Martin Luther King Jr and GOP values

[JohnnyRingo]

As many already have heard, the Republican party has made an attempt to recruit MLK as one of their own, posthumously.

This outrageous and shameful claim is being fronted by Florida conservative and accused plagiarist Francis Rice (no known relation to Condaleeza). http://www.nbra.info/
Her group is funding a commercial that features a pair of African American women discussing how the republicans freed the slaves and democrats opposed civil rights through 1960. It even names the KKK as "an arm of the democratic party". This commercial is getting play in Ohio for obvious reasons. I saw it for the 1st time yesterday.

After a search of Martin Luther King speeches and quotes, one has to go to just before his death to find any real reference to any American politics. By 1967 MLK felt compelled to speak out on the Vietnam War.

A quick read of his words from that era reveal a mindset that has little to do with current republican values and more in common with the "far left, anti-war crowd" of present day.

There's no doubt in my mind that if Dr. King were alive today he would be subject to labels of "cut-and-run-coward" and "unpatriotic" by the very people who now hope to hijack his legacy to promote their own endless war and tax cuts for the wealthy:


A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

<snip>
I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:
Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.
Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

<snip>
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken: the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin , we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered


Beyond Vietnam
April 4, 1967. New York, N.Y
http://www.mlkonline.net/

edited to add relevent paragraph

[LeftishBrit]

1. OK...

if that's their attitude, hold them to it! Demand that they act like it. If they claim that they are like the most liberal Republicans of 50 years ago, then they should be held to it. Support 'activist liberal judges', for example. After all, I have heard that all but 2 of the 'liberal activist' Supreme Court justices, whom the right-wing detest, were appointed by Republican presidents! Get them to replace at least half of their right-wing senators and congressmen with liberal/moderate Republicans whom one could imagine taking part in the civil rights movement.

If they don't rush to do so, then they need to be replaced by the real moderates: the Democrats.

In my own country, both main parties have moved way to the right of what they were pre-Thatcher and pre-Blair; but even so, I am amazed at what counts as normal among the current American Republicans. And - if it wasn't always that extreme - let them put their words into practice by rejecting their current extremism.

[ComerPerro]

2. Republicans in the 1860s were not the conservative party

moreover, Lincoln freed the slaves as a means to an end, as a way of imposing economic warfare on the South.

And, because of the parties switching around FDR's time (Democrats becoming more liberal and promoting social programs, Republicans going fanatic conservative), many conservatives in the South remained Democrats out of habit and practice, even though they may have been bigoted conservative racists. And, yes, they did oppose Civil Rights. So did Republicans in the South.

Why do they think the Democratic party was so divided in the late 1960s?


And I'll close with two thoughts:

I've never seen a Republican champion civil rights and economic justice. Not one. Not even "liberal" (by today's standards) Nixon.

and

The "Great Society", and the passing of Civil Rights legislation and reforms, that all happened under LBJ, a Democrat.


These statements by Republicans would be a humorous example of their idiocy if they weren't so riddled with disgusting lies.