20 Jan 2013 Project 21’s Stacys Comment on the Politics of the King Day Holiday

With this year’s commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birth and legacy falling on the same day that the beginning of Barack Obama’s second presidential administration is being publicly celebrated, Project 21 members are speaking out about the politicization of the King message by liberal interests.

Stacy Washington says: Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy in light of the current state of politics in America is a sad and sobering affair.

Dr. King spoke of being an impartial objective observer of the political parties.  This would also be the job of the media, and it’s obvious that they are completely unaware of the tasking.  Essentially, we have no one to stand apart to report on and judge political splits because the majority of the media is completely and unabashedly beholden to liberal doctrine.

Looking everywhere – from social issues to economic policy to the proliferation of the welfare state – not one area of American life currently seems to reflect the ideals of Dr. King to judge people on their character and not their race, to work hard and do for ourselves, to protect the family and to honor God through the practice of our faith.

In celebrating Dr. King this year, I’m hoping for a change in politics and the American experience back towards those ideals that he espoused.

Stacy Swimp adds: In June of 1965, at Oberlin College, two years after his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. delivered a presentation called “Remaining Awake During a Great Revolution.”  King was not there to talk about a “dream” – he called on America, particularly black Americans, to “remain awake.  He encouraged them to change their mental attitudes and look to develop new ideas and a new direction.

Dr. King was thinking of economic independence and moral excellence.

It’s clear to me that Dr. King knew that civil rights legislation was just a part of the solution of the woes of black communities.  Personal responsibility, high expectations, entrepreneurship and strong families, King asserted, were what we had to focus on as well.  He would later write that a black American “will only be truly free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive selfhood his own emancipation proclamation.”  This is a prophetic warning to all black Americans, as we have seen that the “Great Society” programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson never truly delivered on their supposed intentions.

If Dr. King could now see the nation he loved and died for and the divisive, so-called president willing to act as the embodiment of the King legacy – I believe Dr. King would be devastated.

Dr. King would be devastated that his supporters have not only failed to keep alive the dream that people “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” but that we have not even bothered to stay awake at all.