It's my belief that it's no longer in doubt: Barack Obama is not a progressive, even a moderate or cautious one. On virtually every issue imaginable, we've seen nearly a year of bending over backwards to mollify conservative and reactionary forces-with a singular lack of success-while repeatedly rebuffing or attacking progressives, even when all they are doing is trying to support his agenda,
Behind all the various different examples one could point to, I believe that there's a common thread of underlying continuity and accommodation with the Reagan/Bush/Gingrich/Bush era ideology, rather than fundamental change. Put simply, as revealed during the campaign, at a fundamental level Barack Obama believes that Reagan's criticism of the New Deal is true. Which is why he is aligned with conservadems who want to gut Social Security and Medicare. He also believes that Reagan's style of blind, unquestioning, authoritarian patriotism is not just legitimate, but superior to the progressive, democratic-republican alternative that is actually founded on living out the political philosophy on which our nation was founded.
All that is quite a mouthful, but what it comes down to is that Obama does not believe in the critical/prophetic patriotism professed by Martin Luther King, and carried on, however imperfectly, by his own long-time minister Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The incidents used to drive a wedge between the two were actually superficial to their underlying differences. Obama is, above all, a symbol of black assimilation. After centuries of always being on the bottom, trampled underfoot by any recent arrival, with Obama's ascension to the Oval Office, black America could finally say it had arrived , it had been integrated into America's polity at the highest level.
On The Flip: Martin Luther King had never been an apostle of mere integration...
But Martin Luther King had never been an apostle of mere integration, of bringing blacks into the mainstream of sick society that had rejected them brutally, thoughtlessly and without compassion since the day of their first appearance. When he co-founded the the Southern Christian Leadeship Conference, it was not under the motto of integration of blacks into white America, but of transformation of all America-"To save the soul of America." Indeed, in his prophetic speech, "Beyond Vietnam-A Time To Break Silence", King explained:
For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath --
America will be!
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
One can certainly understand why a presidential candidate might not want to lead with such a radical perspective. But Obama has done much, much more than not lead with this perspective, he has actively repudiated it--as he did in his speech on race during the campaign, when he misrepresented Reverend Wright as not seeing the progress America had made, simply because he continued to point out the progress not yet made. That fact that Obama sees this difference in emphasis in either/or terms puts him squarely on the side of conservatives since time immemorial who have always misrepresented progressives in like manner, portraying any objection to present circumstances as "negative," even "nihilistic," "anti-social," "unpatriotic," even "irreligious."
When Obama ran for President he clearly stated that he was not against all wars--just dumb ones. But as examples of wars he was not against he chose WWII and the Civil War, examples that long-time pacifist Albert Einstein could agree with, along with most of those who joined with Martin Luther King. (Though not, one should note, Bayard Rustin.) Both WWII and the Civil War were largely fought over issues of fundamental human rights, and so presented almost unique circumstances. Thus, when Obama cited them, he set off no alarm bells for progressives. Likewise, when he made noises about Afghanistan, they were readily explained away--he needed to "talk tough," or it was simply a rhetorical trope, a way of criticizing the Iraq War without seeming in full retreat.
But the truth is, there is really very of Martin Luther King in Barack Obama. And his forthcoming announcement of escalating the war in Afghanistan is yet another way in which he makes that "perfectly clear," as one of America's greatest war criminals liked to say. Now that he has chosen his very own Vietnam, will the true heir of Dr.Martin Luther King please stand up?
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