..and I”m taking a long weekend, myself.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, I’ll urge you to listen, as I do this time every year, to Reverend King’s final, and in some ways most iconic, speech, “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop”.<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>“I Have A Dream”, full of vigor and hope, gets all the headlines; “Mountaintop” is both more sober and more expansive; it focuses on the stump-pulling work of the battle for civil rights. It has lessons for those who fight for\u00a0<em>all\u00a0<\/em>civil rights.<\/p>\n<p>As always, the whole thing is worth a listen.<\/p>\n<p>Keep that in mind when you read some of the, uh, revision of King from the right these days – most notably Charlie Kirk:<\/p>\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Martin Luther King Jr. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncregister.com\/blog\/martin-luther-king-quotes-st-augustine-and-st-thomas-aquinas\">appealed to Augustine and Aquinas<\/a> to justify resisting racist laws. He elevated character high above skin color and moral universalism above separatism of all kinds. His political claims were grounded in America\u2019s founding promises, his message garbed in a high-minded, critical patriotism. He called the United States his \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/kinginstitute.stanford.edu\/nationalism\">beloved nation<\/a>,\u201d even as he denounced Washington\u2019s forever war in Vietnam. At a moment of profound polarization, King is one of the few figures who can still supply us with unifying themes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So naturally, some in the more excitable corners of the right have been taking an ax to his legacy. The latest comer is Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who last week <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/charlie-kirk-tpusa-mlk-civil-rights-act\/?utm_source=twitter&mbid=social_twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_brand=wired&utm_medium=social\">declared<\/a> that \u201cMLK was awful,\u201d and vowed: \u201cWe\u2019re gonna be hitting him next week. Yeah, on the day of the Iowa caucus, it\u2019s MLK Day. We\u2019re gonna do the thing you\u2019re not supposed to do. We\u2019re gonna tell the truth about MLK Jr.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Civic pieties should be scrutinized in the light of later historiography, to be sure. But that isn\u2019t what the MLK haters are up to. Their anti-MLK crusade is the mirror image of progressive efforts to discredit national icons and narratives. Ironically, MLK himself has also been the target of such attempts from the left, on the grounds that his moderation stunted more radical projects of racial liberation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, Kirk is broadcast on Salem, so I urge you to listen for yourself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let’s just say I’d like a word with the guy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking of questions – I suspect George Orwell has some…<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/MLKDay?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#MLKDay<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/FBI?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#FBI<\/a> honors one of the most prominent leaders of the Civil Rights movement and reaffirms its commitment to Dr. King\u2019s legacy of fairness and equal justice for all. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/tj9EUoXsFK\">pic.twitter.com\/tj9EUoXsFK<\/a><\/p>— FBI (@FBI) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FBI\/status\/1746910418436513980?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 15, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>…for the FBI. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>..and I”m taking a long weekend, myself. With that in mind, I’ll urge you to listen, as I do this time every year, to Reverend King’s final, and in some ways most iconic, speech, “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop”. “I Have A Dream”, full of vigor and hope, gets all the headlines; “Mountaintop” is both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-universe-and-everything"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86837"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86841,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86837\/revisions\/86841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}