On the official Martin Luther King holiday, one should celebrate the man’s civil rights legacy. Even those who continue to oppose equality for all persons in this country will dutifully, perhaps grudgingly, recite today from King’s “Dream” speech. Count the times today people quote the line about people in this country, one day, being judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character.
If only. There are quite a few among us who have much to fear from being judged by the content of theirs. Gore Vidal wrote in Esquire in July 1961, Neal Gabler observed, that a new movement was brewing in America. Not for promoting equality, but for promoting sociopathy and calling it character.
Ayn Rand, Vidal saw, was becoming the guiding spirit of conservatism even as Black people sought for the first time since their ancestors arrived on these shores in chains to claim the full blessings of liberty that our founding documents promised and that King’s movement demanded.
Rand, Vidal wrote, “has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who hate the ‘welfare state,’ who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts.” Vidal could not possibly have seen at the time just how far the Rand cult would spread, Gabler lamented in 2016 ahead of the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as president.
Gabler wrote:
To identify what’s wrong with conservatism and Republicanism — and now with so much of America as we are about to enter the Trump era — you don’t need high-blown theories or deep sociological analysis or surveys. The answer is as simple as it is sad: There is no kindness in them.
“The transformation and corruption of America’s moral values didn’t happen in the shadows. It happened in plain sight,” Gabler wrote. A few short years later, the country shambles towards autocracy in plain sight. Democracy’s enemies wrap themselves in the flag, drape themselves in red, white, and blue, and engage in medieval combat with police while professing their love of country and the rule of law. It is Black people, Black people, they cry, who are the real racists.
Today, with hands over their hard hearts, they will pledge allegiance to the ideal of liberty and justice for all. As they perform patriotism, let us recall what else King said before being assassinated for upsetting white supremacists.
Several sets of quotes are floating about, but Leonard Pitts provides a pithy few less likely to be heard at today’s ceremonies:
“Something is wrong with capitalism. Maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. We must develop programs that will drive the nation to the realization of the need for a guaranteed annual income.”
“A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.”
“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a … mass effort to re-educate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”
“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting.”
“This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.”
“For the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country even today is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists.”
Pitts finishes his offering with one of the last lines King spoke the night before his death in Memphis, “All we say to America is: be true to what you said on paper.”