08:08 AM 1/14/2012, Carrol Cox wrote:
>Ted Morgan traces the whole affair. NYT viciously attacked King when he
>joined the core anti-war position that it was a deliberate crime. That
>marked the birth of the "Good King" vs the 'Bad King." That is all part of
>burying the threat of the '60s.
>
>Carrol
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
>On Behalf Of Jim Farmelant
>Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2012 6:54 AM
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Happy Birthday, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
>
>
>
>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.
>
>N
>
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