How Fares The Dream?

nytimes.com:

When we observe Martin Luther King's Birthday, we have something very real to celebrate: the civil rights movement was one of America's finest hours, and it made us a nation truer to its own ideals. Yet if King could see America now, I believe that he would be disappointed, and feel that his work was nowhere near done.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

 

 

Comments

[Hugebrass]

10:18 AM on 01/19/2012

You can simply add this latest blather from Krugman to the long list of other things he's been wrong about over the years.

[Kai-HK]

04:15 AM on 01/18/2012

MLK would be disappointed….by all the systemic and institutionalized discrimination forced on businesses and schools through quotas and other reverse discrimination measures that benefit one color over others. He would not like to see companies be FORCED to hire or not hire people based on color, and the same with schools.

How disappointing.

This is not the Dream, this is his Nightmare!

Kai

[Andrew Harvey]

09:28 PM on 01/17/2012

I think Dr. King would be disappointed to see all this endless bickering about the 1%/53%/99%....
As a man of faith, I doubt he would have sunk to the level of being so materialistic and envious about who makes more money than so and so.

That's what happens to you when you lack a belief in a higher power. Everything then becomes a never ending story about what you didn't get, who has the bigger pay check, who drives the nicer car, who takes the better vacations, and work no longer has meaning in and of itself.

[Kai-HK]

04:18 AM on 01/18/2012

Agreed! OWS is a hate group, no different than any group that makes broad generalizations about a group of people based on the actions of a few. Replace '1%' with 'black people' and and the intent is the same hate-group logic used by all hate groups, Nazis, KKK, OWS, etc.

[quadsfather]

09:15 PM on 01/17/2012

He would have not let the serfdom and destruction of any people just to harvest their votes let alone African Americans!

[ChangeAgent007]

03:41 PM on 01/17/2012

http://www.examiner.com/civil-rights-in-national/occupy-the-dream-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-s-birthday-how-far-have-we-come

I was wondering the same thing.

[John Derrick]

11:04 AM on 01/17/2012

MLK was not in favor of welfare because it incites complacency of the poor and minorities yet Obama has contributed more to welfare than any other President before him. The long-extended unemployment has served nothing but to increase the number of people on welfare, and this is exactly what he wants. Big government serves itself by slowly drawing it's citizens into complacency....and it's working. If folks don't open their eyes and see the truth; they will be voting for the re-election of their own demise. In order to re-take our Country; we must shrink government and put it back in it's place....UNDER the rule of We The People.

[Kai-HK]

04:20 AM on 01/18/2012

Agreed.

"The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what the harshest racism couldn't do. And that is to destroy the black family."
~Professor Walter Williams

[DSciarrino]

11:02 AM on 01/17/2012

The class system we fought against starting in 1776 has returned without a shot being fired. A civil war we fought and won starting in 1860 promising equality for all has been ceded to confederate thought. A wold war we fought and won against fascism seems to be going in favor of the corporate class that was the power center of the Nazi war machine. Why is it the people of the U.S. lose every time the government wins a war?

[an seanchus mor]

11:19 AM on 01/17/2012

good question, the corporatism one is the most troubling though because it is a product of the negation of the first two.

[PROGRESSISGOOD]

11:01 AM on 01/17/2012

I disagreed with MLK and the civil rights movement in the 60's because it focused almost exclusively on the problems of the black man in America (although I do admit the racist segregation laws had to be struck down first). I believe that focus alienated the natural constituency of poor whites who should have been part of MLK's movement. Dr. King's later efforts in the area of economic justice could have been his greatest contribution to America if he could have organized the poor whites in America to his cause along with the poor blacks.

Since his death we have had no leaders who will speak out about economic injustice. We need to revitalize the movement for an economic bill of rights put forth by FDR just before his death and later championed by MLK in his "I have a Dream" speech.

Economic justice is the foundation for all other rights. Without economic justice we have nothing.

[EndRacismNow]

04:09 PM on 01/17/2012

The problem is what exactly does 'economic justice' mean? Communists used that same rhetoric in countries like Russia and all it did was cause the starvation of millions. The Bolsheviks simply replaced the bourgeoisie as the oppressers and made life worse in the process.

[Karelh]

10:03 AM on 01/17/2012

He's not the only one that's disappointed.

[shiloinns]

10:03 AM on 01/17/2012

Here is the solution to fix our sick economy:The "One - Year Mortgage Holiday" 9 Point Economic Recovery & Jobs Plan, as fully detailed at www.saveoureconomy.com is the only legitimate economic stimulus plan designed to actually solve the current housing, credit, banking, financial crises, that will jump start our economy, create millions of new jobs, stimulate growth and generate long term economic prosperity.

The #1 key element of the plan, the "silver bullet", is an ingenious "One - Year Mortgage Holiday" for every home owner & business in America, so that for 12 months, you do not have to make a monthly mortgage payment. All Renters of apartments, retail & office space will also get a 38% rebate on their rent. Consequently Main Street, that has already spent & wasted Trillions bailing out Wall Street and received nothing in return, since credit markets are still frozen, foreclosures, unemployment and bankruptcies are still rising, would then be able to have a well deserved one year "Time Out", from having to make a mortgage payment. So a 25 year mortgage simply becomes a 26 year mortgage. All mortgage bank lenders, would still be paid a monthly average interest rate of 6% on all mortgage debt in the country. This would allow consumers, all home owners, renters and businesses to decide for themselves how best to spend, save & invest their own money each month, that would inject approximately $80 billion monthly back into the economy.

[Rags2Rags]

09:11 AM on 01/17/2012

A good read regarding Dr. King's views and translating them into today's politics:

http://hillbuzz.org/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-was-a-republican-and-hed-be-a-pro-life-social-conservative-if-he-was-alive-today-37610

[JScott]

08:50 AM on 01/17/2012

Reaganomics overtook racism.

[nomoredead]

08:34 AM on 01/17/2012

" With unemployme­­­nt at 9 to 17 percent, depending on what you measure, there are about 25 million people who need jobs or more hours in the jobs they have. Deteriorat­­­ing infrastruc­­­ture in the United States needs over $2 trillion in investment­­­s over the next decade. US poverty rates are at record levels. There are about 50 million people without health insurance. We’re laying off tens of thousands of teachers.
Austerity is needed to transfer the last remnants of middle class “wealth” to the elites. They have already transferre­­­d our home equity wealth, our 401k, part of pensions, savings wealth, and any wealth derived by labor to the top 1 percent. They did this by the housing and stock market engineered bubbles (still on going) and the sending of our jobs overseas. All that left of any value for the middle class is the social safety net, namely our earned SS benefits and paid for Medicare benefits, and that is being transferre­­­d to the top with the national emergency “austerity­­­.”"

[AbeMartin]

08:52 AM on 01/17/2012

Thank goodness we still have the 2012 Superbowl and the beginning of the Major League Baseball season before us so we can dissociate temporarily from the economic woes. Oh, yeah. And lots of cheap beer.

[stape45]

06:25 AM on 01/17/2012

Any true patriot would be disappointed.

[iam99]

04:04 AM on 01/17/2012

The great leaders in history would hang their heads in shame with what the leaders of today have done to our nation's People.