DEAR LIBS: MLK Jr. Was Allegedly A Serial Adulterer & An Abuser Who Thought Rape Was Funny – Should We Tear Down His Statues?
June 1, 2019 in News by RBN Staff
Source: clashdaily.com
by Wes Walker
Here’s the dilemma created when we demand moral ‘perfection’ from our historical leaders and demonize them when we find out they have ‘feet of clay’.
That ‘feet of clay’ reference is Biblical, historical, and literary. If you’re a Leftist, or have been failed by public school or hipster pastors, you may have to look it up.
And that’s exactly the point.
There was a time when we could see the public achievements of someone who was a historical ‘great’, and assess those quite independently of their personal flaws and failings.
Washington, for example, helped establish America and we would not be the nation we are today were it not for him. That is objectively true despite some obvious stains on his record — most obviously, slavery.
Washington, for example, helped establish America and we would not be the nation we are today were it not for him. That is objectively true despite some obvious stains on his record — most obviously, slavery.
Sanger’s eugenics project carried its own racial preoccupation. In a letter of Dec. 10, 1939, to Clarence Gamble (cited here), she explains the nature of her organization’s outreach to the African-American community: “The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” In her autobiography she proudly recounts her address to the women of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, N.J., in 1926.
Source: American Magazine
You could go on and on down the list. In fact, that was the whole point of conflict with the series of statues being toppled or removed in recent years, including the flashpoint that triggered those now-infamous events in Charlottesville.
That takes us to today.
MLK is a National hero. Why? because he fought — and literally paid with his life — in an effort to secure equal treatment of people regardless of their racial background.
He is remembered with a national holiday. Monuments have been raised in his honor. His ‘I have a dream speech’ is counted among some of the greatest speeches ever delivered in the English language. The culture changed — for the better — because of the sacrifices he made for a cause he believed in.
