| The fact was, that while there are always individual exceptions (there were blue-eyed blonde German conservatives who opposed Hitler), the Civil Rights Movement was almost entirely liberal or radical-not to mention heavily black. The closest conservatives came to it, as a rule, were the culturally conservative Black Muslims who criticized and attacked it, competing with it for influence in the black community.
As for conservatives today, their differences are not hard to puzzle out. The elite conservative establishment, which rules via a Gramscian "culture war," using institutional power to control the very meaning of things, does exactly that with Dr. King: it redefines them as one of their own. The non-elite fear- and rage-driven conservative fringe, which attacks everyone else as part and parcel of a depraved, all-powerful conspiracy against them, redefines King as part of that conspiracy. As Glenn Greenwald in effect argues in his new book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics (reviewed here tomorrow), the non-elite style of discourse has been adopted wholesale by conservative elites when it comes to running against Democratic Party figures.
King, however, is a little too larger-than-life for such a strategy to work against him, and thus they seek to remake him as one of their own. And they've been at it for quite a long time now. That much, the Times gets right:
Some conservatives have tried to adopt Dr. King as one of their
own, looking to his emphasis on justice, self-reliance, religious faith
and morality, and what came to be called family values. A joint lecture given by Robert Woodson and William Bennett at the Heritage Foundation in 1993 layed out this strain of thinking.
In the debates raging over affirmative action, opponents often
argued that Dr. King wanted a color-blind world, not one with
institutional preferences for anyone, white or black - to the point
that in June 1995, an essay published by the left-leaning Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting was complaining:
By virtue of a snippet from one 1963 address-a single phrase about "the
content of our character"-King is the most oft-quoted opponent of
affirmative action in America today.
Opponents of abortion also occasionally cite Dr. King as someone who they think would back their position; in 2006, the conservative Christian radio commentator Chuck Colson stretched that idea to posit that if Dr. King were alive, he would support the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. (The Lede hasn't found a linkable transcript, but there's an audio clip posted with a Media Matters essay that disagrees with Mr. Colson.)
All things considered, Carolyn Garris wrote for the Heritage Foundation in 2006: It is time for conservatives to lay claim to the legacy
of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. King was no stalwart conservative,yet his core beliefs, such as the power and necessity of faith-based association and self-government based on absolute truth and moral law,
are profoundly conservative. Modern liberalism rejects these ideas, while conservatives place them at the center of their philosophy. Despite decades of its appropriation by liberals, King's message was fundamentally conservative.
She goes on to round up some relevant quotations from Dr. King's prolific writings, as well as things leading conservatives have said about him, including President Bush, who called Dr. King "a towering
figure in the history of our country" on a visit to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington in January.
What the Times doesn't get right is what a transparent load of hokum it all is. Their slavish adherence to "balanced" he-said/she-said "journalism" makes them fundamentally incapable of reporting the truth. And the truth is that it's not just FAIR's opinion versus all these rightwing blowhard bodysnatchers. It's FAIR's facts, from that same 1995 essay that the Times just somehow overlooked:
The exploitation of King's name, the distortion of his teachings for political gain, is an ugly development. The term "affirmative action" did not come into currency until after King's death--but it was King himself, as chair of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who initiated the first successful national affirmative action campaign: "Operation Breadbasket."
In Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities, King staffers gathered data on the hiring patterns of corporations doing business in black communities, and called on companies to rectify disparities. "At present, SCLC has Operation Breadbasket functioning in some 12 cities, and the results have been remarkable," King wrote (quoted in Testament of Hope, James Washington, ed.), boasting of "800 new and upgraded jobs [and] several covenants with major industries."
King was well aware of the arguments used against affirmative action policies. As far back as 1964, he was writing in Why We Can't Wait: "Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic."
King supported affirmative action-type programs because he never confused the dream with American reality. As he put it, "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro" to compete on a just and equal basis (quoted in Let the Trumpet Sound, by Stephen Oates).
In a 1965 Playboy interview, King compared affirmative action-style policies to the GI Bill: "Within common law we have ample precedents for special compensatory programs.... And you will remember that America adopted a policy of special treatment for her millions of veterans after the war."
In King's teachings, affirmative action approaches were not "reverse discrimination" or "racial preference." King promoted affirmative action not as preference for race over race (or gender over gender), but as a preference for inclusion, for equal oportunity, for real democracy. Nor was King's integration punitive: For him, integration benefited all Americans, male and female, white and non-white alike. And contrary to Gingrich, King insisted that, along with individual efforts, collective problems require collective solutions.
Like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, King viewed affirmative action as a means to achieving a truly egalitarian and color-blind society. To destroy the means, the gradual process by which equality is achieved, destroys the dream itself. And the use of King's name in this enterprise only adds derision to destruction.
As for the rest of hokum cited by the Times, it is nothing short of preposterous. If his "emphasis on justice," made him a conservative, then why were conservatives so vehemently opposed to him? Why did they fight against him every step of the way? And if they share his "religious faith and morality", the same question arises-why did they fight against him, instead of with him?
And where, exactly, did King articulate their version of "self-reliance," which says that welfare should be reserved for likes of plantation owners like Senator James Eastland, and not for sharecroppers like Fannie Lou Hamer? Where, exactly did Dr. Martin Luther King say that? I really, really want to know.
I'm sure it must have been a key demand of the Poor People's Campaign. It just had to be, right? All those poor people marching on Washington, demanding to be cut off welfare, and calling for the abolition of Social Security. But I just...can't...seem...to...find...the...quote.
And, while we are on the subject of missing quotations, what about his supposed emphasis on "what came to be called family values"? Where, exactly did he denounce Bayard Rustin and James Baldwin as morally depraved sexual deviants with a hidden gay agenda to destroy America? And did we miss his emphasis on these words of fear and hatred that he never spoke???
Carolyn Garris is no less absurd. If King's "core beliefs, such as the power and necessity of faith-based association and self-government based on absolute truth and moral law, are profoundly conservative," then Osama bin Laden, has an even more powerful claim to the conservative mantle. Is Garris claiming bin Laden as one of her own? Because in that case, she'd be right. The elements of King's thinking that she conveniently ignores-the non-coercive parts, the respect for diversity parts, the reliance on human reason as well as divine revelation parts-none of those pesky liberal ideas intrude on or sully bin Laden's much purer committment to conservative ideals.
In short, is there a purer example of conservative projection than her cri de coeur, "Despite decades of its appropriation by liberals, King's message was fundamentally conservative"?
And why can't the Times just say so? Why is it impossible for them to report the truth? |
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