Essay on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Essay on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. January 21, 2013 By Tim Krenz On a designated day every January, America honors the birth of an outstanding person in our history. As America torments itself in the recent years past and in 2013, divided over fiscal and monetary policy and wars overseas (our own and that of others), and as every divisive social and cultural issue under our constitution begs answers to unthinkable questions, we can reflect on this remembered day the gifts of vision, leadership, and the dream of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. America's political dialogue fractures by the counting minute, and we split further beyond the “reds” and the “blues,” into numerous sub-factions against the “other sides,” and argue about the demerits of some other group's position, with seemingly few definitions of merit for anyone's “our side.” We also, this year, 2013, on January the twenty-first, inaugurate a president who personally symbolizes both achievement and failure, depending upon which side any one person believes he or she stands. In this confused medley of all that separates people, over yesterdays, today, and over all tomorrows, one nation struggles to believe in itself and the American dream. Neither side of any debate owns the absolute right or wrong, but perhaps some ownership of both of them—some of it right, but may be most of it wrong. Nary might a few people have all the correct or even rational answers, many asking the wrong questions in the first place. Dr. King met both the internal and external divisions of his public and private life, and he still unified himself on the inside, despite the normal human contradictions possessed by every adult throughout history. His profound vision, and all it meant and continues to mean, implies a unity of humanity, tolerance, self-respect, and dignified action toward our brothers and sisters—regardless of age, race, class, or spiritual depth of conviction (or its shallowness). He became a martyr because his preachings and his work in action, to overcome intolerance and hate, threatened the existence of the savage power of intolerance and hate. Those harboring the ill-intents and evils will always abuse them to maintain their world-view, and their delusions. For this vision, beyond the end of a legal, though immoral and unlawful, racial segregation in America, Dr. King pursued the natural right of all people to seek and obtain justice, and not just for African-Americans, but even for the working poor and other dis-empowered Caucasian-Americans. Such justice, as Dr. King envisioned it, included the right to earn wages fairly, and too eat that sacred bread of their own labor. As he saw it, and preached it, Dr. King believed that justice required all people to have the opportunity for education, and the means to personal and social progress, without discrimination, through their hard work and investment in a personal future. In the vision for justice, to free people from the violence of segregation and corruption at home, Dr. King fought against (without judgment of his right or wrong on the matter) all forms of violence in the world. While a controversial socialist in politics and an anti-imperialist in economics, he also opposed the United States' policies quite early in the Vietnam War. Dr. King's vision of justice had, and still retains, merit on the principles for which he lived, and those principles for which he struggled, inside and outside his personal life (as everyone does, quite humanly). Although Dr. King ultimately failed to disarm the dangers of the last assassin who tried to murder him, a death which vaulted him to a power-mythical martyrdom, Dr. King's leadership to obtain justice for all humanity, poor or rich, stood solidly on the paradigm of non-violence: The ends of peace on earth demanded the strongest moral and courageous commitment to fight for it without creating the greater hate and harm caused by violent aggression. Maintaining a firm and brave discipline in the eye of those using violence against them, those followers of Dr. King's personal and dynamic leadership rarely retreated nor often flinched from the one underlying commitment of Dr. King's: That highest commandment in nature which orders all to love the neighbor and the enemy, in the name of the higher god of our faith, and in the end, to forgive others who do wrong against them. The action of non-violence meant assertive and moral statements of words, but mostly actions, to prove or persuade the full measure of humanity in all of us, that we must not allow wrong or evil to continue or even to exist. The philosophy of non-violence and peaceful protest could only work, as much as it did, and would only work in the future, if tolerance, godly love for our brothers and sisters under that god, and allowing everyone their dignity and self-respect became the core journeys in our lives. Only individuals can judge themselves whether their material or base instincts have served or mis-served them in their lives. Either way, Dr. King led a generation to think about so much more than here or the hereafter. Finally, everyone knows the dream. Knowing how Dr. King lived publicly, talked openly, and suffered greatly, he died believing in his dream. The generations then and since cannot remember but with horror how his important life ended. To his dream, someday, the world may still attain. To the dream of all living, to the lives full loving, to a living, loving spirit of our faith, humanity must at least maintain the faith, our faith, but with his faith unique among few in history to have such impact. The dream lives in our present and our future, as people have tried to live it in the past. Merit of character in each of us can determine our own conscience; and self-respecting judgment earns the values of justice, peace, and the love we create—in our own souls, and for others. In peace and goodness, and among the harmony of nature and nature's binding laws, remember the day we honor for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.