You forgot about the pro-slavery guy hitting the Massachusetts guy with a metal tipped cane on the Senate floor until he was a bloody pulp. That’s basically the scene now in Congress. Except Harry Reid is handing the pro-slavery guy a new cane every time one breaks on the Massachusetts’ guy’s noggin.

What I love is that racists now have to do the fake love for Martin Luther King, Jr. because his birthday is now enshrined as a national holiday along with … Lincoln. That’s got to smart. Now we need an American Indian leader to be the triumvirate with Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln. My sentiments are with Pometacom, King Philip, of the Wampanoag of Massachusetts. His father, Massasoit, did the Jesus thing and kept the Pilgrims from starving to death. But equally hefty arguments could be made for many American Indian leaders to have the Third National Holiday named on their behalf.

Our country desperately needs a national holiday to recognize American Indians.

Harry Jackson has what Pastor Joseph Swank might call a “full-toothed smile”

Actually “no” and “no.”

You’ve blogged eloquently and effectively about how empty the right’s attempt to coopt MLK is. But any attempt by this crop of Democrats to coopt King is just as empty.

Read, for example, King’s famous April 1967 speech announcing his opposition to Vietnam.

Here’s where I think Clinton would firmly disagree with Obama, Clinton, and Edwards:

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisors” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

King would recognize that all of this years presidential candidates from both major parties support contemporary versions of the militarist status quo against which King spoke. Edwards, Obama, and Clinton barely oppose the current war in Iraq, let alone question the policies and values that underlie it (and underlay the Vietnam War). King understood that Vietnam was not an unfortunate accident, but an expression of deep currents in American foreign policy. We are poorer for having no comparably prominent voices today making a similar case about the Iraq War.

Yikes…I need to do a better job of proofreading….

This…

Here’s where I think Clinton would firmly disagree with Obama, Clinton, and Edwards

Was supposed to say this:

Here’s where I think King would firmly disagree with Obama, Clinton, and Edwards

Why do they bother? It’s not as if they’d choose King under any circumstances.

Why do they bother? It’s not as if they’d choose King under any circumstances.

Except, perhaps, to shine their shoes or porter their passenger trains.

Incontinentia Buttocks — I think part of the appeal of Obama is that he just might understand what King was saying and want to do something about it. He wouldn’t be able to say that and win even the Dem nomination, of course, but, just maybe . . .

And if you accept that hypothesis for the moment, some of his Repblican-seeming statements could be seen as part of the overall misdirection he needs to engage in to get elected.

I think Hillary wants to do good, but she is clearly in the thrall of “the system” as it exists.

I don’t trust Edwards’s conversion at all.

Invigilator,

All three of these candidates are completely in thrall of the system (you can say “they have to be or they couldn’t win” but I think that kind of defeatism is just a self-fulfilling prophecy, though my guess is that it’s the way a lot of progressive Democrats sleep at night).

Does Obama have a secret plan to reform American foreign policy? Anything is possible, but a quick look at Obama’s foreign policy team suggests otherwise. Obama’s not talking to anyone who’s interested in reforming the system. Obama’s foreign policy team largely consists of hawkish retreads from earlier Democratic administrations: Zbigniew Brzezinski (who, despite current Hollywood fairytales, is as responsible as anyone for bringing us the mujahadeen and Osama bin Laden), Anthony Lake, Susan Rice, Richard Danzig, and so forth. These are not reformers.

On the other hand, for those looking for identifying the least evil among the remaining Democratic candidates, there’s a good case to be made for Obama. Edwards’ and Clinton’s foreign policy advisers and records are even worse than Obama’s. Stephen Zunes has a good comparison over on CommonDreams.

a group of black conservatives ran a radio and television commercial in DC, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania which stated that Dr. King was a Republican. Even though their assertion was based in fact, the ads were seen as divisive, pieces of propaganda. To my surprise many black civil rights leaders got upset at the assertion that King had Republican roots. They felt that even if King were a Republican at one point in his life, this would [not] imply his approval of the current agenda of the party.

It wasn’t just black civil rights leaders, it was everyone who had paid attention in class and King’s relatives who I’m going to guess knew a bit more about the man than a bunch of dipshits in DC. However, I shouldn’t be surprised he’s trying to make this a matter of modern day uppity Negroes (civil rights leaders) v. nice coloured folks (black Republicans), because otherwise, who cares?

But let’s take his last sentence (which I’ve corrected since proofreading is a sin in WingerWorld) because it shows why attempts to make Dr. King “One of us,” make Der LœdedHösen’s Big Book of Nanny Nanny Boo-Boo seem reasonable.

Simply put, the author has to ignore everything Dr. King said and streeeetch to find some point where what Dr. King fought and died for seems to touch what the modern day Republican party wants us all to die for and even then he FAILS.

If King were around today he’d be labeled a secularist, possibly a terrorist and certainly a raving radical by the very people who are now trying to make him one of them because just as they’ve ruined the words “Conservative” and “Republican,” “Christian” now means a bigoted loudmouth who wants you to recite the 10 Commandments while he snorts meth off a hooker’s ass. Alternately, you’d have to argue that he’d ignore everything else the Republican party now stands for (endless war, Constitutional and human rights violations and greater economic inequality) and decide “Well, they say they’re Christians, so I guess I’ll go with them.”

Sure. And Johan could have been a Rhodes Scholar but he was too modest.

Another quick answer might be to paraphrase Lincoln’s question about God — the question ought not be about whether MLK Jr. would be on your side, but rather if you would be on his.

O/T, but I wonder if MLK Jr. would endorse these guys? I’m thinking probably not, but I’m sure a dedicated group of principled conservatives could reconvinculate me:

Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told

Ian Traynor in Brussels | Tuesday January 22, 2008

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the “imminent” spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west’s most senior military officers and strategists.

Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a “grand strategy” to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a “first strike” nuclear option remains an “indispensable instrument” since there is “simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world”.

The authors [include] General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and Nato’s ex-supreme commander in Europe, General Klaus Naumann, Germany’s former top soldier and ex-chairman of Nato’s military committee, General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff, and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defence staff in the UK…

But wouldn’t it have been easier to have “occupied” Iraq after a nuclear first strike? Great American patriot conservatives know that risking a worldwide nuclear war is no reason to avoid manly policies.

What does it matter who King would vote for? According to ol’ Dinesh D’Souza, he was just a poor runner-up to the REAL greatest African American ever, Booker T. Washington!

Stupid non-bucket-lowering modern Negroes …

I have no doubt that MLK would vote for the nominee of the party that has openly and blatantly done everything it could do in the past 3 or 4 elections to suppress black voting and disenfranchise black voters.

King’s son endorsed Edwards. But I guess MLK III doesn’t have the personal connection and intimate knowledge of MLK Jr. that Harry Jackson does.

I have no doubt that MLK would vote for the nominee of the party that has openly and blatantly done everything it could do in the past 3 or 4 elections to suppress black voting and disenfranchise black voters.

Of course. That’s what the Selma-to-Montgomery March was all about.

The little fundie grade school that I went to had a series of cartoons running in all our textbooks that were meant to teach moral lessons. It was like goofus and gallant but without goofus.

Anyway, the token black character was named “Booker” after Booker T. Boy was he passive. He had a real burden for his people though. Minorities have two duties in life, you see:

1) Act just like white people (which includes not complaining about not being white)
2) Get other melanin-enhanced people to do the same.

Sing it Incontinentia Buttocks!!!

Repeal the death tax. Also, liberals are fascists.

The answer is obvious: MLK would vote for Romney because he marched with his dad!

El Cid: Maybe there’s a reason all those guys advocating first-strike nukes are all out of their old jobs.

Jackson:

King would be wise enough to realize that a new unity based on faith, which overrides race and culture, may be the new social glue needed in America.

Here is lots of new blue goo now. New goo. Blue goo. Gooey. Gooey. Blue goo. New goo. Gluey. Gluey.

King would be wise enough to realize that a new unity based on faith, which overrides race and culture, may be the new social glue needed in America.

Specifically, the Muslim faith.

Whom. Goddammit, it’s whom. What, do these asshats make a pact or something? “Let’s soak our bug-eyed-crazy ideas in buckets of grammatical nonsense to keep the reality-basers too busy to thwart us”? Well, it’s working. I have a constant headache to go with my soul-ache.

Here is lots of new blue goo now. New goo. Blue goo. Gooey. Gooey. Blue goo. New goo. Gluey. Gluey.

Ah, thanks, J—. Now Jackson’s argument makes sense. Um, for America. It makes sense for America!

Look sir, look sir, Mr. Knox sir. Chicks with bricks some. Chicks with sticks come. Chicks with sticks and bricks and blocks come.

Through three cheese trees, three free fleas flew.

Call the Minutemen.

Naturally King would not have endorsed any candidate

Oh really?

Whom. Goddammit, it’s whom. What, do these asshats make a pact or something? “Let’s soak our bug-eyed-crazy ideas in buckets of grammatical nonsense to keep the reality-basers too busy to thwart us”? Well, it’s working. I have a constant headache to go with my soul-ache.

How about this?

Which presidential hopeful would Dr. King vote for?

[J— runs away]

The specificity of your memory both impresses and frightens me, J—.

Note to self: consider dialing down the grammarofascism, and never argue with J— after drinking . . .

Oh, I’m not arguing. I’m just having a little fun with you and whomever engaged you in that discussion (sorry, I don’t remember who this was, which proves my memory ain’t that good).

(sorry, I don’t remember who this was, which proves my memory ain’t that good).

Indeed, it is central to wherever you left your keys.

Dr. King was a Republican. Even though their assertion was based in fact, the ads were seen as divisive, pieces of propaganda. To my surprise many black civil rights leaders got upset at the assertion that King had Republican roots.

Just for the sake of historical accuracy, I’m going to point out that until F. D. Roosevelt, most black people who were able/allowed to vote voted Republican (the “Party of Lincoln”) whereas Democrats, especially in the South, were the “Party of Not-Lincoln,” and supported Jim Crow & his laws. So it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Dr. King’s “roots” were indeed Republican, that is, some of his ancestors or relatives may well have been Republicans.

Of course, to act as if this means something today is as stupid as wingnut tools whining about Southern Democrats opposing the Civil Rights Act, or the popular “Sen. Byrd was a Klansman, so there, racist Democrats,” while failing to mention all the Southern Republicans who’d still be Democrats if not for Lyndon Johnson’s support of the Civil Rights & Voting Rights Acts.

And to call Dr. King a conservative when he espoused radical ideas in direct contravention to the laws & attitudes prevailing in the U. S. is absurd.

The fact is, all of you liberals are racists and biased agains USA. You are also gay.

Incontinentia Buttocks – obviously it’s just a game to guess who Dr. King would vote for today. And “vote for” is a lot different than “endorse” a la Oprah with Obama.

Kucinich might line up most squarely with King on the social justice and anti-war fronts (he does for me, anyway!). But then, for the sake of argument, assume that King is as practical as he is passionate, and realizes that Kucinich hasn’t a ghost of a chance. Where does he line up with his vote then?

Pretty obviously, it’s like a gazillion times more likely that he pulls the lever for one of the big three Dems than any Republican. Huckabee seems like he just might be a tease for King — but assume also that King has evolved with the times and isn’t appearing to vote in 2008 with a wholly constituted perspective from 1967. That the King voting today has full knowledge of Falwell, Robertson and Dobson, and that he has witnessed the past eight years of the Bush administration and grasps the logic of a “lesser of two evils” vote given the pressing circumstances of the United States in 2008.

I just have a feeling that, as a man who clearly knew how to actually accomplish revolutionary goals and not just pound the table for them in the margins, King would end up voting for, perhaps even endorsing, one of the Dems.

grand strategy” to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world,

Of course, this is only…

Hey, waitaminute. Who are the asshats doing the increasingly brutal acts?

To a large degree, isn’t it the fuckerwads with the tanks and the airstrikes and the invasion forces and the special ops and the fucking nuclear weapons that are bringing about the increasing brutality??!!??Interobang!

I mean, for them to say they have to crank up the brutality and horror to EVEVEN due to the fact that in the last decade they’ve turned up the brutality and horror to NINE is like, its [sputter, stammer, stumble, swallow].

Ahem. It’s kind of like the big bad wolf telling little red riding hood that the best response to the increasing number of wolf attacks is to cover herself in barbeque sauce.

Or something.

Gawd…

mikey

What would Medgar Evers do?

Calling Dr. King a Republican is like calling Guliani a fascist, except for the accuracy part.

What DA said.

Specfically:

101 John Paul Stevens IL April 20, 1920 Ford

103 Antonin Scalia VA March 11, 1936 Reagan

104 Anthony Kennedy CA July 23, 1936 Reagan

105 David Souter NH September 17, 1939 G. HW Bush

106 Clarence Thomas GA June 23, 1948 G. HW Bush

107 Ruth Bader Ginsburg NY March 15, 1933 Clinton

108 Stephen Breyer MA August 15, 1938 Clinton

109 John G Roberts, Jr. MD January 27, 1955 G. W. Bush

110 Samuel Alito NJ April 1, 1950 G. W. Bush

Can we really sit here and think we can afford another Heritage Foundation appointee?

If he were alive, Dr. King would be saying “Draft Dick Cheney!”

Because none of the other GOP candidates are conservative enough.

One thing Dr. King would’ve never done?

Support the black candidate.

What would Medgar Evers do?

If Medgar was to preach what He preached in Mississipi,
They would lay poor Medgar in His grave.

But then Woodie Guthrie was known to be a Republican.

The time has come,
the time is now,
Harry R. Jackson
will you please go now?

What? We’re not reciting Dr. Seuss?

Oh, I’m not arguing.

And I’m not drinking. But the day is young . . .

I’m drinking. And thinking. Which leads to more drinking.

OT but have y’all seen this nice smackdown of media campaign coverage? I don’t have TV so I’m always a few days behind . . .

While we’re on the subject of other blogs, other lives, Greenwald provides a little hope.

I know, I’m Mr. Doomngloom, but I like to read something hopeful occasionally, even if it does strike me as a pit pollyanna…

mikey

Kucinich might line up most squarely with King on the social justice and anti-war fronts (he does for me, anyway!). But then, for the sake of argument, assume that King is as practical as he is passionate, and realizes that Kucinich hasn’t a ghost of a chance. Where does he line up with his vote then?

Why make that assumption about King? What in his career tells you he’d make such a choice?

King enthusiastically campaigned for LBJ in 1964, when Johnson had just signed the Civil Rights Act into law and his rival, Barry Goldwater, had been one of the Senate’s most notable Republican opponents of the measure.

But three years later King was willing to sacrifice his very valuable relationship to the President in order to make public his feelings about Vietnam. King had much more faith in the power of truth, and the power of the people, than in the power of politicians.

King was certainly practical, but not in the value-compromising sense that so many progressive Democrats are “practical” today. Unlike most progressive enablers of the Democratic Party, King understood that politics involves a lot more than elections. He spent the vast majority of his time and energy on direct political action, not electoral politics. It was no doubt his practical side that led him to resist efforts to draft himself and Dr. Benjamin Spock to run as an antiwar, independent presidential ticket in 1968. I agree that for similar reasons he would not have wasted his time campaigning for Dennis Kucinich, however much Kucinich shares his values.

But King would certainly have had better things to do than waste his time supporting pro-war, pro-corporation candidates just because they’re a little less bad than their opponents. My guess (and it is of course only a guess) is that he would see the Clintons, Obamas, and Edwards of American politics much as he saw “white moderates” in Letter from a Birmingham Jail:

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

On single-payer healthcare, on removing our troops from Iraq, on equal marriage rights, on issue after issue the leadership of the Democratic Party at best says that we must wait for a “more convenient season.” Somehow I don’t think that Rev. King would be as easily bought off as most Democrats seem to be.

Somehow I don’t think that Rev. King would be as easily bought off as most Democrats seem to be.

Nader 2000!

Ahh, Nader 2000.

How much has Nader’s Halliburton stock gone up since that fateful election? One wonders.

Oh, by the way, Ralph Nader is a fucking Halliburton stockholder. Some of us liberals weren’t moronic sheep 7 years ago.

Did he keep his KBR stock after the spinoff?

How much has Nader’s Halliburton stock gone up since that fateful election? One wonders.

How much has HAL has gone up since 2000?

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=my&s=HAL&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=kbr

The article wasn’t THAT bad.

But getta load of his conclusion, “Last year I wrote a piece entitled: “King: Conservative or Liberal?” I concluded that King’s core beliefs matched those of most conservatives with the exception of his sentiments about war.”

Yeah, war. Eventually, King woulda gotten over that whole nonviolence thing. If some segregationist fuck-knob didn’t murder him first…

Chicken:

Wow, HAL really opened the pod-bay doors for some folks…

No, I don’t mean Nader in 2000.

Like I said above, King was not principally invested in electoral politics.

In 1968, he was not running around campaigning for Eugene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy (both of whom were arguably closer to his values than this year’s crop of Democrats), nor was he dreaming of a third party campaign (though many wanted him to run). He was organizing the Poor People’s Campaign and aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis.

Honestly, Democrats today are more invested in the TINA principle than Margaret Thatcher ever was. You make any suggestion that the most important thing in the world is not supporting their mediocre candidates and it’s time for a Two-Minute Hate starring Ralph Nader as Emmanuel Goldstein.

“…hitting the Massachusetts guy with a metal tipped cane on the Senate floor until he was a bloody pulp. “

That Massachusetts guy would be Charles Sumner, who ended up with a tunnel under Boston Harbor named after him, and a larger-than-life statue in the Public Garden – making the whole thing entirely worth it.

Totally off topic, as others talk about drinking, I’m listening to some Hot Chick Classical Music, namely piano trios by Shostakovich and Arensky.

And I bought the CD for the music, not the pictures of gorgeous twins and their Asian friend.

Oh, yeah! Now to crack open that little pinot noir…

You make any suggestion that the most important thing in the world is not supporting their mediocre candidates and it’s time for a Two-Minute Hate starring Ralph Nader as Emmanuel Goldstein.

So then. What is your suggestion?

So then. What is your suggestion?

Well this thread wasn’t about my suggestion. It was about what we might imagine Dr. King would be doing. And I’d imagine that, rather than focusing on the presidential race, he’d be organizing various forms of direct political action because that’s what he spent basically his entire damn career doing. And given his extraordinary record, I also imagine that whatever ideas he’d have for such direct action would be a whole lot better than anything I, or anyone else on this thread, could come up with. The greatest tragedy of King’s assassination is that we lost a leader who had decades of vision and political creativity left in him.

As for what I would suggest? There are always tried-and-true, always good ideas like registering voters or working with single-issue organizations promoting necessary changes (from The Center for Voting and Democracy to United for Peace & Justice and many, many more).

If I were a Democrat, I’d be spending a lot of time working to reform my party: running for local and state committee positions, working on primary campaigns to unseat “DINO”s, organizing progressive Democrats and so forth…though truth be told I’m not a Democrat in part because I think such efforts are largely a waste of time given the powers and money arrayed to keep the party committed to its corporate and militarist orientation.

I wish I could more enthusiastically say “work for the Green Party,” but I fear that my party, while standing for the right values, is pretty adrift at the moment.

But, as I said, I’m sure Dr. King would have much, much better ideas.

D Aristophonese, to interrupt the Nader bashing for a moment, I have to agree with IB on this one. We are not going to get anywhere arguing who MLK would have voted for, but I have trouble reconciling someone who said this:

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

With someone who would vote for the lesser of two evils, when both evils are rooted in American military imperialism…

On single-payer healthcare, on removing our troops from Iraq, on equal marriage rights, on issue after issue the leadership of the Democratic Party at best says that we must wait for a “more convenient season.” Somehow I don’t think that Rev. King would be as easily bought off as most Democrats seem to be.

It’s interesting, IB, because I guess I always just assume that if Dr. King were active today, he would be leading a national ministry. But in our own more fractured time, perhaps it’s more likely he would a leader at the local level. It’s difficult for me to imagine a single umbrella issue, i.e. civil rights, that today might be rallied around to achieve change in the relatively linear fashion that the Civil Rights movement accomplished.

But that’s probably just my lack of imagination.

At any rate, if he’s acting more locally, there’s less reason for King to collaborate with national politicians. In that imagining, it’s certainly harder to see him endorsing and campaigning for any of the current candidates, as you say.

But who does he, himself, vote for? Or does he vote at all?

fish – I think I was a little unclear earlier, about my feeling that King would ‘grasp the logic of a “lesser of two evils” vote.’

By that, I meant that in my mind he is someone who would be able to fairly weigh that strategy on its merits, and apropos to particular electoral circumstances … that he would neither endorse ‘less of two evils’ nor dismiss it forever and always on purist ideological grounds.

With someone who would vote for the lesser of two evils, when both evils are rooted in American military imperialism…

Let GWB’s suckcessor appoint a couple more judges to the Supreme Court, and this whole worrying about who to vote for thingy will be a distant memory.

Anytime the greens want to run a candidate against a viable Democrat, I’m sure they’ll be able to get money from some Richard Mellon-Scaife funded astroturf organization.

Because Richard Mellon-Scaife is gullible like that.

Not like you.

rather than focusing on the presidential race, he [MLK] would be organizing various forms of direct political action because that’s what he spent basically his entire damn career doing.

Rock the fuck on, Ms. Buttocks.

Progressive Dems are still mostly looking through the wrong end of the telescope, waiting to elect just the right mixture of politicians to lead the country into a new progressive era. It just doesn’t– and can’t– happen that way.

It just doesn’t– and can’t– happen that way.

How does it happen then, kingubu?

I’ve seen this country’s democracy steadily flushed down the toilet since Richard Nixon, with brief interruptions from Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Certainly, I won’t question I.B.’s piousness, or your’s.

But wtf, exactly, are any of you contributing to a solution?

When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember that you came to drain the swamp.

Where is ANY evidence that the Green Party, in whatever incarnation, has done a thing besides bring more alligators?

hey thunder, chill. Short of armed insurrection, your country is going to be run by and for corporate interests. We’re just bickering over the scraps that we can wrangle from the greedheads, and we’re mostly on roughly the same side here.

As for King, Jackson’s contention seems to be that he would vote for whoever had the most rocksolid antichoice platform. These people don’t do sophistication.

hey thunder, chill. Short of armed insurrection, your country is going to be run by and for corporate interests. We’re just bickering over the scraps that we can wrangle from the greedheads, and we’re mostly on roughly the same side here.

I live in Ohio, d00d. I’m already chillin’.

As for the mostly on roughly the same side, tanx for nottin, splittuh!1one!

Well, I’m with ITTDGY on this one. See, here’s what pisses me off:

If I were a Democrat, I’d be spending a lot of time working to reform my party: running for local and state committee positions, working on primary campaigns to unseat “DINO”s, organizing progressive Democrats and so forth…though truth be told I’m not a Democrat in part because I think such efforts are largely a waste of time

I don’t doubt that you’re sincere, IB, but kee-rist! First you tell us what to do (three things that, by the by, I actually do) and then tell us not to bother because we’re wasting our time? Because, what, being an active member of the Green party is so much more effective in terms of changing the political landscape?

OK, that thing I said earlier about not drinking? That’s over. The day’s not young anymore.

If King were still alive the same fuckers disingenuously claiming him as a conservative would be pissing on him as a commie terrorist.

And there wouldn’t be a holiday in his name, either.

As for what he’d be doing now at the age of 79, I’m going to guess enjoying his retirement.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m not in the idealogical purity biddness (or the “fuck it, cook me another shot” camp for that matter) and I don’t think IB is, either. All I’m saying is that progressive Dems still seem to me to be largely focussed on finding leaders to effect change and, IMO, that is putting the cart before the horse.

Of course elections matter; of course keeping the WH out of the GOP’s hands in ’08 is crucial (and while Obama is my guy, if Hilary wins the primaries I will not only vote for her but try to convince everyone I know to do the same). I didn’t think I needed to say any of that but I guess I did.

The proven model for progressive change is bottom-up, not top-down; that effective progressive leaders are pushed out front by mass movements, not pied pipers who lead the public in this direction or that.

All I’m saying is that the way to effect change is to get your neighbors riled up and all pointing generally in the same direction. That’s where the political mandate come from to elect good people to office and where the pressure comes from to make sure they do the Right Thing™ once they are there.

Expecting electoral politics alone to effect progressive change is unrealistic; it takes both sustained direct, grassroots action and elected allies. We (and by that I mean people like me who became politically active in the Intarwebs Age) seem to have lost sight of the fact that a lot of politics has little or nothing to do with elections.

You fuckin GO, Mortician!! I have no idea what that fucker is trying to say, but I’m pretty sure it ain’t helpful.

I’m gonna go with the drinking concept…

mikey

Always look on the bright side of Life!

Presented in the interests of spiritual healing for the S,N! reality based commune.

ittdgy: Thanks. That just never gets old.

I’m gonna go with the drinking concept…

It’s never steered me wrong. Well, OK, that may not be entirely true. But I maintain that it’s central to any point I may have. Or any pint I may have, for that matter.

I’m Righteous Bubba and so’s my wife.

Where is ANY evidence that the Green Party, in whatever incarnation, has done a thing besides bring more alligators?

Here:
http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml

Click on the link “Current Green Office Holders”

Here we go again, with the same shit.

You Democrats have a lot to answer for: your God-damn party hierarchy in California spends more time getting in the way of the Greens that opposing the Republicans–and you say nothing about it. Figure it out, already: either the Greens are too small to be significant, and should be left alone in local races (the SF mayor’s run, for example), or they’re big enough that you need to deal with them and make the appropriate deals. Thunder, you most especially–it’s rectal craniectomy time: your party is the one making deals with the Repugs and helping to bring forward their agenda. How about being an actual opposition party and opposing the Rs?

Save your fire for the real enemy, not for your likely allies. If you feel that Greens are stealing votes that should go to Dems, then the Dems obviously need to move left, not right. If you’re a Dem, and you’re not very, very actively opposing the influence of the DLC and the corporatists in your own party, you have no business criticizing any other party.

Clean up your own shit, then come talk to us Greens.

Lol, rich white men talking about black people!