The first family gathers at the foot of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial during Sunday's dedication. (The Associated Press)
WASHINGTON – For many who helped dedicate the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on Sunday, the towering granite monument is a stark reminder that the civil rights leader's dream of social and economic justice has yet to be realized.
"Economic justice" — what exactly does that mean? The only agent preventing individuals from capitalizing on their capital is the state, which induces people to be dependent. We cannot comfort ourselves with blaming Big Banks and Wall Street. Free market mechanisms are swifter and more efficient when punishing fraud and deceit in the marketplace.
In many ways, the ceremony was a passing of the torch to a younger generation with speeches marked by fierce rhetoric over the nation's economic disparities.
Economic disparities implies that there are "haves"and "have-nots", and those categories do not change. Income brackets are not people, though. Those earning a commensurate income of $20,000 per annum tend to ascend in income over time. Statistics fail to communicate this mobility.
Thousands gathered at the memorial site, some as early as 5 a.m., to hear President Barack Obama, King's children and other civil rights leaders. Speaker after speaker invoked King's "I Have a Dream" speech from 1963 to challenge others to carry on his fight.
"I Have a Dream" was stirring rhetoric, followed by nonviolent action throughout the South. How unfortunate that for many minorities, the way to freedom and prosperity has now been taken over by the government. President Obama has a dream, a Progressive Paradise in which effect elites beyond the reach of the voting masses make all the decisions,
"Yes, my father had a dream. It was a dream, he said, that was deeply embedded in the American dream," said King's son Martin Luther King III. "The problem is the American dream of 50 years ago … has turned into a nightmare for millions" who have lost their jobs and homes.
"The American Dream" was never Martin Luther King's Dream, one in which every member of the human race would come together in caring comity. In no way can a society transform natural prejudice into supernatural openness. We will ever maintain inner prejudices, but an educated mind can resist falling for them. Yet we must give up the notion that every one of us can become pure and ideal in our appraisals of each other.
The nation has "lost its soul," he said, when it tolerates such vast economic disparities, teen bullying, and having more people of color in prison than in college.
The engine of economic growth is not the soul of any nation. Nation-states are defined by force and politics, neither of which can effect economic growth. Individuals freely exchanging a scarcity of goods for needed resources cannot be coerced into fair trade.
His sister, the Rev. Bernice King, reminded the crowd that just before her father's assassination in 1968, he was mobilizing a poor people's campaign to occupy the nation's capital until the economic system changed.
If civil rights activists really want to help the poor, they would get our of the way and let people march to their jobs, instead of marching on Wall Street and Washington and demanding more of other people's money.
She said the postponement of an earlier dedication because of Hurricane Irene that was planned on Aug. 28, the 48th anniversary
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of her father's "Dream" speech, may have been an act of God.
It is shocking how glibly vain spokesmen will invoke the Almighty in order to justify their own whims. Political realities cannot be conjoined with theological verities. Such are the stuff of oppressive theocracies. Spiritual matters must forever remain personal, unique, and individual. Let no man, no matter how religious, claim to speak for God or the masses in matters political.
"Perhaps the postponement was a divine interruption to remind us of a King that moved us beyond the dream of racial justice to the action and work of economic justice," she said. "Perhaps God wanted us to move beyond the `dream' into action."
Racial and economic justice are both dreams, if they are hatched in the minds of collective actors. Economics can never be fair; good trade is a win for both parties, a "double-thank you", otherwise there would be not trade in the first place.
Racial justice is a myth in that race itself is a myth. A human being in himself is too diverse to be defined by a color or even one ethnic group.
Other speakers included union leaders, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who was an aide to King, who urged the crowd to vote for a president who has their interests at heart.
Jesse Jackson is one more slick politician who pretends to care about black people, but like all politicians he is only interested in enhancing his own power and prestige. If minorities want to elect a President with their best interests at heart, let them elected a Tea-Party allied Republican who limited the government and protect our rights and our borders. Individuals of a specific class do not need special treatment from the government. Labels that limit the scope and capacity of individuals necessarily limiter their freedom, preventing them from capitalizing on their skills and dreams. A government that does not care, that does nothing, is the only government with the best interests of every American, black or white.
Actress Cicely Tyson said her contemporaries are passing the fight on to a new generation. She passed the microphone to 12-year-old Amandla Stenberg. The girl recalled learning about the civil rights movement in school and named four young girls killed in a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Ala.
"As Dr. King said at their funeral, `They didn't live long lives, but they lived meaningful lives,"' Amandla said. "I plan to live a meaningful life, too."
Some looked to Obama to carry on King's legacy.
Excellent. Individuals, not races, live meaningful lives, and they do not need the government in order to accomplish this success.
Street vendors nearby sold framed photographs edited to depict King and the nation's first black president conversing together in the Oval Office, along with a wide swath of buttons, posters and other souvenirs showing King and Obama.
When ideology becomes mythology. To think that a Progressive President who will regress the rights and liberties of the American people is positioned side by side with a civil rights leaders, is just unthinkable, if not the height of arrogance and vain historical revisionism.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia said Obama's election was "just a down payment" on King's dream. "We're not there yet," he said.
On the contrary, the GOP has realized the political destinies of many minority candidates, more than the Democratic party, which for years has congratulated itself on corralling the black vote, then taking it for granted.
About 1.5 million people are estimated to have visited the memorial's 30-foot-tall statue of King and its granite walls where 14 of his quotations are carved in stone since it opened in August. The memorial is the first on the National Mall honoring a black leader.
The sculpture of King with his arms crossed appears to emerge from a stone extracted from a mountain. It was carved by Chinese artist Lei Yixin. The design was inspired by a line from the "Dream" speech: "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope."
Obama, who was just 6 years old when King was assassinated, saluted the civil rights icon as a man who pushed the nation toward what it "ought" to be and who changed hearts and minds.
"Ought to be", the central canard of liberalism, how the world "should work." We need fewer people demanding how the world should operate, which only invites government to intervene and discriminate with force.
"He had faith in us," Obama said. "And that is why he belongs on this Mall: Because he saw what we might become.
"As tough as times may be, I know we will overcome," Obama said. "I know there are better days ahead."
We do not need leaders to have faith in "us." A collective focus for faith is not faith at all, but vapid sensationalism cued to flatter the ears of potential voters. Indeed, this nation will overcome, when the nation throws the Vanity-in-Chief out office, and replaces government largesse with constitutional leanness.
The president, who credits King with paving his way to the White House, left a copy of his inaugural speech in a time capsule at the monument earlier in the day.
Many who crowded in to see the president and hear Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder sing chanted "four more years" when Obama arrived. And they said the talk of economic fairness resonated with their own lives.
Does President Obama have no decency? Turning a dedication to a deceased civil rights leader into a political rally to rally his flagging political prospects, is just shameful. This overt act of "Banana Republic" hubris should be enough to dissuade uncommitted voters to send this president packing.
Joyce Lansdown, 61, a retired federal worker from Chantilly, Va., brought her daughter and granddaughter to the ceremony. She was glad Obama and others mentioned the importance of caring for seniors during the economic downturn.
"My heart goes out to them," she said. "My momma is still living on her little Social Security check."
Patricia Johnson, 50, drove with her godfather's granddaughter from Twinsburg, Ohio, to see the president and King's family.
"It seems that President Obama as a young president is following King's footsteps," she said. "I think we can continue to learn a lot from (King's) example."
Her young family friend, 13-year-old Faron Bouldin, wiped tears from her eyes as a recording of King's full "Dream" speech played on large TV screens after Obama spoke.
"It feels really important for me," Bouldin said of King's message.
Elder people living off of Social Security, another misplaced legacy of the New Deal, rendered rampant by the Great (in name only) Society of white liberal maniac Lyndon Johnson. If this country really wants to serve its seniors, it will stop treating them like fools, acknowledge plainly that there is no money for future entitlements, and demand that they act like elders and take less, do more, and thrive as examples of greater independence for the next generation.
Some 10,000 chairs set up in a field near the memorial site were all filled. Many others stood in overflow sections.
The August ceremony when the memorial opened had been expected to draw 250,000, though organizers anticipated about 50,000 for Sunday's event.
Violinist Miri Ben-Ari performed an original composition written for the event and the song "Bus Passed" with spoken word artists Poem-Cees. Poet Nikki Giovanni read her poem "In the Spirit of Martin."
Wonder, Sheryl Crow and James Taylor performed in a concert after the dedication.
The Rev. Al Sharpton called for people from around the world to walk through the stone of hope on the monument.
"When you walk through, you see a man standing in a posture of faith," he said. "Faith that brought us from the back of the bus to the White House."
Faith is the most abused word in the English language, especially from demagoguing preacher who praise God with their lips, but would render everything to Caesar if it meant one more handout.
Before the dedication, the King siblings walked through the memorial plaza with Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and their two daughters.
Bernice King said her family was proud to witness the memorial's dedication and hopes it will spur action to solve the nation's problems.
Echoing her father's words, she told the crowd, "One day we'll all be able to say `Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are all free at last."
Freedom ain't free, nor can a government that gives everything that a citizen wants maintain that freedom.
The Founding Fathers enumerated the dream for every American, one in which their freedom would be protected, not patronized then pulverized by a growing state attempting equality, but enforcing a quiet tyranny that takes away our liberty while expecting us to be thankful for the little security we get in return.