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MLK would’ve protested against Obama
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, on ABC:
If Martin Luther King, Jr., were alive, he would march on this White House because he would say, “Don’t escalate the war in Afghanistan. Get on the side of working people, because if you don’t, you’re going to undermine the reform agenda and the possibilities of a great presidency.”
What next? Glenn Beck telling us MLK would be a Tea Partier?
Cross-posted at Conventional Folly
12 Responses to “MLK would’ve protested against Obama”
“What next? Glenn Beck telling us MLK would be a Tea Partier?”
No analogy on the Right applies. The point is that the far Left (the “progressive” and radical crowd) is unhappy with Obama and the Dems.
I heard more example of this on the Thom Hartmann show about an hour ago. Far left callers are saying that the vote in Massachusetts is happening because the people are, in addition to being angry with the Republicans (lie #1) that the people in great numbers are angry at “corporatist” or otherwise right-wing-in-large-numbers Democrats (lie #2, even more laughable, actually, given the leftist acts by the Dems are what the public is actually angry about).
Yep, the angry at the GOP and at the Dems for being like the GOP — so that's why they're voting GOP. Right.
(This is the same show with the same host with the same people calling in who says that the “racist, oppressive” society calling the looters in Haiti “looters” are racist and oppressive — the correct term for them and their acts should be “scavengers” and “scavenging.” Yep, for “human needs,” like rum.)
Katerina van Heuval is one of the ones who likes to describe Tea Partiers with a sexual term on television so who cares what the little pervert thinks?
The right has been claiming that MLK was a Republican for years. Here's just one example. Nevermind that he clearly wasn't. He denounced Barry Goldwater for supporting racism, remember.
Sample quote:”There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”
DLS, you give me no choice. Here's your penance: http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=32785
True, Spence. Especially that second commenter representing the people on Hartmann's program and such:
“We voted for Obama because of his magic wand and pixie dust. Where the hell is it?”
David, I generally think it's a bad idea to speculate on what someone who has been dead for over 40 years would think about a current foreign policy. Which is to say that I think Katrina van den Heuvel's comment was foolish — but because it's an unprovable rhetorical tactic that really adds nothing meaningful to a discussion about Afghanistan, not because I think that MLK would *not* have opposed escalating the war in Afghanistan.
Why do you think it's so unlikely that he would have opposed escalating the war in Afghanistan?
Yes MLK would have protested and with Reverend Wright at his side.
It is fascinating in my life time, in front of my own eyes the degree to which MLK's– activist, radical, peaceful work is transformed and nearly everyone celebrates him not as who he was and for what he said in the entirety of all that he said, but as a fading icon, a watermark. People who inhabit the mythical center would have deeply rejected him long ago, now adopts him as their own for political expediency. MLK, I read recently, used to comment that his celebrated “I have a dream speech” had been so misappropriated as to become a “nightmare” to him.
MLK was firmly against the Vietnam war. His civil disobedience and nonviolence as practiced like Gandhi would have probably put him against Afghanistan…
LOL DLS
Don't you see snark when you read it? With your snark and trolling, I would expect better..
MLK was only 39 yrs old when America lost him. He would've turned 80 this week if he were alive today. It would've been fascinating to know how he would've grappled with all of the challenges that America has faced since his assassination.
It certainly wouldn't have been surprising if King opposed sending additional troops to Afghanistan. Most Democrats are against it. What's more amusing is the suggestion that King would've led been another great march on Washington to protest both the surge and Obama's alleged sell-out of the working class.
My post was also a comment on the blithe confidence with which Vanden Heuvel channeled MLK to support her pet agenda. The presumptuousness was amazing. But for Vanden Heuvel, hardly uncharacteristic.
I don't read The Nation, or Katrina vandenHeuvel, that much anymore (I used to when I was married and my husband had a print subscription) so I don't really know what she's up to these days. However, I do agree that it's presumptuous for her to assume knowledge of what MLK would do or say on contemporary issues, no matter what they are. I mean, I think we can safely guesstimate in broad lines (MLK believed in nonviolent solutions, *and* he opposed the Vietnam war during his lifetime, so I do think he would have opposed escalating the war in Afghanistan) but beyond that, when you get to contemporary issues that cannot be directly referenced to stands he took in his lifetime, I think you're on dangerous ground if you ascribe possible positions on current issues to him based on what he supported 40 years ago.
Also, as a practical matter, it's silly and pointless. Even if MLK “would have” supported this or that, or opposed this or that, so what? He's been dead for four decades!
I'm not sure Kathy, people resurrect and even fashion themselves after the dead. These people become larger than life, models for others to follow in their footsteps. Presidents look at portraits of dead presidents and ask –What would you do?. So I don't think it such an unusual thing to do.
People like to celebrate MLK for his non violence and for is work in civil rights. But, just before he was assassinated, he realized (as it has been written about) that social and civil justice was predicated on economic justice, and against the advice of many around him (he was increasingly receiving death threats) he turned to denounce the inequity of the financial system (capitalism), to denounce and call out the devils in our economic system. It is likely that which led to his assassination.