Well, I guess we will have to agree to disagree over Dr King’s views on non-violence. To me, his writings on this were pretty clear, and actually defined him in a very fundamental way. Those were just a few quotes I listed, but you can find hundreds more just like those thoughout his works. Again, show me where he ever said that violence itself in not the evil humankind is fighting against.

I do have to take to task again the way the Righties use these extreme hypotheticals to justify whatever they want to do. To equate “not standing by while your daughter is being killed right in front of your eyes” with invading a country that never attacked us is ludicrous. Of course Dr King would try to shield his daughter from harm if the planets alligned just right so that he somehow found himself in that situation. But getting between your daughter and some would-be killers in some wildly concocted scenario does not undermine your commitment to non-violent means in resolving world conflicts. Again, I think Dr King’s committemnt to non-violence was sacrosanct.

Further, I believe Dr King would have opposed this Iraq misadventure for many other reasons that don’t even have anything to do with non-violence. You don’t have to be a pacificist to call the wisdom and morality of this war into question.

Finally, I believe Dr King’s pacificist philosophies and opposition to the war would have earned him a full fledged smear campaign from the White House. There are too many examples of how this White House deals with its critics to not think that Dr King would have been targeted in the most vicious and underhanded way.

Well here’s the central problem. Or at least one of them. Dr. King’s views are not always in line with the Bible, even though he was a Baptist minister. The Bible does not teach that violence in and of itself is evil. It depends. The Bible does not condone allowing an evil aggressor to take the life that God has given you. You can defend yourself, and that MAY involve violence.

The other problem is that I do remember reading of how Dr. King himself allowed that it was allowable (in the case of a Hitler) to use force (i.e. violence) to stop such a person. I don’t have an exact quote in front of me, but I do remember this. Either way, once again, I do not believe Dr. King would have stood idly by and watch one of his kids being attacked. Suffering violence in a general sense is one thing…allowing someone to kill your child right in front of you is another. I would do whatever it took to stop the person (as a normally peaceful Christian) and I have no doubt Dr. King would have used violence in such a situation.

Now whether or not this proves Dr. King would advocate war in this day and age is debatable. I for one do not believe ALL war is wrong. It depends. If we were suddenly attacked in the US and planes started dropping men down who were killing people unless they defended themselves, there would be absolutely nothing wrong with defending my life. This is not some “extreme” hypothetical case, and neither is the other I mentioned. These are entirely plausible and reasonable.

The problem is that some people seem to think ALL violence and all war is wrong or evil, and that simply cannot be the case. If that’s the case, then we should get rid of police and armed forces. Let’s see how long society stays together without the “violence” they sometimes must use to protect and serve. As one who has read many of Dr. King’s books and read parts of all of them, I know he was smarter than to think that all violence is somehow evil. The quotations you posted, though very nice, were said within a certain historical context and cannot be used as some across-the-board, sweeping pronouncement about Dr. King’s views on violence.

As a Baptist minister, Dr. King surely understood the principle of self defence taught by the book of Esther. He was not an advocate for suicide in the face of an unjust oppressor, although to some it seemed like it. I think you need to study Dr. King’s work more thoroughly in the context of who he was and how his theology shaped his sociology.

Or to put it another way:

*Bush believes in using violence to fight against evil. Dr King believed that violence itself IS the evil – it is the evil that lurks in all of us, and we must reject it.*

Those are two very, very different world-views. Now, again, believe whatever you want about Bush. But lets be clear that Dr King and Mr Bush would certainly have been on opposing sides of most of the central issues of Bush’s presidency, particularly those with regards to how to respond effectively to al-qaeda.

That does not necessarily make Dr King a liberal. Unfortunately, liberals are not pacifists!

A point I would like to make is that when I use terms like “moral” I’m not speaking in a fundamentalist Christian context.

I am on the right, yes – but in no way a bible thumper.

later.

“And one more thing on that issue of Dr. King’s “non-violence” stance. All violence is not evil, as I believe even Dr. King realized. If a man was trying to kill one of his daughters right in front of him, I’m sure he would not have sat idly by and let that happen “non-violently.” It would be ludicrous to even propose such a thing. So even here we have to realize that Dr. King’s stand doesn’t necessarily fit the liberal spin people may like to place on it.”

No, I’m sorry, but you are wrong about Dr King’s views on non-violence. He never made exceptions for when violence is “OK”. In fact, he counseled that the more violent those are unto you, the more you should resist the temptation to be violent in response. Dr King did not have to imagine violence against him – he and his followers suffered violence perpetrated against them and their families every day. And through it all he always counseled that no matter what the other side does to you, do not raise a hand in violence. I defy you to find one single quote from him where he sees violence as justified. Again, Dr King made it very clear, in no uncertain words and over and over again: humankind must “overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.”

This has nothing to do with “liberal spin”. Don’t believe me or what any liberal tells you. Go and read Dr King’s words yourself.

If you blindly want to believe that anything said against Bush is a lie, fine – that’s your choice. But lets get this clear: Bush and his retribution-minded followers believe in combatting violence with violence, and in using war to spread “peace and democracy”. I am sure you yourself would admit that. Dr King, in stark contrast, believed very fundamentally that non-violence was the ONLY way to fight violence, and that responding to violence with more violence is a self-defeating fool’s mission.

Why is that you conservatives always imagine some extreme, hypothetical situation to justify abusive violence? The Bushies justify torture by saying things like “well, if we had a terorist in our custody, and he knew where an nuclear weapon was about to explode in an American city, shouldn’t we be able tro use torture as a last resort to save millions of people?” So absurd. And here you are following that same rhetorical pattern: “if some one was about to murder your wife, would you just stand by?” – and then use this extreme hypothetical to conclude that King must not have really advocated a strategy of non-violence. That’s quite an interesting way of reasoning.

For example, years ago, when Bush Jr. first ran for office, I received an email stating that Bush was trying to close all the historically black colleges in Texas. That seemed rather strange to me (especially in an election year), and so I actually CONTACTED each college mentioned in the email and asked if they were closing. Guess what?

They weren’t. And it was obvious to me that someone was lying (and was stupid enough to name the colleges that could be checked for verification) in order to keep black people and people sympathetic to our causes from voting for him. Ever since then, I decided that I will no longer blindly accept either negative or positive assertions made about people.

I’m tired of the rhetoric. Bush is no king. He was elected. We have a House and Senate and Supreme Court. Those who fight in wars in the US VOLUNTEER to enter the services. They were not forced. We did not attack Iraq and Afganistan before 911. WE were attacked. Thousands of OUR people were killed for no good reason. If you want to talk about “horrors” of Bush and “Co,” then I submit to you Bush is a saint compared to Saddam, Al-queda, Osama and others of the like.

Michael Moore and his deceptive and disinformation filled movie did not fool those of us who are diligent enough to determine what’s true and what’s false. The Bush-bashing rhetoric simply won’t fly with me.

And one more thing on that issue of Dr. King’s “non-violence” stance. All violence is not evil, as I believe even Dr. King realized. If a man was trying to kill one of his daughters right in front of him, I’m sure he would not have sat idly by and let that happen “non-violently.” It would be ludicrous to even propose such a thing. So even here we have to realize that Dr. King’s stand doesn’t necessarily fit the liberal spin people may like to place on it.

I would agree that I don’t think you can conveniently pidgeon-hole Dr King into categories of right or left, Democrat or Republican. He was a complex man for whom such political labels meant little.

While I think it is going to far to say Dr King would somehow hate Republicans, and love everything liberals do, I do think his writings indicate that he’d have been appalled at the aggression of the neo-cons running the country at the moment, who are neither Christian nor conservative. As an article of faith and a matter of effective political strategy, Dr King was an avowed disciple of non-violence – the kind of non-violence that allowed a skinny little man to bring down the mightiest empire, and allowed Dr King to transform American society.

“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” -MLK

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” -MLK

“The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.” -MLK

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” -MLK

No, I don’t think Bush (the classically misguided man armed with a fist full of guided missles) and Dr King would have seen eye to eye on many things. By now, Dr King would have been condemend by the neo-con Right as a traitor and an al-qaeda sympathizer, would have had his phones tapped (again), and would have had his character smeared by Karl Rove and his minions. In a way, I am glad he is not here today to witness – and be a target of – the horrors of BushCo. But no one around today would have stood up as mightly against the siren song of the Bushoviks’ self-serving “war on evil.” I miss MLK’s ferocious sensibility.

Again, my point was to knock down the simplistic meme that crime and immorality “is the fruit of liberal thinking”. I think your own most recent post demonstrates that things are far more complex than that.

Zooming in on a particular crime or immoral act that happened in Massachussetts say, or any other place, isn’t very instructive. Immorality happens everywhere, which is precisely my point, and why it is kind of silly to say it is due to a particular political philosophy. More instructive is to get a broad, general sense of where crimes and immoral activities are happening more, and where less. When you do that, your notion of “liberalism leads to immoral acts” doesn’t generally jive with the data.

By grasping at the example of New York, you seem to think Giuliani did it all by himself. Of course Giuliani deserves a lot of credit, but you conveniently seem to forget that his tenure largely coincided with President Clinton’s, during which time crime stats across the nation plummetted. NY was the beneficiary of a lot of federal programs aimed at alleviating poverty, getting people off welfare and back to work. And NY benefitted during this time from national economic policies that rewarded working people instead of pinching them. What turned NY around was a combination of ideas from all portions of the political spectrum, from Giuliani’s great leadership and “get tough” style, and from the great (and mostly liberal) citizens of that city.

It is a shame that things are so polarized today that such solutions that draw from the best of all worlds are no longer contemplated. There was a time when liberals and conservatives could work together and made great things happen. Now conservatives see liberals as the cause of crime and immorality. The conservatives have been successful recently at grabbing all the power for themselves, but I don’t think that we are a better or more moral nation because of it.

“As for abortion, the rates will of course be higher if you are part of a community in which morality and abstinence is practiced – but that sure doesn’t make that community less healthy. Whereas if you are part of a community in which sex is considered a hobby or recreation, you learn all the tricks of the trade … condoms, pills and whatever else you need to avoid getting pregnant. But to leap to the assumption that a community is less moral and less wholesome because it shows higher abortion stats within a certain demographic is fallacious.”

Forgive me, but I’m a little confused by this portion of your post. Are you actually admitting that abortion rates are higher in communities where abstinence is promoted? Conversely, you seem to be saying that communities less restrictive of sex have less abortions. I couldn’t think of a better reason to support more open dialogue about sex, and to do so free of religious condemnations. Which is the greater sin? Having sex, or having abortions? Can’t it be said, then, that your “get tough” morality-police mindset contributes to more abortions?

I’d partuclarly like to hone in the last sentence of that paragraph: “But to leap to the assumption that a community is less moral and less wholesome because it shows higher abortion stats within a certain demographic is fallacious.” No Aidan, it is not I who have leapt to that assumption. It is the religious right who makes that case, over and over again. They just seem to ignore the stats.

Finally, I’d like to address this: “A cursory look at activities in Hollywood, a glance at Heidi Fleiss’s diary would undoubtedly yield a sizable entry on the left…” Of course it would – undoubtedly. But that doesn’t address my point. Your thesis was that liberalism leads to immorality – that immorality, in your words, is “the fruit of liberal thinking”. But if that is true, then why are the leading voices of social conservatism engaging in so many immoral acts? Shouldn’t they be mostly free of such immorality? Yes, yes, I know that nobody is entirely free of sin. But you’d expect these guys, by your thesis, to be less sinful than their liberal counterparts. That clearly isn’t the case, and it isn’t just limited to Rush and O’Reilly. I gave lots of other examples, and can give more. Again, I ask you, if immorality is the fruit of liberal thinking, then why are the least liberally minded among us so utterly and frequently immoral? Are they closet liberals perhaps?

Anyway, Aidan, perhaps you and I should open a “Crossfire”-type blog together where we got at it from the left and right. LaShawn has been very gracious to let us debate here. (By the way, LaShawn, I do in fact read your posts carefully…)

I also would like to say that I agree for the most part with the comments of “Aidan Maconachy.” Jesus was indeed no liberal, and as a Jew who followed the law, saying He was “mum” on homosexuality is like saying He was “mum” on Levitical law. But I would also add that true Christianity isn’t necessarily about “rights” or “responsibility” but about relationship – relationship with God and fellow human beings.

This nonsensical idea that Dr. King would not have had anything in common with conservative Christians today or Republicans is absurd.

It really shows me the depth of ignorance of Dr. King’s own writings when people try to argue, for example, that he would have supported “abortion rights.” Perhaps these folks should read Dr. King’s book “Strength to Love,” in which he pointed out how the influence of Christianity put an end to the horrible infanticide of the Roman Empire.

The liberals in Congress wanted to smear Alito by trying to call him a racist to protect Roe. But the facts say otherwise, and it amazes me how conveniently gullible some folks can be.

When it comes to Republicans, let us not forget that this was Lincoln’s party, which helped free the slaves. And we can’t forget that it was a Republican President that signed the King holiday into law. The extremes to which some liberal folks will go to in order to distort the truth is amazing. We must be cautious of going to far to the left or right, and we all need to seek truth even if that truth is disagreeable to us.

As for sister Coretta…may she rest in peace and may God help us all to stand strong for truth and justice as her and her husband did.

Massachussetts is the state where a judge recently gave a sentence of sixty days to a child molester. I believe he backed off this after heat from conservative media got involved. I guess if you don’t prosecute this stuff adequately or even report it, we are talking about sub-cultures of “permission”. If you are soft on crime you’re not going to garner statistics. Simple as that.

I have a liberal arts background and when I was at University I hung with people who I guess you could call “liberal types”. In that environment there was a tolerance for a lot of stuff that simply never got reported. Everything from drug use, to sexual preferences and petty crime. Some of these folks had the view that the corporate, governmental domain was “the enemy” and it could be played at will. It’s a type of psychology that doesn’t take issues to the authorities. A lot of crap gets incubated and denied.

The city that undermines your entire thesis is the most watched and monitored city on the continent when it comes to crime stats – New York.

When Rudi Guiliani took over the mayor’s chair New York was in deep trouble. In 1993 when Dinkins – a Democrat – was mayor, things were spinning out of control. Crime was rampant, street people everywhere “earning” a so-called street tax … squeegee hoodlums strong armed motorists at traffic lights etc etc.

When Rudi moved with NYPD commissioner, Bill Bratton, to crack down on everything from broken windows to graffiti to turnstile jumping – liberals went ballistic. There were street demos and an orchestrated effort to demonize Rudi, who they referred to without embarrassment as “a nazi”. Yet with conservative policies of law and order and policies of fiscal constraint, there was a dramatic turnaround that many described as miraculous. New York became a model city – light years removed from the urban disaster area it was fast becoming.

Let’s look at the New York experiment from a sociological point of view. If as you argue, a liberal and “inclusive” approach does indeed improve the quality of people’s lives and leads to less, rather than more crime, how come it was headed downhill? Why doesn’t your red state criticism hold true? Why did the city go to hell in a handbasket when this was the prevailing philosophy?

Let’s go from the macro city model to something more localized. Here in Ontario, in common with many cities in the U.S., the state school system has many deep seated and systemic problems that are not simply funding related. We get frequent reports via the Toronto Star of kids being shot in and around school grounds. The burn out rate for teachers is very high, especially in urban areas. I know about some of this, in part because my wife is a high school teacher.

Just recently in the Toronto there was a case of a young girl who had been systematically sexually assaulted in school for months on end. The assailants were part of a loose knit gang. She was too afraid to report it for fear of being disbelieved and ridiculed. The liberal ethic with respect PC correctness has made discipline a tricky business. Even when you can finger the perps and have the evidence it doesn’t get any easier. When these youths were finally apprehended their families called racism. No doubt legal battles and all kinds of messiness is pending. No wonder people prefer to cover it up and live in denial.

Sticking with my example, a school can be incubating a legion of serious problems and if there is no will to address them, they won’t surface. Liberal culture can run a denial game like there is no tomorrow. It is actually amazing to watch. The window dressing is everything. Keep up the front at all costs.

Look at Detroit. Arguably one of the most liberal cities in the USA. Also one of the highest
on the crime roster right across the board.

Liberals famously point to the NRA and conservatives as the culprits who uphold a culture of gun crime. This is false. Most registered gun owners are law abiding. Murders aren’t committed by conservative gangs roaming around and terrorizing neighborhoods, but by youths who are “cool” and “hip” … gangstas who flaunt authority and celebrate the great liberal virtue of “doing their own thing”.

Toronto lately has been plagued with gang murders. It’s like a cancer and seems beyond solution. Now Canadians have booted out the Liberals and elected a Conservative government, and Stephen Harper our new PM has vowed a crack down on this phenomena.

As for abortion, the rates will of course be higher if you are part of a community in which morality and abstinence is practiced – but that sure doesn’t make that community less healthy. Whereas if you are part of a community in which sex is considered a hobby or recreation, you learn all the tricks of the trade … condoms, pills and whatever else you need to avoid getting pregnant. But to leap to the assumption that a community is less moral and less wholesome because it shows higher abortion stats within a certain demographic is fallacious.

We constantly hear instances in the news about liberal jurisdictions that are soft on crime. I think a culture lies behind the stats that basically has a tolerance for certain types of behavior, and so this stuff never makes into the public arena.

As for media personalities. Really I’m tiring of hearing the old O’Reilly and Rush canards. If you want to start the name game I would probably run out of cyber space. A cursory look at activities in Hollywood, a glance at Heidi Fleiss’s diary would undoubtedly yield a sizable entry on the left that would make the right column seem kind of sparse.

We could labor these examples interminably. My main point to you is that when we look behind the surface – as happened in new York, as should happen in Detroit, as needs to happen in Toronto, you will find deep rooted and systemic problems. By the way the liberal regime in the city hall in Toronto isn’t doing much better than Dinkins did in NY. As the school analogy demonstrates, spin and denial can nix any accurate fact finding or statistical report. If problems are hidden, aren’t addressed, tolerated … they won’t show on the radar.

From that point of view it’s entirely possible that states showing higher stats are actually doing a better job on crime and flushing it out.

What you see, isn’t always what you get.

you say: “When I look around I see a moral wasteland. I see kids bringing guns into schools … all types of psycho-emotional disorders … drug addiction, broken marriages … pornography … all this is the fruit of liberal thinking i.e. misplaced idealism, failed policies and the undermining of authority.”

But, Aidan, all of these evils you see are happening at a much higher rate in conservative, “Bible-belt” states than they are in the more liberal states. You mention broken marriage, for example. Which state has the highest divorce rate? Marriage was a key issue in the last election, with Massachusetts’ gay marriages becoming a symbol of alleged blue state decadence and moral decay. But in actual fact, Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country at 2.4 divorces per 1,000 inhabitants. Texas, which sought to ban gay marriage, has a divorce rate of 4.1. A fluke? Not at all. The states with the highest divorce rates in the U.S. are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. And the states with the lowest divorce rates are: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Every single one of the high divorce rate states are conservative ones that went for Bush. Every single one of the low divorce rate states went for Kerry. The Bible Belt divorce rate, in fact, is roughly 50 percent higher than the national average.

Jesus, after all, was mum on the subject of homosexuality, but was very clear about divorce, declaring it a sin unless adultery was involved.

Or take abortion. America is one of the few Western countries where the legality of abortion is still ferociously disputed. It’s a country where the religious right is arguably the strongest single voting bloc, and in which abortion is a constant feature of cultural politics. Compare it to a country like Holland, perhaps the epitome of socially liberal, relativist liberalism. So which country has the highest rate of abortion? It’s not even close. America has an abortion rate of 21 abortions per 1,000 women aged between 15 and 44. Holland has a rate of 6.8. Americans, in other words, have three times as many abortions as the Dutch. Remind me again: which country is the most socially conservative?

Be it drug abuse, welfare abuse, or pornography, or any other of your social evils, the pattern is consistent: the highest rates occur in the most socially conservative, Christian-leaning parts of the country, and the lowest rates occur in the more liberal and secular parts of the country.

Even a cursory look at the leading members of the forces of social conservatism in America reveals the same pattern. The top conservative talk-radio host, Rush Limbaugh, has had three divorces and an addiction to pain-killers. The most popular conservative television personality, Bill O’Reilly, just settled a sex harassment suit that indicated a highly active adulterous sex life. Bill Bennett, the guru of the social right, was for many years a gambling addict. Karl Rove’s chief outreach manager to conservative Catholics for the last four years, Deal Hudson, also turned out to be a man with a history of sexual harassment. Bob Barr, the conservative Georgian congressman who wrote the “Defense of Marriage Act,” has had three wives so far. The states which register the highest ratings for the hot new television show, “Desperate Housewives,” are all Bush-states.

So my question to you is this: If all the moral decay in this country “is the fruit of liberal thinking”, then why is most of the immorality happening in conservative areas, and less in the more liberal areas of the country?

I am not a fundamentalist Christian or even a practicing Christian.