Martin Luther King Jr.
Not a lick of traffic coming into work this morning — which only serves as a reminder as to how many state and city workers there are here in Austin (to include school teachers and university/college employees).
I’m having an interesting debate via FaceBook with one of the few Liberals I know whom I also respect — Mark is a former HS classmate and a 21-year Veteran of the United States Army (going from the rank of Private to Major during that time) — on the political ideology of Martin Luther King.
I initially wrote, “Happy MLK day. And don’t forget, my Hippie friends: MLK was a Republican.”
Here’s the rest of our conversation:
Mark: Robbie, so was Lincoln. However, both of them were liberals as were most of the Republicans were the liberals while most of the Dems were conservatives. I offer this only as a generalization, because in reality it was far more complicated than that…
Robbie: True, but MLK went from civil rights leader to legendary status when he called upon this country to live up to its ideals and “to judge those on the content of character and not the color of their skin” which is a firm repudiation of the identity/group politics Democrats have used to divide this country for decades.
And speaking of Lincoln, since Abraham Lincoln, Republicans have been there for blacks when it counted. Nevertheless, Democrats invariably take all the credit for the success of the civil rights movement and invariably fail to give any credit to Republicans.
In the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes. By contrast, the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes.
See http://www.congresslink.org/civil/essay.html and http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1982/3/82.03.04.x.html
And as for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, of the 420 members who voted, 290 supported the civil rights bill and 130 opposed it.
Republicans favored the bill 138 to 34; Democrats supported it 152-96. Republicans supported it in higher proportions than Democrats.
As for your claim that MLK was a liberal…that’s speculation. As for my claim that he was a Republican, that’s a fact.
Mark: No, my claim that he was a liberal is also fact. To be Conservative means to continue the traditional status quo. To be liberal means to be for progressive change in some social or political process or position. The status quo of the time was institutionalized prejudice and discrimination around the world, not just the US. MLK moved the civil rights movement in the US laying a groundwork for the rest of the world to follow, much as Ghandi did in India.
Robbie: Fair enough.
Mark: On a related note, I am not nearly as aligned with a political party nearly as much as I am aligned with a liberal ideology and even there I have some friction such as on the question of abortion.
Robbie: I understand that distinction clearly…I’m aligned more with Conservative ideology, rather than with the Republican party, which has been anything BUT Conservative for quite some time.
Mark: Oh yeah, I have been meaning to tell you how much I enjoy our political sparring. You are always polite and your argument well argued. I had someone “unfriend” me the other day over something so stupid as the color of the President’s tie! (For the record I merely pointed out the silliness of caring about the color of anyone’s tie, let alone the guy in charge of guiding the country).
Mark: So let me ask something fairly fundamental (and I really am asking, not making a point). Do you really mean then that you wish for social and political processes to stay stagnant without changing?
Robbie: In a way, yes. I want much less government than we currently have now. I want less government involved in nearly every facet of our lives…fiscal regulations, social engineering, wealth redistribution, etc.
________________
Oddly enough, none of my other 400+ Facebook friends have jumped into the fray.
Good exchange, Robbie.
As for the 400+ not joining in, well, it is a holiday.
Except for me and you.
Time to mine some salt.
Mark is using the logical fallacy of circular reasoning.
He defines a conservative as:
To be Conservative means to continue the traditional status quo
He defines a liberal as:
to be liberal means to be for progressive change in some social or political process or position.
So any change whatsoever and you are automatically deemed a liberal. These are some interesting antics that liberals have to contort themselves to in order to claim MLK and Lincoln as there own.
In order to get this mantra to stick, I think one would need to show how the southern democrats flipped their ideology after the civil war, which they never did. Southern democrats made sure for 100+ years that blacks would never receive the equality that our constitution guarantees.
That’s a good point, Bar, about letting Liberals define the terms of the argument.
Conservative does NOT mean “continue the traditional status quo.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. supported affirmative action, opposed the war in Vietnam and wanted the US economy to go in a more social-democratic direction. In fact, that’s what he was focusing on with his Poor People’s Campaign near the end of his life, and his positions on economic issues would put him well to the left of most Democrats today. To claim that MLK was some sort of a conservative, by the terms of that era or this one, is absurd and an Orwellian rewriting of history.
By the way, you say “As for my claim that he was a Republican, that’s a fact”.
If it’s a fact, can you provide some links to articles that provide evidence that MLK (a) self-identified as a Republican, (b) consistently voted Republican or (c) consistently endorsed Republican candidates? If he was a Republican, one should be able to find such evidence.
Plus, if we’re going to talk about Republican support for civil rights legislation in the 1960s, let’s also talk about how the Republicans who supported such legislation were demonized as liberal Republicans (like Nelson Rockefeller) by conservatives of that era, as well as the sudden shift of the South towards the GOP in the 1964 Presidential election after Barry Goldwater came out against the Civil Rights Act that LBJ supported.
That’s easy.
Go to the NBRA web page and click around.
There are numerous articles, such as these two in pdf:
Martin Luther King, Jr. was Republican Information – NBRA Civil Rights Newsletter.
“The Democratic Party Owes Blacks An Apology” by Frances Rice.
Then there is this image that was a successful ad campaign, that began outside Denver before the donk convention.
As for the civil rights acts, none of them would have passed without overwhelming GOP support. Algore’s father, then Sen. Gore set something of a record for a filibuster on the ‘64 civil rights act, and he was a donk.
The examples you cite only state why MLK, according to their analysis, should have been a Republican. They don’t provide any proof (such as via direct quotations, writings, voting records, etc.) that he actually was one. In other words, they are assertions and arguments, not examples of evidence. Try again.
Incidentally, MLK endorsed and voted for LBJ for President in 1964. That’s not something a Republican would do. Link below.
http://www.africawithin.com/bios/martin_luther_king.htm
And yes, the Democratic Party in the South in the pre-civil rights era (which was dominated by its right wing, Ralph Yarborough in Texas notwithstanding) supported segregation. And a Southern Democrat named LBJ broke with that, thus speeding up the exodus of Dixiecrats to the GOP (see, e.g., Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, et al) and the movement of black voters from being GOP-leaning swing voters to being staunch Democrats.
I gave you a starting point, follow the advice I gave.
Click around some.
And click some more, you have many unanswered questions.
Dr. Alveda C. King didn’t lie, and has written about her Uncle, and made this video.
It was Richard Nixon who first brought MLK to D.C. as a political figure in the 1950’s.
LBJ broke with that tradition for purely political reasons. As a devotee of FDR’s Raw Deal, he wanted his own legacy with the
GreatBreak Society programs. It is detailed in a book, that you can look for yourself as I have linked it here many times, that LBJ told a group of governors on Air Force One, that if he was able to get the Civil Rights Act passed, “the n***ers will vote democrat for a hundred years.”Of course, nothing is as simple as it seems. A pdf.
It’s interesting to see that the only member of the King family who makes the GOP claim is someone who makes their living on the conservative circuit. It’s also interesting to see that the only person in the family making this assertion is a niece, not MLK’s widow, children or others who actually had close day-to-day contact with him.
Also, while King may have registered as a Republican in 1956 (which would make sense, as the Democratic Party in the South at that time was dominated by the segregationists who later moved to the GOP), there isn’t much evidence of that (see the reference to research by his biographer Taylor Branch in the link below), and it is clear that in 1964 he was endorsing the Democratic Presidential candidate.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-bohrer/dr-king-a-registered-repu_b_38108.html
Also, I notice no one has been able to respond to the substantive ideological points that I made above, namely that a pro-affirmative action, anti-war social democrat wouldn’t exactly be described as a conservative in the 1960s or now. If you want to read more about that, be sure to look at how his movement was described in places like National Review at that time.
I can understand why conservatives would want to claim liberal civil rights movement era heroes like MLK as one of their own. They certainly don’t have many conservative heroes from that movement and era to lay claim to.
Or to be more precise with language per MLK’s activities in 1964 – voting for the Democratic Presidential candidate in 1964 and vocally opposing the Republican candidate in 1964. Whether or not that constitutes an “endorsement” is largely a semantic point, but I’ll be a stickler on that and simply point out who he supported and what the obvious implications were.
What I find interesting is I provided you with more than anecdotal info, as requested, and you fall back on the “she’s a conservative so it doesn’t count.” Then you cite the Huff-N-Puff and TNR as rebuttal sources?
You actually think there were no anti-war conservatives in the 1960’s?
That is absurd on the face of it.
You can talk about all the sociological changes that have taken place since the 50’s, that doesn’t alter that he is known by a family member to be a Republican, and no other family member has refuted it. You can say he voted for LBJ in ‘64, but can you cite any family member or official party registration that showed he was a donk?
The ball is in your court.
We Patriots are having a party in honor of Mr King. Chicken is in the friar, watermelon is on its way, and I’m going to drink so much Old E I’ll want to start smokin’ marijuana and voting Democrat!
I never made the claim he was a member of any political party. Robbie did, and so did you. Don’t try and move the goalposts. I merely pointed out that there was little or no evidence for the affirmative claim that MLK was a Republican. All that’s been provided, rather than writings, quotations or public actions from the source (otherwise known as evidence), is the claims of one relative who seems to be making a living off of these sorts of claims and comments by people who say “he should have been a Republican for the reasons we cite, therefore he is one”.
Let’s look at the record. Who did he vote for? (No shortage of links showing his support of LBJ and opposition to Goldwater – I provided some and Google is your friend.) What statements did he make regarding one party or another? That will tell you about his partisan choices or lack thereof.
Moving from partisanship to ideology (which are two separate things), while there may have been anti-Vietnam War conservatives running around in the 1960s, by and large that position was considered to be the left-liberal position – as defined by most conservatives and liberals of that era. Plus, I don’t see any responses regarding his obviously liberal positions on other major issues. Let’s put it this way, if he was such a conservative in that era (let’s stick to that one rather than engaging in hypotheticals and anachronisms about what he would be today – though conservatives would lose on that front too), we should be able to find lots of examples of self-described conservatives lauding him back then. Unfortunately for conservatives of this era, there aren’t many such examples and journals like National Review weren’t kind to him. Not to mention what the Jesse Helmses of the world back then said about him. (I’m picking Helms specifically, because in those days he was a radio personality with some choice words to say about the civil rights movement.)
The ball was never in my court, because you never knocked it over the net. I’m going to bed now, so good luck with the serve.
It is you who have moved the goal posts.
This is from your second post, the one I replied to:
I did just that, but because it doesn’t fit your ideology or preconceived notions, you claim it isn’t valid.
Now you are going on about whether he was a conservative or not.
Decide on one definition or the other, it does make a difference. My contention was that he was a Republican, as per your original question, as has been shown.
I had a little work to do around the house before bedtime, and I noticed this response.
Wrong – you didn’t provide any solid evidence that MLK (a) self-identified as a Republican, (b) consistently voted Republican or (c) consistently endorsed Republican candidates. All you provided as evidence is the claim of one niece (who by chance happens to make her living as a conservative activist), a claim that is (a) not supported by any public statements of MLK, (b) not supported by claims from his close relatives (like his widow) or associates and (c) not supported by independent evidence, like from party membership documents, etc.
The statements of one relative doesn’t constitute proof of your (and Robbie’s) claim that he was a Republican. The burden of proof is upon the person making the affirmative claim, and what you have to support your claim is really weak, particularly when one is talking about a major public figure like MLK who left behind a pretty large paper trail.
Regarding whether or not MLK was a conservative, that claim, while separate from the point regarding his partisan affiliations, is part of the whole “MLK was a Republican” schtick that groups like the NRBA like to use, so I’m not the one going on about it. The sources you cite do. No one here has been able to support that contention, because it isn’t supportable on its face, based on the public positions taken by MLK and how they lined up ideologically then and now. Also, I’m not seeing any rebuttals regarding how MLK was viewed by conservatives of that era, which would be a pretty important bit of evidence regarding where he sat on the ideological scale.
I suppose on one scale, it’s good to see that conservatives want to claim, however falsely, that MLK was one of their own. That’s progress, of a sort, compared to what they used to say about him and people like him.
It does to me and many others, so that says something about your refusal to accept it.
Duck and dive much?
Neither Robbie nor I ever claimed he was a conservative, only that he was a registered Republican, to which you have offered no proof that he wasn’t.
There were RINO’s then as now, so your attempt at diverting this to whether or not he was a conservative is only demonstrative of your liberal ideology.
He was a registered Republican. This is not in dispute. Except by you, obviously.
“It does to me and many others, so that says something about your refusal to accept it.”
Yes, it says you don’t have or need much evidence to support this talking point.
“Neither Robbie nor I ever claimed he was a conservative, only that he was a registered Republican, to which you have offered no proof that he wasn’t. There were RINO’s then as now, so your attempt at diverting this to whether or not he was a conservative is only demonstrative of your liberal ideology.”
Again, the burden of proof lies on he who asserts the positive (Logic 101 – sorry if you aren’t familiar with such concepts), so the burden is on you and Robbie to come up with evidence, not for me to prove a negative. (Though the example I give of his actions in the 1964 Presidential election does serve to prove the negative – that whatever he was, he wasn’t a Republican.) The only evidence you have is the claims of one relative, and nothing else. Zip, zero, nada. That’s a level of proof that would be laughed at by any group of serious historians or political analysts on this or any other issue, particularly given the fact that the person in question was a major public figure whose views and work were heavily scrutinized and documented at the time. The fact that this level of proof matters and is adequate to you and many others says a lot about you and the many others who would believe and promote such laughable dreck.
The issue of whether he is or was a conservative is a major part of the NRBA’s work (which you cite) and Robbie brought up the issue of how one defines conservatism in his 1:44pm comment, so I’m not the one who brought it in the conversation. Not to mention the fact that if you’re going to talk about politics and partisanship with any level of intellectual seriousness, ideology has to be part of the discussion. As far as ducking and diving goes, I notice you aren’t coming up with any counters to my points regarding how MLK and his movement were viewed by conservatives in that era. Quite telling, that.
And I like how now you are saying that if MLK was a Republican, he was basically just a RINO anyway. Please, run with that.
mistermark
You and “logic” have never met, like 2 ships passing in the night.
The “burden of proof” is upon you, the accuser, not anyone here.
I see our liberal education system did a job “educating” you.
No, what it says is you refuse to believe any facts that don’t coincide with your indoctrination.
The NBRA has had this info out for years, and has drawn the ire of many liberals, but to date no other family member has been willing to go on the record and refute what Dr. King has revealed. It would seem that the other member of King’s family are more honest than you.
I proved he was a Republican, you haven’t. None of the other crap you blathered on matters, as the goal posts remain fixed in my sight.
What this is really about is, liberals like you cling viciously to the myth that has been carefully crafted to fool black voters into believing the jackass party actually cares about them, and not just their vote.
Since the racist LBJ started his War On Poverty started, over $7 billion dollars of wealth have been redistributed by the government on various programs, with no appreciable gain. It doesn’t matter to liberals, they can lie-cheat-steal and then claim it is their good intentions that really matter, we just need to redistribute more of America’s wealth to achieve “social justice.”
The jackass party doesn’t want black Americans to be reminded that it is the party of racist, from antiquity to Reid/Clinton/Boxer/Biden/Grand Kleagle Byrd, Jim Crow Laws, the KKK, and now the modern economic plantation they wish them to remain on.
Many black Americans have not been fooled and know liberalism is a dead end for their personal advancement.
Cling to all the liberal lies if you must, you’ve already convinced me you have.
There has only been one period in modern times where the black middle class has grown and that was during the Reagan years, from 2.6 million households with incomes of $25,000 or more in 1979, to 3.9 million in 1989.
The jackasses keep blacks and other groups dependent on government for their power base, and to lose one of those building blocks, the whole house of cards collapses.
This began with your doubting MLK was a Republican, and it has been proven that he was, with no contravening evidence that he wasn’t.
Accept it or not, it matters not to me. At least I do know you are incapable of a serious debate when the simplest request is proven, and you can’t accept it.
You are a typical liberal ideologue, and not worth the bandwidth expended on this simple matter.
“The NBRA has had this info out for years, and has drawn the ire of many liberals, but to date no other family member has been willing to go on the record and refute what Dr. King has revealed. It would seem that the other member of King’s family are more honest than you.”
The Flat Earth Society has had their info out for years also, but that doesn’t make it true. Perhaps the King family has better things to do than spend time refuting the uncooborated statements of one family member, who seems to be a bit of an outlier/outcast in the family. Taylor Branch, MLK’s biographer has refuted that claim, as mentioned in one of the links I posted.
In any case, I’ve made my points regarding how this sort of factual claim is easily provable (if true) by independent sources, not just the word of one niece. All you have to offer as evidence is that one thing, which wouldn’t pass the laugh test among any group of serious historians on the topic. (I’m sorry, is the term “serious historians” too ee-lee-tist for you?) All the bluster in the world won’t change that. When you have some actual independent evidence to muster (and I still notice no response as to MLK’s actions in the 1964 Presidential race), get back to me. Until then, I will still be, as always, laughing at you and people like you.
“He was a registered Republican. This is not in dispute. Except by you, obviously.”
It is in dispute. In fact, it’s not proven by you or believed by anyone who takes the history of that era seriously. The links I provide show that. If he was a “registered Republican”, where is the evidence of registration? Such things can be found from party membership rolls, voter registration records, voting records in political primaries, etc., not to mention the man’s own words, if he commented on that. In other words, from independent sources that are generally considered by serious people to act as historical evidence – which you don’t have. Argument by assertion may be a lot of fun, but it isn’t provision of proof. Show us some links to evidence to support your point. If all you can come up with is the claims of his niece, you got nothing.
I love how you are pwning these right wing mouth breathers.
The above was not Houston Steven.
You truly are dumber than a bag of rocks.