Honoring MLK

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got some difficulties ahead, but it really doesn't matter
with me now because I've been to the mountaintop. I
don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a
long life. Longevity has its place, but I'm not concerned

(00:23):
about that now. I just want to do God's will,
and he is allowed me to go up to the
mountain and I've looked over and I've seen the promised Land.
I may not get there with you, and I want

(00:44):
you to know the night and we have a people
will get to the promised Land. He was ripping there.
He uh, he didn't want to give a speech that
day and he was tired and it just got in
and so they said that there's a lot of people here.
I want to see you. So he came out and
gave that speech about having a long life. And it
was the day before he was shot. So yeah, chillingly prophetic.

(01:08):
It's Martin Luther King Junior's birthday. We got this text,
good morning, gentlemen, and happy MLK day. I woke up
for my seven am math class only order to arrive
to school and realize five minutes before class starts that
there is no school today. But I love listening to
you guys. Yes, well, thank you, my friend a seven
AM class, I would have made that roughly once. I

(01:29):
think in my college career, UM, a lot of stuff
closed today. And the reason I bring that up is
I just I feel like MLK has practically no influence
on America at this point for a variety of reasons. UM.
I think a lot of the Left season has way

(01:49):
too passive and not miltont enough as a way to
UH to try to effect change in the modern world.
And UH and um or I think part of the
problem is he did, especially later in his career, have
some kind of equity ish ideas and proposals definitely redistribution

(02:12):
of wealth and that sort of thing. But his equality
stuff is better known, and so it's tough to use
him as a symbol of UH hitting everybody against each
other in terms of race and redistribution the rest of it,
because he's much better known for you know, the the
I have a dream speech and the content of the character,
et cetera. CNN tweeted tweeted this out. During the nineteen sixties,

(02:34):
King was a very divisive figure. The last gallop pole
to ask about his popularity during his lifetime. Taking a
nineteen sixty six he was killed in sixty eight, found
his unfavorable rating was sixty three. That's a pretty high
unfavorable rating. Um. I'm a big fan of Martin Luther King, Jr.
I've read a lot of books about him. The way

(02:54):
he handled the non violence movement and was patient and
slow and painstakingly used our process and system of government
to affect change. I think is a model for for
anybody who wants to affect change. But um, a lot
of people feel that that's that's not the way to
do it. Jam things down people's throats, or you'd be

(03:14):
more violent to scare people, right, you know, you you
attack them in the restaurant. Um. This out from the
Washington Post. Members of Reverend Martin Luther King Junior's family
demanded today that the Senate scrapped the Philip Buster and
pass voting rights legislation, as they led a DC march
on the holiday honoring the Civil rights Like that's a
stupid idea. Well, some members of his rather large family did.

(03:38):
He's got a handful of you know, offspring and grandchildren
all are quite conservative on that stuff too. So you
pick and choose which relatives of mL King you want
to quote in short, and it's so weird. I can't.
I can't let this go that we have a federal
holiday for a guy the federal government was trying to

(03:59):
destroy at the time of his death. It's just I mean,
do you take that as progressed? Well, it is progress,
I guess, But how do you not mention it? How
would it? Nobody mentions it. Not only does the government
not mention it, but no nobody in the media mentions it.
And why and why why does nobody talk about the
fact the FBI secretly recorded him having sex with other women,

(04:23):
sent the tapes to his home for him and his
wife to see, and sent a letter saying, so do
the right thing and kill yourself, among all the other
things they did trying to ruin him through taxes and
this and that. Um, the federal government was trying to
destroy them, and they wanted him to kill himself. I
think there are a couple of things going on, Number one, especially,
you know, we're distracted by other things, so historical figures

(04:47):
need to be reduced to one thing, like one simple
declarative sentence, and that's it. That's where the story ends.
Nobody has any patience for anything else. Secondly, I think
the idea that well, that was the j grew whoever
FP and that's long gone. The FBI is now just
fine square never makes any mistakes, which of course is ridiculous. Um,
so you got that. Actually, you know the really interesting

(05:11):
aspect of Martin Luther King Jr. Well, one of the
interesting aspects about his career in his life is that
he was an incredibly flawed human being. He was very,
very flawed in a lot of different ways. But a
lot of the work he did was, as Jack described,
incredibly courageous, smart, crazy smart, only not only strategically but

(05:33):
just intellectually, um and patient, even as he had these
terrible personal flaws. And And the reason I bring that up,
and I've I've talked about this for years, just on
it off, because I don't want to borry you. We
want our heroes to be saints and we want our
villains to be entirely evil. I think because that lets

(05:57):
us off the hook du fustlike use a little Doughey,
a little stress from work. Maybe he had a cocktail
last night. And I'm not a hero, I'm not required
to do what's right and what's good in society. That's
for the Saints to do. Are strong and Jetty