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thatcrazycajunForty-seven years ago today, when I was still an infant barely three months old—and three months before the nation's first Roman Catholic President would be struck down in Dallas, Texas by an assassin's bullet—the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. gave this speech on the steps of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial on a sweltering late-summer Wednesday in Washington, DC. The speech was to become one of the most historically important ever given, ranking with Lincoln's address at Gettysburg and that aforementioned Catholic President's inaugural address ("Ask not...").
Today, on that same set of steps, conservative TV commentator Glenn Beck is holding what he calls a "Restoring Honor" rally which is being widely criticized as an attempt to co-opt King's aura of historic inevitability for a cause some see as antithetical to that which King championed. A counter-rally organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton will also be held nearby today.
The First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and of peaceable assembly apply to both, and I condemn any attempt to silence speakers at either rally in the strongest possible terms. The way to respond to speech you don't like is never, ever to try shouting the speaker down, but to respond with speech of your own. I think spreading the sound and the text of King's original words is the best possible response to anything Beck or his friends spout in front of Abe's statue today...second, of course, to actually taking action at the voting booth or in peaceful activism.
We are still demonstrably far from the final, full achievement of making Dr. King's dream a reality. But progress has been made...and will continue to be made long after the words spoken on Beck's podium today fade into forgotten history.
Today, on that same set of steps, conservative TV commentator Glenn Beck is holding what he calls a "Restoring Honor" rally which is being widely criticized as an attempt to co-opt King's aura of historic inevitability for a cause some see as antithetical to that which King championed. A counter-rally organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton will also be held nearby today.
The First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and of peaceable assembly apply to both, and I condemn any attempt to silence speakers at either rally in the strongest possible terms. The way to respond to speech you don't like is never, ever to try shouting the speaker down, but to respond with speech of your own. I think spreading the sound and the text of King's original words is the best possible response to anything Beck or his friends spout in front of Abe's statue today...second, of course, to actually taking action at the voting booth or in peaceful activism.
We are still demonstrably far from the final, full achievement of making Dr. King's dream a reality. But progress has been made...and will continue to be made long after the words spoken on Beck's podium today fade into forgotten history.
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Amen, Brother!
Date: 2010-08-28 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-28 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 12:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 09:12 pm (UTC)While the government should do nothing to prohibit such conduct, nothing requires anyone to respect it either.