#5333 Im generally sort of skeptical of much, but not all, of whats come to be known as the SJW agenda. But, every so often, I get this haunting feeling in my mind that because Im dubious about much of the rhetoric I commonly hear at this school by those most vocal, I would have been on the Bull Connor side of the country in 1964. So last night I went back and read the I Have a Dream Speech and I was re-assured that I indeed found it beautiful, inspirational, and moving. At least one big and important difference between the ideas of that speech and a lot of what I hear from todays campus activists has to do with how just the American system in the ideal case is. Martin Luther King speaks of a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir contained within the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. But, for him, American society had defaulted on part of that check -- the part that was owed to black people. The fundamental injustice, as MLK understands it, is not the American system itself, but the fact that so many had been left out of that system. So while he was calling for a revolution of a kind, it was a very peculiar type of revolution. Its not clear to me that our campus activists would agree with that part of MLKs analysis, and thats what worries me. When I hear that fundamental structures need to be overturned because our country is one built on chattel slavery, I get the sense that what the activists want is not simply the full inclusion of blacks in the proposition that all men are created equal. I also think its at least a slight misunderstanding of the American founding, and certainly with American history regarding the Civil War. Im not sure exactly where this leaves me, but one rule that Ive come to believe in is this: you have to judge an activist not merely by what they are against. We share the things we are against. But I think the rich traditions of American liberty, even though they havent always been applied well, are broad enough to right these wrongs, so long as we come to truly cherish them.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 06:48:54 +0000
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