I intended to write on this topic sooner, but wanted to see how Martin Luther King, Jr. was remembered over “his” holiday. For one day a year, we take time to recognize, acknowledge, honor, dismiss, forget, and deny a man that was murdered for standing up for what he believed. Decades after the dust has settled from King’s “rabble rousing”, we have relative equality, since people do not prosper under liberty, but ignorantly suffer under sophistic rights. Moreover, in a consummate act of patronization, we recognize a government holiday named after one of its victims. We give one day to recognize a struggle that took a lifetime, and a life.
King was not the first to posit civil disobedience. Mahatma Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau were both progenitors of that doctrine. After each generation of peaceful strides, government responded with more legal and institutionalized tyranny and oppression. Of course, King is lauded for making great strides in achieving racial, political, and societal equality, but is it that blacks are elevated to the same level as whites; or were whites lowered to the same level as blacks? If you have two glasses; one filled to the brim with rights, and the other half-filled with rights, and you wish to make them equal in volume, you don’t necessarily need fill the lowest one, but may instead opt to empty the fullest one. This is the equality King achieved; or more accurately, the equality the government created.
I am not here to disparage King’s work, his message, or the man himself. I greatly admire and respect what he stood for and accomplished. I’ve heard people refer to King as a failure for black people still not having true racial equality. I believe King was a success, as evidenced by his untimely murder. If there is failure to be assigned, then let it rest on the heads of all who have settled for the watered-down, diluted, manufactured, prescribed, defined, and regulated “privileges and benefits” the government dispenses to placate the otherwise restless rabble so as to keep them fat, dumb, and happy. We have failed. We have failed to protect that which we possess, individual sovereignty. We failed to remain vigilant over encroaching power. We have submitted to servitude, and self-delusion.
What did King accomplish, exactly? He stood defiant against institutionalized legal power. He stood defiant against the state. He was assaulted, stabbed, beaten, reviled, hated, and ultimately murdered. King did not die for what he believed. He died because he was shot. Let it be said that he was murdered for what he believed. He did not wish to die. If someone had said to him, “Dr. King, believing such things will cause your life to flee your body.” I presume he would have given it a second thought, and then probably proceed nevertheless. However, his beliefs affected his opponents to such a degree that they moved to permanently silence him. His message was infectious and dangerous. What kind of world would this be if ALL men were treated as equals? Where would government get its power to soothe the pain of injustice it creates? What if all we had to do to defeat tyranny is to simply disobey?
Where King and I part ways is where he advocated passive civil disobedience. I fall more along the lines of the Black Panthers or Malcolm X. I agree with taking a passive, disobedient stand against tyranny, but I find when government or authority fails to honor that peaceful overture and instead compel allegiance, obedience, or action; then righteous, violent self-defense is warranted, by any means necessary. As Malcolm X said, “It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself.” I understand why King took the tact he did. His foe is was, and still is, impressive, ruthless, violent, and pervasive. Violence turns many away from what would otherwise be a just battle. Yet, when one comes upon a battle and sees only carnage, if is hard to identify with the struggle when the reason for the bloodbath unknown to the observer. King needed to win minds more so than kill tyrants.
The government’s response to “uppity black-folk” was the Civil Rights act of 1966. What were the “equal rights” Uncle Sam so generously gave to his subjects? If you look to Title 42 United States Code, Chapter 21, Subchapter I, Section 1981, it will tell you that “Equal Rights” include, in part, “… full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.” Where, in that legislation, do the words “rights” or “liberties” appear? Moreover, in order to achieve this equality, without acknowledging Creator-derived unalienable rights belong to blacks as well as whites, the government created the subordinate “white citizen” class and elevated, or laterally moved, the blacks to that subjugated group.
Instead of blacks being acknowledged to have unalienable rights, like the Declaration of Independence states belong to “all men”, prescriptive and diluted privileges were created, called “Civil Rights”, and offered to the People in exchange for their unalienable rights, and their allegiance. Government slyly created a slave class and tricked the blacks into staying right where they were, along with the ignorant and newly-subjugated “white folks”. Honestly, I don’t know why blacks wanted the same rights as whites. Blacks had to be forced into subjection, and whites hurriedly marched headlong into it.
After all the strife, struggle, battles, and deaths ,we have a legal pacifier shoved into the gaping mouths of the infantile masses. Subjects gladly trade what their Creator bestowed for what government creates. The government did not set a day aside to honor Dr. King’s accomplishments and promote his message. The message they wish to convey is, if you exhibit audacity, arrogance, fearlessness, righteousness, and independence, then you too will suffer beatings, oppression, insult, and most likely death. This is what we are to remember on this government-made holiday. It is the reminder that Dr. King stood for something more important than life. He did not willingly succumb. For his petulance he was killed, and it would serve us well to not follow in his footsteps, and instead, accept the scraps off master’s table and obey.
So, we have Martin Luther King for a day, and servitude for the rest. Pay obligatory homage to fallen heroes, but don’t dare emulate them or suffer like-fate. Ignore what you possess by right of your birth. The government claims to be able to provide for your comfort and security. Surely you don’t believe your Creator blessed you with anything comparable to the power of that malignancy called government. I urge you all to exhibit audacity and independence. Step outside your comfort zone. Venture off of the plantation. When “master” comes-a-stalking to get you back in line turn that passive disobedience into righteous self-defense. Why be King for a day when you can rule yourself for life?
Mark McCoy
handbook
King for a day.
I intended to write on this topic sooner, but wanted to see how Martin Luther King, Jr. was remembered over “his” holiday. For one day a year, we take time to recognize, acknowledge, honor, dismiss, forget, and deny a man that was murdered for standing up for what he believed. Decades after the dust has settled from King’s “rabble rousing”, we have relative equality, since people do not prosper under liberty, but ignorantly suffer under sophistic rights. Moreover, in a consummate act of patronization, we recognize a government holiday named after one of its victims. We give one day to recognize a struggle that took a lifetime, and a life.
King was not the first to posit civil disobedience. Mahatma Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau were both progenitors of that doctrine. After each generation of peaceful strides, government responded with more legal and institutionalized tyranny and oppression. Of course, King is lauded for making great strides in achieving racial, political, and societal equality, but is it that blacks are elevated to the same level as whites; or were whites lowered to the same level as blacks? If you have two glasses; one filled to the brim with rights, and the other half-filled with rights, and you wish to make them equal in volume, you don’t necessarily need fill the lowest one, but may instead opt to empty the fullest one. This is the equality King achieved; or more accurately, the equality the government created.
I am not here to disparage King’s work, his message, or the man himself. I greatly admire and respect what he stood for and accomplished. I’ve heard people refer to King as a failure for black people still not having true racial equality. I believe King was a success, as evidenced by his untimely murder. If there is failure to be assigned, then let it rest on the heads of all who have settled for the watered-down, diluted, manufactured, prescribed, defined, and regulated “privileges and benefits” the government dispenses to placate the otherwise restless rabble so as to keep them fat, dumb, and happy. We have failed. We have failed to protect that which we possess, individual sovereignty. We failed to remain vigilant over encroaching power. We have submitted to servitude, and self-delusion.
What did King accomplish, exactly? He stood defiant against institutionalized legal power. He stood defiant against the state. He was assaulted, stabbed, beaten, reviled, hated, and ultimately murdered. King did not die for what he believed. He died because he was shot. Let it be said that he was murdered for what he believed. He did not wish to die. If someone had said to him, “Dr. King, believing such things will cause your life to flee your body.” I presume he would have given it a second thought, and then probably proceed nevertheless. However, his beliefs affected his opponents to such a degree that they moved to permanently silence him. His message was infectious and dangerous. What kind of world would this be if ALL men were treated as equals? Where would government get its power to soothe the pain of injustice it creates? What if all we had to do to defeat tyranny is to simply disobey?
Where King and I part ways is where he advocated passive civil disobedience. I fall more along the lines of the Black Panthers or Malcolm X. I agree with taking a passive, disobedient stand against tyranny, but I find when government or authority fails to honor that peaceful overture and instead compel allegiance, obedience, or action; then righteous, violent self-defense is warranted, by any means necessary. As Malcolm X said, “It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself.” I understand why King took the tact he did. His foe is was, and still is, impressive, ruthless, violent, and pervasive. Violence turns many away from what would otherwise be a just battle. Yet, when one comes upon a battle and sees only carnage, if is hard to identify with the struggle when the reason for the bloodbath unknown to the observer. King needed to win minds more so than kill tyrants.
The government’s response to “uppity black-folk” was the Civil Rights act of 1966. What were the “equal rights” Uncle Sam so generously gave to his subjects? If you look to Title 42 United States Code, Chapter 21, Subchapter I, Section 1981, it will tell you that “Equal Rights” include, in part, “… full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.” Where, in that legislation, do the words “rights” or “liberties” appear? Moreover, in order to achieve this equality, without acknowledging Creator-derived unalienable rights belong to blacks as well as whites, the government created the subordinate “white citizen” class and elevated, or laterally moved, the blacks to that subjugated group.
Instead of blacks being acknowledged to have unalienable rights, like the Declaration of Independence states belong to “all men”, prescriptive and diluted privileges were created, called “Civil Rights”, and offered to the People in exchange for their unalienable rights, and their allegiance. Government slyly created a slave class and tricked the blacks into staying right where they were, along with the ignorant and newly-subjugated “white folks”. Honestly, I don’t know why blacks wanted the same rights as whites. Blacks had to be forced into subjection, and whites hurriedly marched headlong into it.
After all the strife, struggle, battles, and deaths ,we have a legal pacifier shoved into the gaping mouths of the infantile masses. Subjects gladly trade what their Creator bestowed for what government creates. The government did not set a day aside to honor Dr. King’s accomplishments and promote his message. The message they wish to convey is, if you exhibit audacity, arrogance, fearlessness, righteousness, and independence, then you too will suffer beatings, oppression, insult, and most likely death. This is what we are to remember on this government-made holiday. It is the reminder that Dr. King stood for something more important than life. He did not willingly succumb. For his petulance he was killed, and it would serve us well to not follow in his footsteps, and instead, accept the scraps off master’s table and obey.
So, we have Martin Luther King for a day, and servitude for the rest. Pay obligatory homage to fallen heroes, but don’t dare emulate them or suffer like-fate. Ignore what you possess by right of your birth. The government claims to be able to provide for your comfort and security. Surely you don’t believe your Creator blessed you with anything comparable to the power of that malignancy called government. I urge you all to exhibit audacity and independence. Step outside your comfort zone. Venture off of the plantation. When “master” comes-a-stalking to get you back in line turn that passive disobedience into righteous self-defense. Why be King for a day when you can rule yourself for life?
Mark McCoy