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MLK's national holiday was approaching. This fuss about the word "negro" came up in the nation's capitol -- and the media. We got to thinking about those days, and compared them to these days. Curious as to what the good Rev might think of the observations presented here, we sent them to a member of the King family, and were told "... this would make a good blog piece" and received their blessings. LL/OrMag

America, the Confusing

Monday, January 11, 2010 -- The current situation is a tangle. You wish to send support to the United Negro College Fund, and can't tell anybody about it (Hell, ask where to send the money !!), unless you are one. Why? Because, if you aren't one, it is racist to speak the organization's name. The problem reaches all the way to our national capitol, but with a twist. A Republican uses the term "negro" and he is driven from the U.S. Senate. Years later, a Senate Democrat does the same thing, and, in a barrage of defense from white liberals, the ACLU, the Congressional Black Caucus and the President of the United States, is instantly forgiven.

Why?

The present-day Democrat Pary -- which is dominated by progressives (liberals) is the problem, here. Regardless of your skin color, to be a respected member of it -- and so be vaccinated against the labyrinthine PC speech threat -- you have to ignore the two most basic facts relating to the subject of race in American history.

These two most important facts have to do with the two most important figures in this discussion: a Republican named Abraham Lincoln and a Democrat named Martin Luther King, Jr. The first was a lifelong Christian and the second was a lifelong Christian and a Christian minister. That's right, the end of slavery, and the social justice revolution that began in the Sixties, were both directly tied to Christianity. Blacks were freed of their slavery chains and later released from the bondage of Jim Crow -- by leaders whose common denominator was Christianity. This is why many of us wonder why "modern" Democrats and other liberals, such as the old-line media, consider the most evil citizens of this nation to be what they refer to as "right-wing Christians."

You know, people who believe in God, the Constitution and the right to own guns. Tea Party types.

George Washington was a right-wing Christian. He had friends who attended a tea party, and who owned a gun. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were written by right-wing Christians who went to tea parties and owned guns. Abraham Lincoln would have been at that Boston tea party if he had lived in those times. He was a right-wing Christian who owned a gun, and who during his life figured out that the fundamentals in the Constitution did not support slavery. That's right, he realized that the slave-owning founding fathers had accidentally outlawed the very slavery that some of them -- and almost every nation on Earth, including those in Africa at the time -- practiced!!

Of all the famous figures in our nation's history who created freedom or subsequently expanded it to cover every citizen, only one wasn't a right-wing, tea-party-attending Christian. That was Martin Luther King, Jr. He was just a Christian. His only connection to right-wing Christians was by way of using the legal principles created and enhanced by right-wing Christians as a baseball bat to put an end to the legislative and cultural wrongs that in his day abused the American Dream for whole classes of the nation's population. Yet, he was an odd non-right-winger. In his most famous speech, his "I Have a Dream" speech, he uttered some right-wing, tea-party-like words. He said he longed for the day that Americans would be judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin.

That, lads and lassies, is an absolutely pure right-wing statement. Why? Because it demands the removal of affirmative action from all aspects of American life. It requires that there be no penalties which are purely based on somebody's race. (White is a "race." Affirmative actions, like the points added to black youth S.A.T. scores in California to increase their college entrance numbers in the prestigious schools, penalizes people for being white. Martin Luther King, Jr. hated race-based penalties. Two wrongs don't make a right.)

All of which brings us back to why a Republican was rejected by the U.S. Senate for uttering the word "negro" and a Democrat who did the same thing wasn't shouted out of the building. The founding fathers, Lincoln and his fans and all right-wing Christians alive today believed and believe in the fundamentals expressed in the U.S. Constitution. They believed and believe in a set of specific, fundamental ideas contained within their faith and their primary founding legal document. With his words in that speech, and perhaps totally unintentionally, the Christian minister, Martin Luther King, Jr. demonstrated that he believed in those principles, too.

This means that people who display rage at one person and forgive another person -- both of whom did exactly the same thing -- by definition must lack principles. It means their motivation is based on something else. My guess is that their actions are based in self-interest. In this case, a willingness to say anything which serves the immediate purpose of maintaining their political power. It is common to hear somebody say that all politicians are self-serving jerks. Full time liars. That's not true. As you have read, here, there are two kinds of politicians. The first one is like Abe Lincoln.

(Democrats are the historic font of race freedom in America? Read this: Ken's "Congress" )

(This piece was written by Oregon Magazine's co-publisher, Larry Leonard)