The day after Beck's rally for incohence, last weekend, he appeard with Chris Wallace, and attempted to impose a whole new set of interpretations on what he'd been up to. Early on in the clip below, he spoke of:
Reclaiming the civil rights. Meaning people of faith that look at equal justice and look at every man the same. Not the politicians. Not the parties. Not white people or black people. People of faith.
Of course, this was no more historically accurate than anything else he's ever said in his life, particularly about civil rights. First off, there were all sorts of "people of faith" opposed to civil rights--indeed, the modern religious right (post Billy James Hargis, that is) was born out of opposition to the civil rights movement. Their big "civil rights" battle was trying to preserve the tax-exempt status of the segregationist Bob Jones University. That's what side they were on. And secondly, on the other side were a lot of secular Jews like me and my family, along with everyone else. And without the politicians and the parties, it wouldn't have meant a thing, because it was about changing the laws of the land.
So, pretty much the same incoherent farrago of lies routine, just with a new set of lies.
But that's not what I wanted to focus my primary attention on. What I really wanted to focus on comees later in the clip, where he says:
The real agenda should be equal justice, an equal shot. The dream was judge a man by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. That's something that everybody can take part in.
So everybody can take part in it--including the parties and politicians who it shouldn't have anything to do with. You see what a babbling idiot he is?
But that's not my central point here. That would be how he characterizes "the real agenda", as "equal justice, an equal shot."
Well, I'm here to say that King wasn't talking about just giving people "a shot", even an equal one. He wasn't coming from a market perspective. He was coming from a visionary perspective, and that vision was what he called "The Beloved Community." If you're not familiar with the term, then there's an entire dimension of Martin Luther King's thought that you've yet to become familiar with.
I understand the term Beloved Community to mean an inclusive, interrelated society based on love, justice, compassion, responsibility, shared power and a respect for all people, places, and things-a society that radically transforms individuals and restructures institutions.
This is a classic Nurturant Parent, liberal vision that stands in stark contrast to the impoverished, Strict Father, Randian individualism that informs Beck's POV, for all his talk about Christianity (which Ayn Rand thoroughly despised.)
Strong continues:
The term "Beloved Community" can be traced back to Josiah Royce (1855-1916), the 19th century American religious philosopher. It was a part of the popular theological vocabulary of Boston University's School of Theology during the early 1950s, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a doctoral student there. Royce characterized the Beloved Community as "a spiritual or divine community capable of achieving the highest good as well as the common good."
Royce believed that "Every proposed reform, every moral deed, is to be tested by whether and to what extent it contributes to the realization of the Beloved Community...When one cannot find the 'beloved community,' she needs to take steps to create it and if there is not evidence of the existence of such a community then the rule to live by is To Act So As To Hasten Its Coming."
What could be more collectivist? More progressive? More "fascist" in the topsy-turvey world of Beck and Goldberg and Faux News?
And yet, individuals have a vital role to play:
Royce held that each individual should strive toward this goal of the Beloved Community, and that the more individuals who joined the effort, the greater the possibility of achieving it. He believed that this would lead in time to the radical transformation of individuals.
Which ties in very nicely with one of King's greatest, most important sermons, "The Drum Major Instinct", that enunciates a vision of individualism totally opposite to the selfish orientation that pervades conservative conceptions. I wrote about this back in 1995, the oldest thing I wrote on the Internet that I still know how to find a copy of, "Martin Luther King - A Different Drum Major", which begins like this:
It's fashionable today to pose the theme of personal responsibility in opposition to the continued quest for social justice. We even hear Reverend Martin Luther King quoted out of context, as if judging people by the "content of their character" was meant to endorse the idea that some of us should starve, some should go homelss, and some should shiver naked in the midst of winter.
But Dr. King didn't think that the content of our characters was something coldly quantifiable, capable of being determined by the marketplace, like the price of pork rind or pig iron. When he spoke of personal responsibility he had a much more lofty view in mind: that we are each responsible not just for ourselves, but for each other, and for our collective redemption from the sins of our past that stain us still. He did not falsely oppose the ideas of personal responsibility and commitment to social justice. Rather, he saw the commitment to social justice--rooted in the Gospels--as a means for transforming mere egotism and blind ambition into engines of individual redemption--the crowning reward of personal responsibility.
That is a vision totally at odds with Glenn Beck.
Here's Strong again:
King built on Royce's ideal, especially during the later stages of his life. He came to believe that in addition to the radical transformation of individuals, there was a need for a "deep restructuring of institutions if the Beloved Community was to be realized." An organizing principle for King's thinking and work, this ideal was deeply rooted in two primarily principles:
The American dream of equality and justice for all
The biblical vision of the kingdom of God
Dr. King viewed all life as interrelated. He frequently remarked, "All men [women] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." He came to believe that what affects one person directly affects everyone indirectly, and to treat even a single person unjustly is an affront to all people everywhere.
There's more to Strong's essay, and I encourage you to read the whole thing. But this much should thoroughly suffice to show you haw radically different King's vision was as opposed to Becks. No matter how much Beck twists and turns and squiggles and squirms there is simply nothing in common between the two.
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