Essentially Contested America

As if the state of the economy is not sufficiently dispiriting, the Guardian reports that senior, international, military figures have prepared a manifesto for NATO for the use of “preemptive” nuclear attacks. Consider this report: “The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the ‘imminent’ spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west’s most senior military officers and strategists. . . . Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a ‘grand strategy’ to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a ‘first strike’ nuclear option remains an ‘indispensable instrument’ since there is ’simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world.’” To read on click here.

It’s difficult to appreciate the rationality of this strategy. Are these military strategists so insulated from the rest of society that collateral effects of using nuclear weapons to prevent others from obtaining nuclear weapons is viewed as essential? And even if attacking these nations is appropriate why use nuclear weapons? Moreover, not to be pedantic, but these military wizards are talking about “preventive” attacks, not “preemptive” ones. The former is attacking a country well before there’s the imminent threat of danger, while the latter is taking out a nation, when its planes on revving up on the runway, so to speak. Rather than begin the process of rendering Planet Earth a nuclear-free zone, the prospect of deploying nuclear weapons is discussed recklessly and with impunity. Until we recognize, as we finally did in the Cold War, that nuclear weapons put everyone in jeopardy, even ourselves, the existence of nuclear weapons in the present war on terror will continue to threaten human flourishing. Rather than pursuing the strategic and tactical uses of nuclear weapons in the so-called war on terror, we should immediately revive the process of nuclear disarmament with the ultimate aim of eliminating nuclear weapons entirely.
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Vermont seems to be taking presidential accountability seriously. Consider: “To many, it seemed quixotic, in a season where so much attention is showered on prospective presidents-to-be, to raise flags about a lame duck. . . . But John Nirenberg, who has called for hearings into the conduct of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, with the possibility of impeachment, says rescuing America’s standing in the world demands it. . . . The 60-year-old professor from Brattleboro, Vt. argues that, with a year left in Mr. Bush’s term, there is still time to investigate his conduct of the Iraq war, as well as other issues which have brought criticism against his administration – the outing of a CIA agent, the surveillance of Americans without warrants, and the abuse of detainees. He . . . said he shudders with anger and fear in response to actions and statements, such as a willingness to redefine what is torture and when it can be used, made by Mr. Bush and Cheney: ‘Anger because we have stooped so low, fear because all of what we have cherished as a nation – indeed, all of the great things about the United States that we have shown the world – are being destroyed by the current administration.’ . . . With the White House refusing to turn over documents or testimony in response to Congressional subpoenas, the only weapon in the arsenal of lawmakers seeking accountability, critics say, is impeachment. Yet even before the Democrats officially took back control of Congress and she was elevated to House Speaker in January 2007, Rep. Nancy Pelosi announced that impeachment was “off the table. . . . And so Nirenberg, an Air Force veteran who built a career as a social studies teacher, college professor and organizational consultant, and is a former dean of the School for International Training, decided to take action. To read more click here.

In an unrelated (?) event, “Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont. . . . The Brattleboro Select Board voted 3-2 Friday to put the controversial item on the Town Meeting Day warning. . . . According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy, organizers of the Bush-Cheney issue gathered enough signatures, and it was up to the Select Board whether Brattleboro voters would consider the issue in March. . . . Cappy said residents will get to vote on the matter by paper balloting March 4. . . . Kurt Daims, 54, of Brattleboro, the organizer of the petition drive, said Friday the debate to get the issue on the ballot was a good one. Opposition to the vote focused on whether the town had any power to endorse the matter. For more click here. Vermont, as David, taking on Goliath, our soft dictatorship, and the apathy of the American public regarding its criminal acts, puts the rest of the Union to shame. We can be thankful the Bush-Cheney regime will soon be over, but others are not as fortunate. The tragedy of George W. Bush is chillingly depicted in the following: “It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a tragic waste. But he at least he has a life. There are tens of thousands of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan that stand as stark testaments to his true legacy. If he wants to redeem his time in office he should kneel before one and ask for forgiveness.” The remaining question is how long after Bush-Cheney leave office will America and the world be redeemed and healed.

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Over the course of the last week Democrats must ask themselves whether they want a plural Presidency. Mr. Clinton’s ruthless, even vicious, attacks on Barack Obama; his ubiquitous presence in the campaign; and his arrogant criticism of the media (the content of which is sometimes on target), provides a window into what life will be like under President Hillary Clinton and First Gentleman Bill. It’s not a pretty picture. This is not to say that Mr. Clinton’s remarks are all preposterous or absurd. Rather, are we prepared to listen to him in attack-and-defend mode for another four to eight years? Democrats should now ponder Gary Wills’ critically important question, “Does anyone expect him [Bill Clinton] not to use his experience in an energetic way if he re-enters the White House as the first spouse?” Democrats should reflect on this question and Mr. Wills’ answer: “This is not a new question. It was intensely debated in the convention that formulated our Constitution. The Virginia Plan for the new document submitted by Edmund Randolph and the New Jersey Plan submitted by William Paterson left open the number of officers to hold the executive power. . . . Some (like Hugh Williamson of North Carolina) argued for a three-person executive, each member coming from a different region of the country. More people argued (like George Mason of Virginia) for a multiple-member executive council.

According to Mr. Wills, “[t]he objection to giving executive power to a single person came from the framers’ experience with the British monarchy and the royal governors of the colonies. They did not want another monarch. . . . But as the debate went forward a consensus formed that republican rule would check the single initiative of a president. In fact, accountability to the legislature demanded that responsibility be lodged where it could be called to account. A plural presidency would leave it uncertain whom to check. How, for instance, would Congress decide which part of the executive should be impeached in case of high crimes and misdemeanors? One member of the plural executive could hide behind the other members.”

It was the problem of accountability that drove “James Wilson of Pennsylvania[to make] . . . the argument for a single officeholder with typical depth and precision: “To control the executive, you must unite it. One man will be more responsible than three. Three will contend among themselves till one becomes the master of his colleagues. In the triumvirates of Rome, first Caesar, then Augustus, are witnesses of this truth. The kings of Sparta and the consuls of Rome prove also the factious consequences of dividing the executive magistracy.” . . . Wilson and his allies carried the day; and their argument is as good now as when they embedded it in the Constitution.”

Wills drives his point home by referring to our excruciating experience of the past seven years. “One problem with the George W. Bush administration is that it has brought a kind of plural presidency in through the back door. Vice President Dick Cheney has run his own executive department, with its own intelligence and military operations, not open to scrutiny, as he hides behind the putative president. . . . No other vice president in our history has taken on so many presidential prerogatives, with so few checks. He is an example of the very thing James Wilson was trying to prevent by having one locus of authority in the executive. The attempt to escape single responsibility was perfectly exemplified when his counsel argued that Mr. Cheney was not subject to executive rules because he was also part of the legislature. . . . We have seen in this campaign how former President Clinton rushes to the defense of presidential candidate Clinton. Will that pattern of protection be continued into the new presidency, with not only his defending her but also her defending whatever he might do in his energetic way while she’s in office? It seems likely. And at a time when we should be trying to return to the single-executive system the Constitution prescribes, it does not seem to be a good idea to put another co-president in the White House.”

Democrats have ample reason to recoil from the prospect of a co-presidency of Clintons. The problem, of course, just what is the alternative. Mr. Obama is capable, honest, and refreshing. But his theme of hope, unity, and change has been tried and failed before. How can we successfully reach out to our opponents in a polarized world that promises to stay polarized despite Mr. Obama’s best efforts? In such a world, John Edwards’ tenacity and intelligence is attractive, but his chances of winning the nomination are worse than remote. Democrats are faced with painful choice. Wisely or not, some Democrats will stay at home if the choice is between John McCain and the Clintons.

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“Strict constructionist” President, George W. Bush who claims Supreme Court Justices should interpret the Constitution not rewrite it is up to his familiar, anti-constitutional games. alternatively stated, “Everyone’s bound by the Constitution, except me.” Consider this report in the Boston Globe: “President Bush’s plan to forge a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could commit the US military to defending Iraq’s security would be the first time such a sweeping mutual defense compact has been enacted without congressional approval, according to legal specialists. . . . After World War II, for example – when the United States gave security commitments to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and NATO members – Presidents Truman and Eisenhower designated the agreements as treaties requiring Senate ratification. In 1985, when President Ronald Reagan guaranteed that the US military would defend the Marshall Islands and Micronesia if they were attacked, the compacts were put to a vote by both chambers of Congress. . . . By contrast, Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki have already agreed that a coming compact will include the United States providing “security assurances and commitments” to Iraq to deter any foreign invasion or internal terrorism by “outlaw groups.” But a top White House official has also said that Bush does not intend to submit the deal to Congress. To read more click here. Americans should be aware that, as Bruce Ackerman puts it, “[t]his isn’t the way we do things in the United States. The Constitution insists that Congress must get into the act before we make sweeping commitments in the name of the nation.” The Founding design creating a separation of powers and checks and balances prevents tyranny and provides conditions for cooperation between and among the branches. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have the idea that they can trash the Constitution and a majority of Americans would be totally unaware of their treasonous conduct or if aware, they would be unconcerned. These are the conditions which permit soft dictatorship to fester and later to thrive. Where is the outrage which conservatives spew forth when judges articulate an implied constitutional right to personal privacy and autonomy? How can constitutional limits on the executive, limits expressed in constitutional practice since ratification, be ignored? Who should pay a political price for trashing the Constitution?

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The idea of “the burdens of judgment” in the subtitle of this weblog can be understood in this way: Reasonable disagreement–disagreement that is not resolvable by attending to an intersubjectively provable mistake by one of the parties–is caused by the burdens of judgment which consist of the following: (1) the complexity of empirical factors relevant to judgment; (2) the difference in weight given to the various empirical factors agreed upon as authentic; (3) the indeterminacy associated with the central concepts in political debate and consequently, the need for interpretation and theories of interpretation; (4) the important differences in life experiences and the effects these differences have on reasoning and judgments; (5) differences in various kinds of normative factors with concomitant differences in the normative force that generate different judgments; and (6) the difficulty in selecting the appropriate subset of values from society’s actual set of “cherished” or fundamental values.[1]

The burdens of judgment do not serve as a shill for either conceptual or epistemic skepticism. Indeed, according to this doctrine, there may very well be right answers to hot-button controversies as well as correct methodologies for discovering them. The problem is not agreement on a right answer is impossible just difficult. Therefore, in both the underlying structure of political society, constitutional foundations, and, my view, ordinary politics, one needs to heed the admonition that republican democrats cannot impose their answers of one’s fellow citizens. Moreover, the burdens of judgment suggest a political attitude that one needs to condition oneself to exhibit: since all citizens are moral and political equals no one can have a corner on the truth. The difficulty in avoiding reasonable disagreement should chasten those who think of democracy as merely a vehicle for getting their own way. Rather it is a process, a deliberative process, of reflectively constructing judgments that in principle can achieve provisional closure to hot-button debates among moral and political equals. But a republican democrat realizes that sometimes, many times perhaps, even provisional closure is elusive. In such circumstances, one should not retreat within the inner recesses of one’s substantive positions–whether it is libertarianism or Marxism, for example–rather one’s needs to subject one’s substantive position to the reflective criticism of others and acknowledge how unlikely it is for one’s substantive position to emerge from such deliberative debate unchanged in significant ways. Imagining that it can illustrates a failure to appreciate the significance of the burdens of judgment.
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[1] John Rawls, Political Liberalism 54-58 (1993) with a slight gloss by me.

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It’s difficult to see how American citizens can be duped by Mayor Giuliani, a charlatan and a dictator wannabe in his successful, but duplicitous attempts to garner praise for his “heroic” to 9-11. What precisely did GiulianiRun into burning buildings to save lives? Directed the attempt to save further devastation? No, Giuliani walked down the streets with his entourage, greeting New Yorkers, and surveying the damage, all the while making sure his presence was conspicuous. Check out the New York Times assessment: “Why, as a New York-based paper, are we not backing Rudolph Giuliani? Why not choose the man we endorsed for re-election in 1997 after a first term in which he showed that a dirty, dangerous, supposedly ungovernable city could become clean, safe and orderly? What about the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL? . . . That man is not running for president. . . . The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square. . . . Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges. . . . The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.” (Emphasis) To read further click here.

Why last night, even Senator McCain interrupted the debate to offer his fulsome praise of Giuliani as a “hero.” Just what did the Mayor do to even suggest such praise? Even the above Times’ editorial characterizes Giuliani as standing fast on 9-11. But what does that mean? Wouldn’t any New York Mayor have stood fast in these harrowing circumstances? What choice would he have? I lived in New York for 27 years. None of the Mayors serving during that time would have acted any less “courageously” than Mr. Giuliani. What difference can a Mayor make in such a catastrophic event as 9-11? But Giuliani, with fulsome media support, has fashioned himself to be “the hero of 9-11.” Reflect on what that means and who it excludes. Mayor Giuliani is an uncomplicated fraud. What’s so troubling is that so many Americans bought his act–even the otherwise astute New York Times’ editorial board and Senator McCain among a vast array of others. Why people are frightened to tell the truth about 9-11 and a Mayor whose failures in preparing for such an emergency are legion? Such intimidation creates a snowball effect. Each time someone’s praises the “heroic” Giuliani the snowball gets bigger and firmer. There were real heroes on 9-11, to be sure. Among many others, were the gallant, dedicated men and women of New York’s fire department who gave their lives to defend New York. Their memory is sullied every time someone perfunctorily refers to Mayor Giuliani as a hero.

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Check out Chalmers Johnson’s critique of Charlie Wilson’s War: “I have some personal knowledge of Congressmen like Charlie Wilson (D-2nd District, Texas, 1973-1996) because, for close to twenty years, my representative in the 50th Congressional District of California was Randy “Duke” Cunningham, now serving an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence for soliciting and receiving bribes from defense contractors. Wilson and Cunningham held exactly the same plummy committee assignments in the House of Representatives–the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee plus the Intelligence Oversight Committee–from which they could dole out large sums of public money with little or no input from their colleagues or constituents. . . . Both men flagrantly abused their positions–but with radically different consequences. Cunningham went to jail because he was too stupid to know how to game the system–retire and become a lobbyist–whereas Wilson received the Central Intelligence Agency Clandestine Service’s first “honored colleague” award ever given to an outsider and went on to become a $360,000 per annum lobbyist for Pakistan. . . . In a secret ceremony at CIA headquarters on June 9, 1993, James Woolsey, Bill Clinton’s first Director of Central Intelligence and one of the agency’s least competent chiefs in its checkered history, said: “The defeat and breakup of the Soviet empire is one of the great events of world history. There were many heroes in this battle, but to Charlie Wilson must go a special recognition.” One important part of that recognition, studiously avoided by the CIA and most subsequent American writers on the subject, is that Wilson’s activities in Afghanistan led directly to a chain of blowback that culminated in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and led to the United States’ current status as the most hated nation on Earth.” Read the rest.

Republican Johnson’s argument is persuasive, extremely persuasive. Yet, recently on Sunday Morning expressed no regrets and gleefully preened when unveiling a weapon, a rocket-propelled grenade, I think, which was given to him by the Mujahideen–a.k.a. the Taliban and Al-Qaeda inter alia. These are the people Wilson supported and armed enabling them to use these arms to kill Americans in Afghanistan. These are the same people who Ronald Reagan called “freedom fighters” and Charlie Wilson chimed in adoringly depicting them as “heroic.” These same “heroic freedom fighters” parented the craven fanatics who wantonly killed thousands of Americans on 9-11. Yet, neither of these conservatives-one Democrat, the other a Republican–icons are in any way held accountable. Several years ago, Bill Bennett wrote a screed condemning the lack of outrage–blaming American citizens for being “enablers”–over Clinton’s “outrageous” conduct of lying about his sexual peccadilloes. Outrage toward perjury in a sexual infidelity case? That’s right! Where, pray tell, is the outrage now over Reagan and Wilson creation of fanatical terrorists who are intent on killing Americans? Americans have, indeed, lost a sense of outrage, and if Bennett is an example, we no longer even appreciate what type of conduct should be the object of outrage. No one connects the role Ronald Reagan and Charlie Wilson’s outrageous conduct played in bringing about our current difficulties in Afghanistan. Oh, yes, let’s not forget George W. Bush’s virtual abandonment of the pursuit of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in order to redirect American forces to fight the calamitous and unnecessary war in Iraq. We’ve traded genuine outrage for “outrage” over insignificance. That surely bespeaks the moral death of a nation.

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The Guardian reported last month that: “The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, was behind a controversial decision to block California’s attempt to impose tough emission . Staff at the agency, which announced last week that California’s proposed limits were redundant, said the agency’s chief went against their expert advice after car executives met Cheney, and a Chrysler executive delivered a letter to the EPA saying why the state should not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases. . . . EPA staff members told the Los Angeles Times that the agency’s head, the Bush appointee Stephen Johnson, ignored their conclusions and shut himself off from consultation in the month before the announcement. He then informed them of his decision and instructed them to provide the legal rationale for it, they said. . . . ‘California met every criteria … on the merits,’ an anonymous member of the EPA staff told the Times. ‘The same criteria we have used for the last 40 years … We told him that. All the briefings we have given him laid out the facts.’ . . . In an editorial, the New York Times described the decision as, ‘an indefensible act of executive arrogance that can only be explained as the product of ideological blindness and as a political payoff to the automobile industry.’” For more click here.

These people–the President and the Vice-President and their minions–are lawless reprobates who are perverting the Constitution. In any serious republican democracy both individuals would be impeached and removed from office. That won’t happen here. However, if we cannot punish these evil doers, we can punish the Republican Party especially those individuals who have supported Mr. Bush consistently throughout his catastrophic regime.

Even more so than Democrats or the general electorate right-thinking Republicans need to punish their own Party who must be held responsible for inflicting this terrible injury to the national soul. Ironically, Republicans of almost any stripe, themselves have reason to be outraged at the Bush presidency. Bush has betrayed fiscal conservatives by increasing the cost and size of government. Social conservatives has been betrayed by Bush’s indifference to their concern over same-sex marriage and abortion. Republicans concerned about undocumented workers find no solace from Bush. Moderate Republicans have no voice in the Bush White House. Except for fanatical Bush supporters, the Republican Party has betrayed Republicans as tragically as it has betrayed the nation. Conservative scholar Bruce Fein has urged impeachment on the ground that failure to castigate the current administration for arrogantly exceeding its constitutional authority is tantamount to leaving a loaded gun around for future presidents to use. Well, for a variety of reasons, Congress is too cowardly to initiate impeachment hearings except for quite sincere, but quixotic attempts by various congresspersons. But that does not prevent Republicans and other patriots from showing that any political party that supports constitutional criminals will pay a severe price at the polls. If the Republican candidate wins in November, it signals that the electorate doesn’t much care about presidents who pervert the Constitution. That’s an authentically dangerous message for the electorate to send to future generations.

The smart money says the Republican will lose in November. Some of the National Review crowd think this is due to the public’s disenchantment with the conservatism of the eighties and nineties, you know, the stuck in the mud of Reaganism. But future events can derail such long-term predictions. If the Republican candidate loses in November, it should be made clear in the campaign and afterward that the loss is not due to any disenchantment with conservative ideology, but rather that the Republican Party betrayed the nation by supportiing Bush in the 2004 election. For his duplicity and inability to appreciate and remain loyal to American constitutional traditions, the Party should have dumped him just as the Democratic Party dumped one of Bush’s remote ancestors, Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president of the United States. Sure the political savants and realists will simply reject this proposal as just another progressive, quixotic delusion. Maybe so. But if politics is to make any sense in the future responsibility must be assumed by the purveyors of catastrophe in this case the National Republican Party.

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(This post is a modified version of one originally published on 18 January 2007.) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the most, if not the most, important and inspiring leaders of the 20th century, perhaps in all American history. The reason: Dr. King was one of the last great ethical holist living in a decidedly partialist age. His rejection of ethical partialism reveals a decidedly American aspiration toward “liberty and justice for all.” No American can rest until she does whatever is possible to give all Americans the chance at a genuinely gratifying life.

An ethical partialist is not a bad person. She doesn’t lie, steal, and so forth. She works hard to make a good living in order to live a full life. An ethical partialist never forgets to give to charities at Christmas. She tries to do right and to improve society. However, an ethical partialist realizes there’s just so much a person can do, and sees her quest as distinctly separate from and dissimilar to the quest of others. Ethical partialists see their connection to other human beings as important, but not sufficiently important to redirect their lives on behalf of others. After all, BMWs are really cool. I suspect most people are ethical partialists.

Martin Luther King, Jr. eschewed ethical partialism. Consider his words:

I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

These words express the interconnectedness between and among people. Interconnectedness is not static. Rather, it is a dynamic process that never ends and requires a commitment to values transcending oneself. It captures the importance of recognizing that our identities are mutually interdependent. Cruelty, suffering, pain, and injustice anywhere threaten satisfaction and justice everywhere. Human beings exist in an “inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Whatever touches one, touches all. One must choose between a life committed to giving one’s best to improve the plight of others or remain detached, committed only to one’s private “perfection.”

That’s why racism, poverty, and war, among other horrors, are so wrong. These evils strike at our mutual identities. Racism says: “You can’t be like me.” Poverty says: “You are not like me.” And war rejects our interconnectedness entirely.

Dr. King rejected ethical partialism because he could not rest until racism, poverty, and war were eradicated. Ultimately, Dr. King’s journey was predicated on “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me.” If others were not all they ought to be, Dr. King could not be what he ought to be. The ethical holist cannot rest in a world driven by injustice and oppression. Throughout the ethical holist’s life the motive to move society closer to liberty and equality remains primary.

Consider the words of another giant of the 20th century who eschewed ethical partialism, Mahatma Gandhi:

Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest [person] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [or her.] Will [that person] gain anything by it? Will it restore [that person's] control over his [or her] own life and destiny?

Eschewing partialism speaks of what we ought to be and what we ought to do. This is an “ought” of reflection, criticism, deliberation, and action. It rejects being absorbed with one’s own self-interest, the ideology of the “me-generation.” In this Dr. King was quintessentially American. He recognized that the true spirit of the American experiment was a continual process of deliberating over the shape and content of the American character. He embraced ethical holism as a religious imperative and urged others to embrace it, even on secular grounds. Dr. King excluded no one from the interconnected fabric of the human community.

One wonders how Dr. King would have reacted to the Jena Six incident. In all likelihood he would have journeyed to Jena, Louisiana with love and respect to both parties. Doubtlessly, he would have attempted to explain why nooses are symbols of hatred and tear at the very fabric of a society still riven with racism. It’s difficult to imagine how he would have responded to a prosecutor who felt free to tell the assembled students “See this pen in my hand? I can end your lives with a stroke of a pen.” And despite his love for everyone, even those who thought hanging a noose was merely a prank, or rather especially because he loved those who thought this, he would have not hesitated to character noose hanging as the despicable act it is and such conduct is tied to the terrible role racism has played in America from the start.

There’s one authentic way to celebrate Martin Luther King’s journey, and one way only. We must try to realize Dr. King’s holistic commitments in our own lives with more persistence than we do anything else.

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O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
Who more than
self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev’ry gain divine!

Oh beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern impassion’d stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America! God
mend thine ev’ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O Beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!