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   From: rkoch@banmlkdaycom   
      
   By Marcus Epstein   
   January 18, 2003   
      
   There is probably no greater sacred cow in America than Martin   
   Luther King Jr. The slightest criticism of him or even   
   suggesting that he isn't deserving of a national holiday leads   
   to the usual accusations of racist, fascism, and the rest of the   
   usual left-wing epithets not only from liberals, but also from   
   many ostensible conservatives and libertarians.   
      
   This is amazing because during the 50s and 60s, the Right almost   
   unanimously opposed the civil rights movement. Contrary to the   
   claims of many neocons, the opposition was not limited to the   
   John Birch Society and southern conservatives. It was made by   
   politicians like Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, and in the   
   pages of Modern Age, Human Events, National Review, and the   
   Freeman.   
      
   Today, the official conservative and libertarian movement   
   portrays King as someone on our side who would be fighting Jesse   
   Jackson and Al Sharpton if he were alive. Most all conservative   
   publications and websites have articles around this time of the   
   year praising King and discussing how today's civil rights   
   leaders are betraying his legacy. Jim Powell's otherwise   
   excellent The Triumph of Liberty rates King next to Ludwig von   
   Mises and Albert J. Nock as a libertarian hero. Attend any IHS   
   seminar, and you'll read "A letter from a Birmingham Jail" as a   
   great piece of anti-statist wisdom. The Heritage Foundation   
   regularly has lectures and symposiums honoring his legacy. There   
   are nearly a half dozen neocon and left-libertarian think tanks   
   and legal foundations with names such as "The Center for Equal   
   Opportunity" and the "American Civil Rights Institute" which   
   claim to model themselves after King.   
      
   Why is a man once reviled by the Right now celebrated by it as a   
   hero? The answer partly lies in the fact that the mainstream   
   Right has gradually moved to the left since King's death. The   
   influx of many neoconservative intellectuals, many of whom were   
   involved in the civil rights movement, into the conservative   
   movement also contributes to the King phenomenon. This does not   
   fully explain the picture, because on many issues King was far   
   to the left of even the neoconservatives, and many King admirers   
   even claim to adhere to principles like freedom of association   
   and federalism. The main reason is that they have created a   
   mythical Martin Luther King Jr., that they constructed solely   
   from one line in his "I Have a Dream" speech.   
      
   In this article, I will try to dispel the major myths that the   
   conservative movement has about King. I found a good deal of the   
   information for this piece in I May Not Get There With You: The   
   True Martin Luther King by black leftist Michael Eric Dyson.   
   Dyson shows that King supported black power, reparations,   
   affirmative action, and socialism. He believes this made King   
   even more admirable. He also deals frankly with King's   
   philandering and plagiarism, though he excuses them. If you   
   don't mind reading his long discussions about gangsta rap and   
   the like, I strongly recommend this book.   
      
   Myth #1: King wanted only equal rights, not special privileges   
   and would have opposed affirmative action, quotas, reparations,   
   and the other policies pursued by today's civil rights   
   leadership.   
      
   This is probably the most repeated myth about King. Writing on   
   National Review Online, There Heritage Foundation's Matthew   
   Spalding wrote a piece entitled "Martin Luther King's   
   Conservative Mind," where he wrote, "An agenda that advocates   
   quotas, counting by race and set-asides takes us away from   
   King’s vision."   
      
   The problem with this view is that King openly advocated quotas   
   and racial set-asides. He wrote that the "Negro today is not   
   struggling for some abstract, vague rights, but for concrete   
   improvement in his way of life." When equal opportunity laws   
   failed to achieve this, King looked for other ways. In his book   
   Where Do We Go From Here, he suggested that "A society that has   
   done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years   
   must now do something special for him, to equip him to compete   
   on a just and equal basis." To do this he expressed support for   
   quotas. In a 1968 Playboy interview, he said, “If a city has a   
   30% Negro population, then it is logical to assume that Negroes   
   should have at least 30% of the jobs in any particular company,   
   and jobs in all categories rather than only in menial areas.”   
   King was more than just talk in this regard. Working through his   
   Operation Breadbasket, King threatened boycotts of businesses   
   that did not hire blacks in proportion to their population.   
      
   King was even an early proponent of reparations. In his 1964   
   book, Why We Can't Wait, he wrote,   
      
   No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the   
   exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down   
   through the centuries…Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages.   
   The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the   
   appropriation of a the labor of one human being by another. This   
   law should be made to apply for American Negroes. The payment   
   should be in the form of a massive program by the government of   
   special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a   
   settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common   
   law.   
      
   Predicting that critics would note that many whites were equally   
   disadvantaged, King claimed that his program, which he called   
   the "Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged" would help poor   
   whites as well. This is because once the blacks received   
   reparations, the poor whites would realize that their real enemy   
   was rich whites.   
      
   Myth # 2: King was an American patriot, who tried to get   
   Americans to live up to their founding ideals.   
      
   In National Review, Roger Clegg wrote that "There may have been   
   a brief moment when there existed something of a national   
   consensus – a shared vision eloquently articulated in Martin   
   Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, with deep roots in   
   the American Creed, distilled in our national motto, E pluribus   
   unum. Most Americans still share it, but by no means all." Many   
   other conservatives have embraced this idea of an American Creed   
   that built upon Jefferson and Lincoln, and was then fulfilled by   
   King and libertarians like Clint Bolick and neocons like Bill   
   Bennett.   
      
   Despite his constant invocations of the Declaration of   
   Independence, King did not have much pride in America's   
   founding. He believed "our nation was born in genocide," and   
   claimed that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution   
   were meaningless for blacks because they were written by slave   
   owners.   
      
   Myth # 3: King was a Christian activist whose struggle for civil   
   rights is similar to the battles fought by the Christian Right   
   today.   
      
   Ralph Reed claims that King's "indispensable genius" provided   
   "the vision and leadership that renewed and made crystal clear   
   the vital connection between religion and politics." He proudly   
   admitted that the Christian Coalition "adopted many elements of   
      
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