[Quantum]

How did conservatives successfully hijack the legacy of MLK? He was no conservative and was definitely on the left, preaching against the excesses of capitalism and the Vietnam War before his assassination. Where as before, conservatives called him a commie, race-mixing cheater, drunkard etc., now they hail him as true conservative who fought for colourblindness. Was this a desire to neutralise the gains of the Civil Rights Movements and was a desire to distance themselves from the segregationists of yesteryear.

All this blabbering about the Republicans being the party of Lincoln and helping blacks to be free from the "liberal plantation" is pathetic to say the least. It makes you think what they are conserving, if they just adopt today's liberal policies tomorrow.

[Potemkin]

Was this a desire to neutralise the gains of the Civil Rights Movements and was a desire to distance themselves from the segregationists of yesteryear.

The Republicans are like the Borg - they always assimilate their successful (and preferably dead) opponents. It's the same motivation which lies behind the current policy of the ruling elite to assimilate gays into mainstream society through gay 'marriage' and the like - it neutralises them as a subversive force. in a few decades time, even hardline conservatives will claim that they were always in favour of equal rights for gays and wasn't Allen Ginsburg a really great guy?

All this blabbering about the Republicans being the party of Lincoln and helping blacks to be free from the "liberal plantation" is pathetic to say the least. It makes you think what they are conserving, if they just adopt today's liberal policies tomorrow.

They are conserving the gains made by bourgeois liberalism, retrospectively. As Milton put it, "They also serve who only stand and wait."

[Joe Liberty]

How did conservatives successfully hijack the legacy of MLK? He was no conservative and was definitely on the left, preaching against the excesses of capitalism and the Vietnam War before his assassination. Where as before, conservatives called him a commie, race-mixing cheater, drunkard etc., now they hail him as true conservative who fought for colourblindness. Was this a desire to neutralise the gains of the Civil Rights Movements and was a desire to distance themselves from the segregationists of yesteryear.

It's a desire to jump on the politically popular bandwagon, that's all. And distancing themselves from segregationists shouldn't be difficult, since those were the Democrats back in the day.

Welcome to another example of how Democrats and Republicans are just two sides of the same coin.

[mikema63]

Because, votes votes votes votes votes votes votes.

[Rainbow Crow]

MLK was socially conservative I think and communism is not really discussed anymore, so insofar as his legacy is still relevant at all, he leans conservative unless you believe that Republicans are still the racist party, a perception they are laboring to do away with. The Vietnam war was also a product of the Democrats.

[youtube]M5FR1LGsT7E[/youtube]

[mikema63]

preaching against the excesses of capitalism and the Vietnam War

So conservative!

[Potemkin]

MLK was socially conservative I think

Back in the 1950s and 60s, social conservatism meant Jim Crow and segregation. No. No, he was not socially conservative.

[Rainbow Crow]

I am talking about today's standards of course, and being against the Vietnam war (primarily pushed by Democrats) does not implicate modern Republicans at all. What is hard to understand about this? Are either of those statements wrong?

[Sithsaber]

He died in memphis where he was supporting a labor strike. Not social conservative.

[Rainbow Crow]

Unions have changed with time as well. Which is not to say that MLK needs to fit perfectly into the cookie-cutter before being invoked.

The argument here is basically "MLK was a liberal almost 60 years ago, so he would be a liberal today, let's not analyze his actual positions with any eye for context." It's a terrible argument and I don't see myself continuing to argue against it any further, sorry.

[Sithsaber]

Poor People's Campaign:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign
^Not a social conservative in the economic sense at least.

[Rainbow Crow]

Social conservative and fiscal conservative aren't necessarily the same thing, though even the state of welfare and the poor has changed dramatically over 60 years.

[Sithsaber]

Well he was a reverend, open hedonism and homosexuality wouldn't exactly have been embraced with open arms. If MLK is a social conservative than so is Che (due to the ingrained machismo)

ps: Although back then not a lot of jobs were open to blacks, especially influential ones. King was a semi noted womanizer.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

People are to some extent a product of their time, so it's a bit ridiculous to apply today's standard of conservatives to MLK. Even radical suffragettes would probably be social conservatives by today's standards. In fact, almost everybody who has lived in more 'conservative' times would be. Doesn't make any sense and isn't intellectually honest, in my opinion.

[Sithsaber]

tHANKS YOU FOR THIS useful post.

[Rainbow Crow]

Well, people asked for an explanation and they got it. By K's logic, we can't call anyone from the past a social conservative because times have changed and it's not fair to co-opt people who argued for the beliefs we hold into our modern ideology, because they were once called liberals, and now a completely different set of ideas is called liberal. Surely, the label should control and people like MLK should be on the liberal side forever? Go "fairness."

I've actually had this argument about Jesus Christ. He was totally radical when Julius Caesar was in power, so how can we call him a social conservative today? It's not fair, right?

[Sithsaber]

Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and WW2 Stalin were all social conservatives if we use your viewpoint.

[Rainbow Crow]

I don't know about Stalin, maybe he was, I think Che might have been. Pretty sure that Fidel was.

[The Immortal Goon]

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*****, N*****, N*****.” By 1968 you can’t say “N*****”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N*****, N*****.”

I'm pretty sure MLK would be down with that. And we can see how kindly Republicans treat his living lieutenants like Jesse Jackson-also a minister and also a hardened Republican.

It's only logic that MLK and Ann Coulter would be going around the country saying the opposite of everything MLK said.

Sarcasm aside, MLK's biggest problem was that he thought if he asked nicely the capitalist system would start acting nicely. Now he's worm food with a bullet in his dome, and capitalists just have to slightly change their rhetoric against him, but not his followers.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

Thanks, Sithsaber.

RC, I think you misunderstand me. A label like 'social conservative' only makes sense in context. That is, people can only really be categorised relative to their peers at the time. Otherwise, the label becomes meaningless since today's liberals/progressives will automatically be tomorrow's conservatives and therefore everybody would ultimately be conservative in retrospect for all time.

Another aspect of this is that if we choose to ignore the circumstances and prevailing values at the time for people like MLK and categorise him by today's standards, then our judgement of people in the past, many of which are national heroes today, would have to be a lot harsher in almost all cases.

To be clear, just because I think we shouldn't apply today's standards to MLK doesn't imply that we can assume he would be in favour of progressive policies today. We don't know what he would think had he been born in the 70s. He was a progressive in his day, though, and 'belongs' to the liberals.