fiftythree

THOUGHTFULLY DRIVING THE PORCELAIN BUS

A Column by John S Schroeder

2/1/03, Author's Note: Other commitments this day prevent me from writing extensively. Our country stands perilously close to war. We must pray long and hard for those whose direct efforts will engage in that war. There are many who think war is not an option. They are the same bunch that never spank their kids. Look at the self-indulgent individuals that pass for citizens today and you will see where that has gotten us. In world events the bad actors play with poison gas and nuclear bombs. The consequences of not "spanking" them are too horrific to contemplate. I think I will be writing more about this in the weeks to come.

January 25, 2003

This week we will be short. Last Monday was the newest of our national holidays commemorating the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King was, in my never to be humble opinion, the greatest American orator of the last century. Oratory is a dying art with few great practitioners to begin with. Aside from Dr. King, Winston Churchill was the only other great one in the 20^th century.

Dr. King is also a controversial character. Many people feel like he did irreparable harm to America in his efforts to end segregation. I do not think so. I have read much of what Dr. King said and wrote, and I have heard some of his speeches. While I will agree that much of what the civil rights movement has become is not good for the country, Dr. King's vision was a pure and beautiful thing that could harm no one. For evidence you need look no further than the fact that in recent years he has been attacked from both ends of the political spectrum as a hypocrite because of his marital infidelities. All men are flawed, as was Dr. King, but this flaw does not diminish the beauty of his vision.

Lest any of my liberal friends point out the attack on Clinton because of sexual matters, I would remind them that former (thankfully) President Clinton's real problems were not in his infidelity, but in his lying about it, not only to his wife, but under oath in a court of law.

And since the name Clinton has come up, please consider the following excerpt from the New York Sun newspaper this last Tuesday:
Senator Clinton took aim at the White House yesterday in the new national battle over affirmative action.

Mrs. Clinton marked Martin Luther King Day at Trinity Baptist Church in the Bronx, where she brought parishioners to their feet with criticism of the Bush administration and news that she would join a friend-of-the-court brief with Senate leaders in support of the University of Michigan's affirmative action policy.

Lawyers will challenge the constitutionality of the university's affirmative action policy before the court in late March or early April. The case has taken center stage in a dispute between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives.

President Bush said last week he would ask the court to ban the practice as unconstitutional in a friend-of-the-ß court brief.

Mrs. Clinton said affirmative action was in keeping with the ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"We are reminded once again by the events of the last year that there are those who don't understand Dr. King's dream and legacy," Mrs. Clinton said. "Yes, we want to be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. But what makes up character?" she said, quoting from Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. "If we don't take race as part of our character, then we are kidding ourselves."
The quote of Hillary Rodham Clinton in that last paragraph is the political equivalent of taking a great piece of painting and shoving it in a jar urine and calling it "art." We will set aside the obvious logical inconsistency within the grammar itself. As I have said, great oratory is rare.

Politics is rarely about the good of the nation and usually about the accumulation of power. The people that exercise political power usually do so not from altruistic motives, but to gain power. If the national good coincides with the path to that power, which it usually does, then everybody is happy. In modern racial politics; however, we have a very different situation. Racial blindness has turned into reverse racism. Segregation has morphed into "preferences." These are not the ideals that started the movement, nor are they the vision of Dr. King.

The junior Senator from New York's remark is; however, so naked, so transparent, and so bold in it's political design that it sets entirely new standards. It is common in politics to claim authority from moral sources that is really not there, but this is very different. This not only claims the authority but also in three short sentences perverts the authority to such a degree as to be contemptible. This is a grammatical twisting worthy of the Great Tempter.

Of course, the sentiment in Ms Clinton's statement has been around for years and is the basis on which all of Affirmative Action has been built. But no one before has every tackled the "I Have a Dream" speech. To this day, most of my lifetime later, I can listen to a tape of that speech, or see a film and I will invariably end up crying. It is one of the most evocative, eloquent, beautiful, and just plain RIGHT speeches ever delivered. Most proponents of Affirmative Action have just sort of ignored the speech; it is simply too powerful to tackle head-on.

This woman's statement reveals that in her world nothing is good, nothing is special, everything is simply fodder for her ambition. On that note I pray for her salvation. But I also pray that the sheer chutzpa necessary to make this statement will reveal to many the do not yet see the perversion that is race relations in this country. Racism cannot die; it is simply a symptom of the state of sin we exist in. The best we can hope for is to remove the official barriers to success for persons of any race. Thankfully segregation is dead. Racial politics should have died with it.

With Love,