KING DEDICATION TODAY – AT 11:08 A.M. ET:  The Martin Luther King Jr. memorial will be formally dedicated today.  I recall King quite well.  Despite his personal flaws, and some political opinions that were too far left, he was one of the better civil rights leaders, and it is appropriate to have a monument to him.

At the same time, the memorial itself is troubling.  The statue of king is disgraceful, making him look like some Communist-era apparatchik standing in front of a government bureau.  And the choice of a sculptor from Communist China, a dictatorship, is equally troubling.  The sculptor should have been American, reflecting American values and ideals.  Reportedly, the sculptor brought with him a number of laborers who were housed in a local hotel, under orders. 

Sadly, the civil rights movement, which was needed, was riddled with hard leftists, a fact whose implications have never been confronted.  Paul Robeson, a great artist, was also a dedicated Communist and front man for the Soviet Union.  Today, Harry Belafonte fronts for Castro.   Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, past and present, like Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee, have clear affiliations with dictatorships.

I could never understand the failure to comprehend the contradiction between calling for freedom on the one hand, and backing enslavers on the other.  The press, naturally, has never confronted the issue.

We wish the memorializers well.  I wonder what King would have thought, though, about the current state of his movement.  It seems today to often be more of an employment agency for activists than an effective device to raise up a people.  Eric Hoffer, the famous longshoreman philosopher, once said that all movements become businesses, then they become rackets.  There are still some final organizations and individuals working on behalf of African Americans, and Herman Cain is one of them.  But the businessmen and racketeers are at the gates, and some have gotten through.

October 16, 2011