{"id":21850,"date":"2013-08-27T12:21:24","date_gmt":"2013-08-27T17:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=21850"},"modified":"2013-08-27T12:21:24","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T17:21:24","slug":"martin-luther-king-and-the-american-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/08\/27\/martin-luther-king-and-the-american-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Luther King and the American Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill<\/a> on MLK’s most famous speech:<\/p>\n

Tomorrow is the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech, made on the Mall in Washington, DC on 28 August 1963. Re-reading the speech 50 years on, the most striking thing about it is how much faith it puts in the American Dream. Where today it is positively hip to be disdainful of all things American, to look upon America as a land of shopping addicts and fat rednecks, King and his listeners were passionately devoted to the idea of America and an American project. Using tellingly capitalistic lingo, King said of those gathered that \u201cwe refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.\u201d King said that his dream, of racial equality, was \u201cdeeply rooted in the American Dream\u201d.<\/p>\n

Not for King the fashionable disgust for America\u2019s obsession with consumerism and wealth. On the contrary, he said blacks were sick of living on \u201cthe lonely island of poverty\u201d and longed to wade in America\u2019s \u201cvast ocean of material prosperity\u201d. Not for King any sneering at America\u2019s promise of wealth and opportunity to its citizens — \u201cnow is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God\u2019s children\u201d, he said. Not for King any mocking of the founding fathers of America, who have in recent years been judged by radical Leftists to have been racist and evil (in the words of The Nation<\/em> magazine just last month, Thomas Jefferson was a \u201cslave-owning rapist\u201d). Instead, King extolled the \u201cmagnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence\u201d and talked about all men\u2019s \u201cinalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the run-up to the fiftieth anniversary of King\u2019s speech, there\u2019s been a great deal of debate about what has changed, especially for America\u2019s blacks. But perhaps the most sweeping, dramatic change has been in attitudes towards the very idea of America. Today, cheap anti-Americanism is the glue that holds so-called liberals and radicals together. Tapping one\u2019s toe to the Green Day song \u201cAmerican Idiot\u201d while laughing knowingly at the fallacy of the American Dream is what passes for being edgy these days. Both within and without America, many Leftish activists and serious thinkers view America as dumb, fat, polluting, reckless and unwittingly hilarious, founded by narcissists and drunks, a \u201cgreedy and overweening power\u201d, as the New Statesman<\/em> said in the immediate aftermath of 9\/11.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill on MLK’s most famous speech: Tomorrow is the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech, made on the Mall in Washington, DC on 28 August 1963. Re-reading the speech 50 years on, the most striking thing about it is how much faith it puts in the American Dream. Where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,13],"tags":[311,715,198,99],"class_list":["post-21850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-liberty","category-usa","tag-1960s","tag-constitution","tag-equalrights","tag-racism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5Gq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21851,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21850\/revisions\/21851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}