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

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About Marc MkKoy

Enemy of the State, iconoclast, critical thinker. Non-citizen and natural man who prefers to not engage in the institutional insanity used to perpetuate an adopted reality of material hedonism in exchange for personal responsibility and personal investment in life. I prefer a path of peaceful resistance, but succumbing to the imperfect, flawed nature of my physical self I must entertain the possibility of violence should my life or safety be threatened by those who believe they possess some moral, political, or other right to subject me to their will. May peace prevail, but those who choose violence welcome the same.
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