history, experience, origins-- in order to feign some sanitized version of nationalism. instead, let us find strength in our diversity and get out of this provincial american mindset that fuses arrogance and ignorance (dogma: isn't it crazy that many american boast that we are the greatest country in the world but have never lived anywhere else?)

While Barack Obama may be seen as a great hope for some in terms of race relations, he is seen by a centrist or liberal political climber, a skilled politician to be sure, but as a politician not qualified for a role like that of MLK.

we use more strawmen in our national discussions than corn farmers. has obama ever said he aspires to be king? actually, he correctly stated in a debate that king was explicitly not a politician , which is why he would never presume that MLK would endorse him if he was live today. MLK was a moral, prophetic gadfly-- his job was to hold politicians accountable, not to be a politician. obama knows ths better than anyone, so he would never aspire to that moral role. what he does do is challenge all of us, including himself, to aspire to the message of the gadfly. again, if you want to cynically criticize him for that just because you are tired of people deifying him, well, i suggest you focus your frustration on our desperation for substance instead of on him-- he never claimed the mantle people are so desperate to saddle him with.

peace,
gkp

About those swift boat ads that the GOP will be putting up against Obama if he is the nominee:

When Kerry ran against Bush in 2004, it was assumed that Bush was doomed. A year before the election Bush's ratings were in the toilet. "Mission Accomplished" was a bad joke. Bush's only military service was in the so-called "Champaign Unit" of the National Guard, a cushy, safe position gotten him by his father. And there were stories that his service record was artificially pumped up, and that he had even gone AWOL. Meanwhile as Bush played fighter pilot in the National Guard and never left the country, Kerry distinguished himself in Viet Nam as a bona fide war hero. So along came the "Swift Boat Veterans For Truth".

They attacked Kerry's record with total lies... complete fabrications... saying that Kerry did not deserve his purple heart award. But the tactic worked, effectively neutralizing Kerry's advantage as someone who had the credentials to be Commander In Chief. That is how effective "swift boat" attacks can be.

The difference between 2004 and 2008 is that the GOP will not need to resort to lies in their swift boat ads against Obama. They will show video of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for over 20 years, performer of Obama's wedding, baptizer of Obama's children, "important mentor" of Obama, member of the Obama campaign's religious advisory council (until the scandal broke), and preacher of the sermon from which "the audacity of hope" was taken and became the title of Obama's book. As Wright is seen cursing America and using the "N word" in racially motivated tirades while his adoring parishioners shout "AMEN!", Obama well be shown refusing to disassociate himself from Wright. Instead he will be seen pointing out his own grandmother's racism for the whole world (and for her) to hear, and calling her "a typical white person". All this can be done in a thirty-second ad. It took Obama thirty-seven minutes to talk his way out of it in Philadelphia last month, and that was before a sympathetic audience. What will he do in the Fall when the GOP swift boat ads start airing?

Another swift boat ad will show clips of Obama talking about how he has always been against the Iraq war. Then his voting record in the Senate will be shown, where he voted the same as Hillary on the war every single time.

Think this will have no effect on the outcome of the election? Think again.