Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. For His Moral Ideals Rather Than His Politics

In commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Peniel E. Joseph, the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University, said in a 2014 article:

King emerges as a talented individual whose rhetorical genius at the March on Washington helped elevate an entire nation through his moral power and sheer force of will.

The March on Washington was when King delivered his famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. Joseph goes on:

Yet missing from many of the annual King celebrations is the portrait of a political revolutionary who, over time, evolved into a radical warrior for peace, justice and the eradication of poverty. During his last three years, King the “Dreamer” turned into one of the most eloquent, powerful and scathing critics of American society. King lent his moral force and power to anti-poverty crusades that questioned the economic system of capitalism and called for an end to the Vietnam War. . . . King’s powerful rage against economic exploitation and war is often overlooked when we think of him as only a race-healer.

The "moral power" of King's famous "Dream" speech in Washington was actually the moral power of the Founding Fathers resurrected. In that speech, King reminded Americans of the ideals laid down in the Declaration of Independence—the philosophic blueprint for the constitution and the new nation—and called on Americans to fully live up to those ideals. “In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check,” King said.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Yet, King's Dream was to be corrupted by an inner contradiction. In his later years, King questioned the legitimacy of capitalism and turned to what he termed "democratic socialism," a hybrid of two evil systems (democracy and socialism) that repudiates the very ideals he espoused in his speech.  In a supreme irony, King unwittingly aligned with the political ideology of America's first encounter with Democratic Socialism, the Confederate Slavocracy.* Therein lies one of the great American paradoxes—the clash between King the moral force and King the political revolutionary.

When the Founders drafted the Declaration of Independence, they laid down the radical principles that would give birth to capitalism. These 55 brilliant words—the opening lines of the second paragraph of the Declaration—sum up the essence of capitalism:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

When King reaffirmed those ideals—that all men are created equal, possessing inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness protected equally and at all times under a government of objective law rather than of men—he was really, though apparently unwittingly, affirming the foundational principles of capitalism.

Capitalism is the system based on individual rights, rights-protecting government and the only kind of equality consistent with justice—equality of individual rights before the law. Because of these principles, Capitalism is the only social system that banishes exploitation and war, because individual rights banishes aggressive or initiatory force from human relationships—particularly aggressive force by government against the people. Under capitalism, exploitation is replaced with voluntary trade to mutual benefit among individuals, a win-win in which individuals trade value-for-value and get better together. Capitalism liberates every individual to think and act on his own judgement and work to lift himself from poverty, and protects those who take up that life-affirming challenge from would-be exploiters who don’t. And under capitalism, war is replaced with peaceful coexistence among nations based on that principle of trade.

So why would King uphold the moral principles of capitalism in his most famous speech while repudiating it in his politics? It's obvious that King didn't understand capitalism or fully grasp the moral implications of the Declaration of Independence that he so eloquently honored.

He undoubtedly viewed the America of the 1960s as capitalist, when in fact what America had was a mixed economy; a mixture of economic freedom and government controls—that is to say, an economy corrupted by heavy political interference, which included the virulently anti-capitalist Jim Crow segrgation laws. America in the 1960s was just emerging from a time when large segments of blacks were legally oppressed and hence unable to enjoy “the riches of freedom and the security of justice” that is capitalism. Blacks, King failed to understand, were not victims of capitalism but of statism.

King’s legacy includes an end to state-sponsored segregation and oppression—a monumental achievement. But his democratic socialist political policies also “succeeded,” strengthening and entrenching the mixed economy in America, which he mistakenly perceived as capitalism—the result being, in turn, to reduce economic opportunities for many poor but ambitious people, including African-Americans.

To his credit, King explicitly opposed full-blown socialism, which he believed leads to communism, a system that he correctly understood "forgets that life is individual." But he wrongly believed that "Capitalism forgets that life is social," leading him to his hybrid democratic socialism. He failed to see that capitalism, by leaving individuals free to pursue their own values in the absence of physical coercion, provides the only proper moral foundation for both individual flourishing and robust benevolent social interaction. That moral foundation, rational egoism, is implicit in the Declaration of Independence, which defends the inalienable rights of every individual to pursue his own happiness.

Thus is the paradox of Martin Luther King.

Commentators like Joseph urge us to elevate his politics to at least the level of his ideals. That, of course, would be an impossible contradiction. But ideas are where the real power lies. Since ideas are the driving force of human events, Martin Luther King, despite his politics, remains one of my heroes. Standing in a line that includes John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Ayn Rand, among others, King reaffirmed America's Founding ideals at a crucial point in American history. That, to me, is his real legacy contribution to America. For that, I am grateful to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

HAPPY MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY!!

* [See Randy E. Barnett, Our Republican Constitution, Chapter 4 “How Slavery Led to a More Republican Constitution.” See George Fitzhugh, "Centralization and Socialism." See especially C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind, Epilogue, Page 359-386: Thompson documents the "common intellectual heritage" of 19th Century pro-slavery intellectuals and 20th-21st Century Progressives.]

Related Reading:

Martin Luther King: An 'Authentic American Hero'—or Not?

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Fundamental Principle of America

“I Have a Dream”: Martin Luther King Urges Consistency to Founding Principles

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal—Ayn Rand

Martin Luther King: Right On Racial Justice, Wrong On ‘Economic Justice’

Who Represented the ‘American Institution’ -- Martin Luther King or His Enemies?

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. For His Moral Ideals Rather Than His Politics

In commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Peniel E. Joseph, the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University, said in a 2014 article:

King emerges as a talented individual whose rhetorical genius at the March on Washington helped elevate an entire nation through his moral power and sheer force of will.

The March on Washington was when King delivered his famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. Joseph goes on:

Yet missing from many of the annual King celebrations is the portrait of a political revolutionary who, over time, evolved into a radical warrior for peace, justice and the eradication of poverty. During his last three years, King the “Dreamer” turned into one of the most eloquent, powerful and scathing critics of American society. King lent his moral force and power to anti-poverty crusades that questioned the economic system of capitalism and called for an end to the Vietnam War. . . . King’s powerful rage against economic exploitation and war is often overlooked when we think of him as only a race-healer.

The "moral power" of King's famous "Dream" speech in Washington was actually the moral power of the Founding Fathers resurrected. In that speech, King reminded Americans of the ideals laid down in the Declaration of Independence—the philosophic blueprint for the constitution and the new nation—and called on Americans to fully live up to those ideals. “In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check,” King said.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Yet, King's Dream was to be corrupted by an inner contradiction. In his later years, King questioned the legitimacy of capitalism and turned to what he termed "democratic socialism," a hybrid of two evil systems (democracy and socialism) that repudiates the very ideals he espoused in his speech.  In a supreme irony, King unwittingly aligned with the political ideology of America's first encounter with Democratic Socialism, the Confederate Slavocracy.* Therein lies one of the great American paradoxes—the clash between King the moral force and King the political revolutionary.

When the Founders drafted the Declaration of Independence, they laid down the radical principles that would give birth to capitalism. These 55 brilliant words—the opening lines of the second paragraph of the Declaration—sum up the essence of capitalism:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

When King reaffirmed those ideals—that all men are created equal, possessing inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness protected equally and at all times under a government of objective law rather than of men—he was really, though apparently unwittingly, affirming the foundational principles of capitalism.

Capitalism is the system based on individual rights, rights-protecting government and the only kind of equality consistent with justice—equality of individual rights before the law. Because of these principles, Capitalism is the only social system that banishes exploitation and war, because individual rights banishes aggressive or initiatory force from human relationships—particularly aggressive force by government against the people. Under capitalism, exploitation is replaced with voluntary trade to mutual benefit among individuals, a win-win in which individuals trade value-for-value and get better together. Capitalism liberates every individual to think and act on his own judgement and work to lift himself from poverty, and protects those who take up that life-affirming challenge from would-be exploiters who don’t. And under capitalism, war is replaced with peaceful coexistence among nations based on that principle of trade.

So why would King uphold the moral principles of capitalism in his most famous speech while repudiating it in his politics? It's obvious that King didn't understand capitalism or fully grasp the moral implications of the Declaration of Independence that he so eloquently honored.

He undoubtedly viewed the America of the 1960s as capitalist, when in fact what America had was a mixed economy; a mixture of economic freedom and government controls—that is to say, an economy corrupted by heavy political interference, which included the virulently anti-capitalist Jim Crow segrgation laws. America in the 1960s was just emerging from a time when large segments of blacks were legally oppressed and hence unable to enjoy “the riches of freedom and the security of justice” that is capitalism. Blacks, King failed to understand, were not victims of capitalism but of statism.

King’s legacy includes an end to state-sponsored segregation and oppression—a monumental achievement. But his democratic socialist political policies also “succeeded,” strengthening and entrenching the mixed economy in America, which he mistakenly perceived as capitalism—the result being, in turn, to reduce economic opportunities for many poor but ambitious people, including African-Americans.

To his credit, King explicitly opposed full-blown socialism, which he believed leads to communism, a system that he correctly understood "forgets that life is individual." But he wrongly believed that "Capitalism forgets that life is social," leading him to his hybrid democratic socialism. He failed to see that capitalism, by leaving individuals free to pursue their own values in the absence of physical coercion, provides the only proper moral foundation for both individual flourishing and robust benevolent social interaction. That moral foundation, rational egoism, is implicit in the Declaration of Independence, which defends the inalienable rights of every individual to pursue his own happiness.

Thus is the paradox of Martin Luther King.

Commentators like Joseph urge us to elevate his politics to at least the level of his ideals. That, of course, would be an impossible contradiction. But ideas are where the real power lies. Since ideas are the driving force of human events, Martin Luther King, despite his politics, remains one of my heroes. Standing in a line that includes John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Ayn Rand, among others, King reaffirmed America's Founding ideals at a crucial point in American history. That, to me, is his real legacy contribution to America. For that, I am grateful to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

HAPPY MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY!!

* [See Randy E. Barnett, Our Republican Constitution, Chapter 4 “How Slavery Led to a More Republican Constitution.” See George Fitzhugh, "Centralization and Socialism." See especially C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind, Epilogue, Page 359-386: Thompson documents the "common intellectual heritage" of 19th Century pro-slavery intellectuals and 20th-21st Century Progressives.]

Related Reading:

Martin Luther King: An 'Authentic American Hero'—or Not?

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Fundamental Principle of America

“I Have a Dream”: Martin Luther King Urges Consistency to Founding Principles

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal—Ayn Rand

Martin Luther King: Right On Racial Justice, Wrong On ‘Economic Justice’

Who Represented the ‘American Institution’ -- Martin Luther King or His Enemies?

Who Represented the ‘American Institution’ -- Martin Luther King or His Enemies?

In a New York Times piece, The Man Who Knew Exactly What the F.B.I. Was Doing to Martin Luther King Jr., Jonathan Eig and Jeanne Theoharis dig into a little history. I don’t take issue with the facts. I do take issue with the interpretation. Here is a key excerpt:

But historians, journalists and contemporary political leaders have largely portrayed Hoover as a kind of uncontrollable vigilante, an all too powerful and obsessive lawman, and Johnson as a genuine civil rights partner until [Martin Luther] King [Jr.]  broke with the president over the Vietnam War. In reality, as new documents reveal, Johnson was more of an antagonist to King, and a conspirator with Hoover, than he has been portrayed.

By personalizing the F.B.I.’s assault on King, Americans cling to a view of history that isolates a few bad actors who opposed the civil rights movement — including Hoover, Gov. George Wallace of Alabama and Birmingham lawman Bull Connor. They thus fail to acknowledge the institutionalized, well organized resistance to change in our society. Americans prefer a version of history where most decent people did the right thing in the end.

It’s time to move past that comfortable story and recognize the power structure that supported the F.B.I.’s campaign. Many Americans — starting with the president — thought movement activists like King posed threats to the established order and needed to be watched and controlled. Members of the press could have exposed the bureau’s campaign. And many government officials who could have stopped, curtailed or exposed the F.B.I.’s attack on King instead enabled or encouraged it.

I take issue with the use of the term "institutionalized," which I believe is misused. "Institutionalized" means "created and controlled by an established organization" or "established as a common and accepted part of a system or culture." In this context, the use of the term “institutionalized” strongly implies that resistance to King's movement for equal justice and rights for negroes (black Americans in today's common usage) is embedded in the ideological underpinnings of American law and constitution. 

But that is the opposite of the truth. Institutionally——that is, in law and philosophy—America is about universal individual rights, equality before the law, and justice. It's embedded in our Founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. In fact, it was King who fought for the American institution. Just read King’s I Have a Dream and Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address speeches, in which King gave his ringing endorsement and tribute to America’s Founding principles. Fundamentally—that is, institutionally—these principles are what America is about. It was the "members of the press" and "many government officials" who went against it. It is they, not the institution, that should be called out. In truth, they are the reactionaries. Conflating Johnson, Hoover, and the other villains under the term "institutionalized" only undermines what King fought against and for.

Has America had more than a few bad actors? Of Course. Half the country abandoned the principles of equal rights to protect slavery. A major racist political movement, Progressivism, at times claimed majority support and elected racist presidents like Woodrow Wilson and FDR, and led the drive to segregate America. Genuine Americans—individuals who actually adhere to the Founding principles—have at times, maybe most of the time, been in the minority—and I would argue, in a critical sense, still are. But political and cultural dominance is not the same as American institutionalism.

Speaking broadly, resistance to change is a common feature, not limited to the United States. But if any country embodies change more than others, it is America, which was Founded on powerful and radical individualist principles. The Civil Rights Movement is evidence of that. From the abolition of slavery to the breaking of Baseball’s “color barrier” by Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby to the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was overwhelmingly passed by some 2/3 of Democrats and 4/5 of Republicans on the heels of a massive cultural change for the better that occurred in that 1947 - 64 period. Without hyperbole or exaggeration, I would equate that period in importance with the period 1760 - 1776, when a philosophical Revolution in the American Mind led to the Declaration of Independence. Philosophical scholar Jason D. Hill called this period America’s Third Founding. And it was led by the power of Americanism.

Related Reading:

Juneteenth, the Offspring of the Fourth of July

What Do White Americans Owe Black People: Racial Justice in the Age of Post-Oppression by Jason D. Hill 

A New Textbook of Americanism — edited by Jonathan Hoenig

America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson.

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

“I Have a Dream”: Martin Luther King Urges Consistency to Founding Principles -- my article for The Objective Standard

42: The Triumph of Courage and Moral Certitude over Irrationality and Bigotry -- my article for The Objective Standard

Larry Doby, American Hero -- my article for The Objective Standard

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

Why It’s So Important to Understand What Actually ‘Made America Great’ in the First Place

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan launched a major attack on Donald Trump—but more fundamentally on Americanism. In Louis Farrakhan: America 'Became Great Enslaving Us,' So Trump Won't 'Make America Great Again', Tyler O’Neil reports for PJ Media:

On Thursday, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan called on President Donald Trump to repent for America's sins and denounced the very idea of American greatness. He addressed Trump, saying the president cannot "Make America Great Again," as his campaign slogan promised.

"Mr. President, you won't make America great again, not in our time," Farrakhan declared Thursday in a speech at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. "She became great killing Native Americans. She became great enslaving us, bringing us from Africa into America to work the cotton fields. You're not going to get that opportunity back anymore."

Farrakhan's group, the Nation of Islam, was formed in Detroit in 1930 and Farrakhan took control of it in 1977. The group started in order to "teach the downtrodden and defenseless Black people a thorough Knowledge of God and of themselves, and to put them on the road to Self-Independence with a superior culture and higher civilization than they had previously experienced."

The Nation of Islam leader called on Trump to "repent for all of the evils that America has done to us, to the peoples of the world."

Was the treatment of blacks and Native Americans consistent with America’s Founding philosophy?

A resounding NO!!

America wasn’t made “great” because of the collectivism that makes slavery and other like evils possible. America is great because America was formed on the basis of the individualist principles that led to the abolition of slavery (along with other forms of political inequality). The Declaration of Independence clearly states that

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

There is nothing unequivocal about those words. It says all men.

The principles in the Declaration of Independence directly conflicted with both slavery and the reactionary Separate-but-Equal and Jim Crow laws—a fact that both the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King and other crusaders for justice well understood. Fortunately, the Declaration won out over both of those evils, albeit after much blood was shed.

Political equality for individuals across the board, based upon the common fundamental nature of all humans as beings of reason—that’s what made America unique, and exceptional, and great—and has been an inspiration to, not an “evil” done to, the freedom-loving “peoples of the world.” Unfortunately, Donald Trump doesn’t understand that—at least not fully. So his “Make America Great Again” slogan rings hollow. Worse, Trump’s usurpation of the slogan plays into the hands of statists who reject those principles of America’s greatness. As proof, I give you Louis Farrakhan’s comments.

Related Reading:

Declaration of Independence

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

Donald Trump on Charlottesville; Robert E. Lee vs. George Washington

Will the World's Statist Past, or the Founders' Values, be America's Destiny?

Was America 'made possible by stealing Indian land and the labor of slaves?'

“I Have a Dream”: Martin Luther King Urges Consistency to Founding Principles

The Colorblind Constitution: Frederick Douglass on Race and America’s Founding -- Hannah Sternberg

[Excerpt] “The tale of Douglass’s education, escape from slavery and ascent to leadership of the abolitionist movement is familiar to any high school American history student. But less examined is the story of his intellectual transformation, from a follower of radical rejecter of the Constitution, William Lloyd Garrison, to an ardent defender of the self-evident truths embodied uniquely in America’s founding documents.”