Martin Luther King Day
I know I'm a bit late on this, but I beg your indulgence. Internet access is somewhat limited over here.

Anyway, I Martin Luther King Day comes and goes every year, and I usually let it go without too much preaching. Recently though I have gotten a book of Martin Luther King's speeches and letters from the Gifu Library, and have been reading through them. It is fascinating to see how the real King often differs from the version of King we celebrate today.

King has been elevated to a status of a modern day saint who is beyond criticism. King has become to modern politics the equivalent of what Jesus Christ is to religion. No one (at least no public figure) would dare say, "King was a good man but he was wrong about such and such." Just as no Christian would say the same about Jesus. And so what has happened with King and with Jesus is that they are very selectively quoted and very selectively remembered.

I often wonder if King were still alive today how many of the people who are now paying lip service to his memory would actually really support him, or if they would be telling him to shut his mouth and support our President.

If time and energy permitted I would like to write much more on this subject, because there a lot more to say on the issue. But I find myself tiring away from a long post, and I'm not the first writer to broach this subject anyway. Media Mouse has a nice post here on it here, which contains a lot of the same ideas I would have said, and links I would have sought out, had I the energy. Although I might have left out the part about the government complicity in his death. It is an interesting theory, but perhaps the point is better served by focusing on what there is no doubt about, such as King's own speeches and writings.