| Count this among your annual gathering of conservatives claiming that Martin Luther King, Jr. was the original teabagger. It's a special e-mail from the state GOP chairman, Bobby Shostak. Since our country was founded, we have always been a people who deeply cherished freedom. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. loved freedom so much that he constantly risked his life in its pursuit for others, no matter their station in life. Dr. King pushed our nation into the unflickering light of conscience so that all could enjoy equality before the law; and he gave his life so that all Americans would be born into a nation that fully lives the seminal words of its founding, “we hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.” Today, his legacy lives on in others -- all those who advance the cause of individual liberty, freedom and equality.
This is an awfully generous allowance for a people who so deeply love freedom that it required a war that left more than 600,000 dead just to get an emancipation that led to a further 150 years of lynchings, Jim Crowe, Lester Maddox and George Wallace and Orville Faubus, and violence threatened over attempts to end segregation under the auspices of a doctrine now held dear within the Republican Party ... state's rights. What is further rich is that voter suppression under the guise of fighting largely non-existent voter fraud is a thinly scaled attempt to roll back the right to vote that was among those things King gave his life for. So, thanks, but no thanks guys. If you'd like to really honor MLK, then what say you stop making it more difficult for poor minorities to exercise the franchise. Also, this. I have a very difficult time believing that the same Martin Luther King who advocated on behalf of labor unions and for some of the most radical wealth redistribution and housing desegregation laws would take too kindly to the state going to an urban center and dictating policy in a way that left workers earning a small paycheck at a time of such great wealth inequality. Again, if you really want to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. ... |
