Today the country honors an American great, Martin Luther King. There will be speeches replayed, memories discussed, national praises and some lamenting about civil rights work yet to be done. Martin Luther King left us something much greater than the memory of his work. The template of his work was: Reason. He applied reason to a devastating, social wrong that persisted for hundreds of years. I’m no MLK scholar but the thrust of his cause was that black Americans are people, American people who are entitled to human dignity and fair opportunities in the endeavors of life, work, housing, family, education. Why? Not because he had a lot of people behind him, a political force that gained the power to impress its ideology on others. No. Rather it was the jurisprudential rightness of what he sought to do, which overarches his civil rights contributions.
King is much greater than a hero of the civil rights movement. He transcended it by making his philosophical reasoning the bulwark of his campaign to transform our society. America soared in its ingenious design for a free populace that would hold the power strings – instead of kings, oligarchs and monarchs. Even our original sin of maintaining slavery only blights that advancement slightly. Never in the history of the world and its many peoples had self-governance reached such heights. Yet MLK set in motion a powerful state psychoanalysis equivalent to the Allies beating back the wrong of Germany’s twisted ideologies. He had the fortitude to press his cause in the face of incredible opposition. He joins the likes of Moses, Lincoln, Ghandi, the early Christians and Pope Benedict XVI, who continues to press dialogue with Islamic leaders on the concept reason’s coexistence with religion.
In spite of our founders’ amazing brilliance in producing the Constitution, they also acquiesced to slavery. How a people of such high reason could endorse slavery for hundreds of years we simply cannot now fathom. But, our historical failing was not alone. The Greeks who gave birth to democracy also savagely fought each for almost thirty years in the year Pelopennesian War from 431-404 B.C. The Roman Empire’s magnificent achievements in architecture, road building and military strategy also feasted on human slaughter in the coliseum. The society that produced Shakespeare also ruled the seas and colonized an enormous numbers of people, including us. The society which spawned Germany’s exquisite achievements in music and philosophy also fostered the rise of the Third Reich and its colossal aftermath of destruction.
Martin Luther King’s most important legacy is not as a civil rights leader but as a thinker. The enduring imprint of Dr. King is that he articulated unwaveringly the philosophical rightness, the reasoned goodness, the jurisprudence of civil rights. Our lesson is to again take up the torch and recognize that we may suffer from the blindness mankind has suffered in the past. Examine our society with a fresh look and apply cold reason to correct our wrongs.
King is much greater than a hero of the civil rights movement. He transcended it by making his philosophical reasoning the bulwark of his campaign to transform our society. America soared in its ingenious design for a free populace that would hold the power strings – instead of kings, oligarchs and monarchs. Even our original sin of maintaining slavery only blights that advancement slightly. Never in the history of the world and its many peoples had self-governance reached such heights. Yet MLK set in motion a powerful state psychoanalysis equivalent to the Allies beating back the wrong of Germany’s twisted ideologies. He had the fortitude to press his cause in the face of incredible opposition. He joins the likes of Moses, Lincoln, Ghandi, the early Christians and Pope Benedict XVI, who continues to press dialogue with Islamic leaders on the concept reason’s coexistence with religion.
In spite of our founders’ amazing brilliance in producing the Constitution, they also acquiesced to slavery. How a people of such high reason could endorse slavery for hundreds of years we simply cannot now fathom. But, our historical failing was not alone. The Greeks who gave birth to democracy also savagely fought each for almost thirty years in the year Pelopennesian War from 431-404 B.C. The Roman Empire’s magnificent achievements in architecture, road building and military strategy also feasted on human slaughter in the coliseum. The society that produced Shakespeare also ruled the seas and colonized an enormous numbers of people, including us. The society which spawned Germany’s exquisite achievements in music and philosophy also fostered the rise of the Third Reich and its colossal aftermath of destruction.
Martin Luther King’s most important legacy is not as a civil rights leader but as a thinker. The enduring imprint of Dr. King is that he articulated unwaveringly the philosophical rightness, the reasoned goodness, the jurisprudence of civil rights. Our lesson is to again take up the torch and recognize that we may suffer from the blindness mankind has suffered in the past. Examine our society with a fresh look and apply cold reason to correct our wrongs.
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