Dr. King is a perfect example of what this country does to the memories of radicals once they have been safely dead a while. And he is not the only one that this happened to. One thinks of Thomas Paine. Nowadays, American school children are taught that Paine was a patriot and one of the American Founders. They are taught little or nothing about the rest of Paine's career (he was probably one of the first international revolutionaries) or about the substance of his ideas on both politics and on religion. Back in the 19th century when people's memories of him were much fresher, he was specifically excluded from the pantheon of great American heroes. After all, he was a participant not only in the American Revolution but also in the French Revolution. And before he had went to France, he had narrowly escaped arrest in England because Pitt's government feared him as an agitator for revolution there too.
And Paine had also been outspoken critic of organized religion. While many of the US Founders had been quietly rationalist deists, Paine went much further, by writing a book, The Age of Reason, that was intended to be readable for ordinary working people - an unforgivable crime in many people's eyes, including old friends like George Washington. Even in the early 20th century there were still people who refused to forgive him, like Teddy Roosevelt who called him a "dirty little atheist."
In the case of Dr. King, the same process of sanctification with the stripping of his memory of all of its radical content (in other words all of its real content) has occurred at warp speed. What took more than a century to occur in regards to Paine, took less than a couple of decades to occur with Dr. King.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math
---------- Original Message ---------- From: Mitchel Cohen <mitchelcohen at mindspring.com> To: mitchelcohen at mindspring.com Subject: [lbo-talk] Happy Birthday, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2012 06:13:25 -0500
http://www.mitchelcohen.com/?p=2029
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
January 15, 2012 would be Dr. King's 83rd birthday. The airwaves are filled with timid and nostalgic tributes to the great man. Except for <http://www.wbai.org>WBAI and other non-commercial stations, only Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech �- and even there but a tiny snippet of it -� makes it onto the airwaves.
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