It appears that the Obama White House is intent on sweeping history literally under the rug after the new presidential rug was found to have a historical quote wrong. The quote attributed to Martin Luther King was actually the words of abolitionist Theodore Parker who will now have his misattributed words walked over by every visitor to the Oval Office.
The quote is “[t]he arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” King, however, was not the source of these inspiring words. They were the work of a Boston abolitionist and Unitarian minister. Parker was an incredible writer and a tireless advocate for the end of slavery. He never lived to see it. He died at age 49 in 1860 — shortly before the Civil War.
King never claimed to be the author of the words and gave credit to Parker.
The original quote from 1853 was
“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”
Theodore Parker, “Of Justice and Conscience,” in Ten Sermons of Religion, (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Company,1853).
In the end, he would likely take the slight in good fashion. After all, he told people “[n]ever violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect.” Amen, Brother.
Source: Washington Post
Jonathan Turley
Buddha Is Laughing
1, September 7, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Blouise,
Maybe we can get Robertson and Beck into the Witless Relocation Program. 🙂
===========================================================
Aren’t they already inductees? FOX News, the Witless Relocation Program ….
Off Topic:
From TPm Muckracker
ACLU Sues Over Digital Border Searches
Ryan J. Reilly | September 7, 2010, 12:11PM
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/aclu_sues_over_digital_border_searches.php
Excerpt:
Civil liberties groups sued the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday, alleging that the government should not be able to search, copy or keep the data on electronic devices carried by people crossing the border without a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Layers (NACDL) announced on Tuesday that they filed a lawsuit against the policy, arguing that Americans “do not surrender their privacy and free speech rights when they travel abroad.”
DHS policy says that electronic devices such as laptops, cameras and cell phones can be searched as a matter of course, and that the border agents can copy the contents of the devices in order to continue searching them once the traveler has been allowed to enter the U.S. — even if the traveler is not suspected of any wrongdoing. Information obtained by the ACLU indicated that over 6,600 travelers — nearly half of whom are U.S. citizens — had their electronic devices searched at the border between Oct. 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010.
Obama quoted what MLKjr stated, which was “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” This was a rephrase of what Mr. Parker stated a century before. So, when President Obama has that statement attributed to King, that was the person who stated it. King was the one who phrased the quote on the rug, not Parker, though it was based on an earlier Parker quote.
Buddha,
Good one! Send them off to Iraq to keep the peace!
🙂
eniobob,
Thanks. That’s just the effect I was aiming for.
Byron,
“The American foreign policy that today sells what we have at below-market rates must be completely transformed and must focus on the American peoples need for jobs.”
I read somewhere that because of NAFTA and the selling of US corn at very low prices some Mexican farmers had to give up agriculture and now live in desperate poverty.
Blouise,
Maybe we can get Robertson and Beck into the Witless Relocation Program. 😀
Tootie:
We must provide essentials first. We must meet the critical needs of the people-health care, affordable housing, etc., then we can produce luxury goods. Provide work for those willing to work and give the farmers land that is idle. The American foreign policy that today sells what we have at below-market rates must be completely transformed and must focus on the American peoples need for jobs.
http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026/?from=rss This article on income disparity is very interesting at least to me. It shows we had this income disparity in 1915 and then it levelled off and started rising again in the late seventies and now is at its highest level.
Tootie,
I left you information about Newt. Do you consider him one of your “family values” conservatives–like David Vitter, Mark Foley, John Ensign, and company?
Tinfoil is hard to come by these days. One would probably have to settle for aluminum foil.
😉
Elaine: What about Newt?
Otteray:
Oh, I’m sure you do know where to get a large supply of tin-foil.
Byron:
I’m not a Tea Party member. I don’t “support” the Tea Party. It, unfortunately, has been co-opted already by the evil neocon Republicans. I only discuss it when others do or bring it up when it is germane to the conversation.
I’m thoroughly happy and content being an “unaffiliated” voter. I don’t join up with national organizations because their leaders become corrupted over time and it is very hard to control image. I prefer decentralized, individual, and independent activities: like writing on the internet.
And most of all prayer.
Byron:
You thoughts are troubling to me. I have a simple code about the rich: though shalt not covet. It is from the Bible. This was written specifically to ME. It is written to the poor as well as the rich and everyone in between.
If I am the only person on earth left who subscribes to the Bible and that command, I am truly the only person left who believes that other peoples money is not my business. But I don’t think I’m that alone in this.
This concept about feeling one has a right to other peoples money is what thieves think. Thieves think my money (what little of it I have) belongs to them.
This is exactly what a Marxist thinks. The Marxist thinks other peoples money belongs to him. He is, therefore, no better than the thief. He is, in fact, a thief.
I’m not allowed this type of moral wandering. I have principles, because my God has them, that I am compelled to adhere to as much as I am able. I wouldn’t know what to do without these principles. They are very old–ancient–and I believe have a proven track record of producing blessing. It is a fact that they do. Blessings, not only for individuals, but for whole bodies of people.
It is as sinful for a poor person (like me) to covet money as it is for a rich person like John Kerry to covet it. Or Bill Gates.
I don’t covet. Therefore I cannot abide ideas that promote it. It is unjust to covet. I believe in justice.
I trust God always. Even when I’m without necessities. He blesses righteous people. He always has. Honest people, though they suffer this world;s injustices too, and even suffer terrors, corporately (as a civilization) do better in life than civilizations which reject Him. History proves this.
The wealth America possess, or recently possessed, was the received blessings of the Christian ancestors before them who the recipients have now rejected. The prayers of our ancestors fell to all. Bill Gates, John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Al Gore: they all came from Christian backgrounds. Most claim to still be Christians. It was that background that laid the foundation for their great privilege. And yet, they have rejected this background by their political actions which attack me and my freedom and the faith they claim to believe.
And that is why we face the abyss.
It is the moral questions about us individually that determines the overall blessings of us all. The issue of “the general welfare” is not as you sugggest. It is one of the survival of the federal government.
As long as the federal government can defend our territory and fulfill its Constitutional obligations, the general welfare is met. The general welfare applies to the functioning of the federal government such that the individual states and individual rights survive or are protected. Only when that is threatened is the general welfare at issue. Y
You seem to have confused any general poverty we might be experiencing with being the meaning of general welfare. If the government limited itself to its authorized powers, it would not have any moral hazard at all. It could function on tariffs (as it once did). Put it has grabbed powers it ought to have and so it needs more and more money to operate and thus it appears it cannot function with robbing the rich. It has put itself in position of risk and injury only because it did so willingly and unconstitutionally.
All government has to do is refrain from abusing its power and authority and it can continue to fulfill is duties with robbing people. Once that is assured, it is up to the states and the people themselves to provide for EVERY OTHER NEED.
This goes for Republicans too and the wrath that they draw down from above. Only, their error is more disturbing. They held back the wrath of God on this nation by their stubborn and awesome defense of the innocent life in the womb. But, now, as if innocent lives were different, they have joined the degenerates on left in that attack on innocent life by their support of the immoral, unjust, and phony war on terror. Now that the right has joined the left in the flagrant taking of life (both claiming it to be morally correct) all hell is breaking loose. Well, this isn’t surprising. No civilization gets away with mass murder: abortion and unjust war. And believe me, the unjust war thing? It went one ALL last century! Mostly prosecuted by Democratic presidents. The cup of blood is full!
We have rejected the blessings of liberty our founders and framers spoke of and believed in and that is why we are on the brink.
Repentance by Christians can turn the wrath of God from the nation as a whole, but the leftists will have to stop being criminals hiding behind the law or we will continue to slide downward like Rome.
Our Constitution (a return to it) can allow us to prosper again. These things goes in cycles. You may think that the rich are forever destroyed, but Castro (the billionaire who destroyed the rich) is proof that you are wrong.
Wealth accrues. It always does. This is the nature of human existence. It is natural. It is as natural as the sun rise. It is nothing to hate humanity for. It can bring blessing. The glory of big business is that it frees women up from painful endless drudgery. American women will pay the biggest price for the Marxist dream, women always do. Marxism is anti-woman. And anti-children. Just look at what the Russians as asking of their women now.
If it goes as you say and the rich are destroyed we will run out of other peoples money quickly, like Greece is experiencing right now. And then our leaders will be begging us to use drugs and alcohol in large quantities so they can tax it to run their thieving schemes and feed their own families without having to get their hands dirty in the ground.
That is where Marxism ends. Christianity, in its most restricted form that would drive a leftist up the wall, ends up like the Amish. One is ugly beyond belief, the other is life honoring and creator honoring.
I’m not saying the world needs to move to an Amish way, but movement the other way hates the human race.
Tootie:
re the tea party
The Tea Party has no interest in solving American problems. It cannot have such an interest. It depends on it remaining unsolved. If the American people formed a united community and won back its freedom, there would be no place any longer for the Tea Party. It’s [Tea Party] power is strongest when a people lives in domestic and international slavery, not when it is free, industrious, self-aware and determined. Tea Party types caused our problems, and live from them.
I oppose the Tea Party because I want to defend the freedom of the American people. The Tea Party is the cause and beneficiary of our current problems. They have misused the social misery of the people to deepen the dreadful split between the right and left political parties, to divide America into two halves thereby concealing the true reasons for the problems in Washington.
“witless” is my suggestion
Buddha,
“You are a simple partisan propaganda spewing creature and I doubt you have a single idea that wasn’t spoon fed to you by some half-wit like Glenn Beck or Pat Robertson.”
I think calling Beck and Roberston “half-wits” is being generous.
😉
Tootles,
“when much hated speech or ideas cannot be punished by the left legally, it is then to be characterized as racist, hatred, or insanity.”
That couldn’t possibly be because the speech is hateful, racist or insane now could it, Ms. Theocrat Homophobe?
You are a simple partisan propaganda spewing creature and I doubt you have a single idea that wasn’t spoon fed to you by some half-wit like Glenn Beck or Pat Robertson.
Tootie, I know where I can get you a large supply of tinfoil at a bargain rate. It may not keep out the secret radar waves but might make you feel better.
Or you could go take a course in logic; however, if you do, please unlock that logic-tight compartment in which you keep your brain.
Woosty:
I’m sorry. I thought you supported Obamacare, and that is why I presumed you were a Marxist. My sincere apologies. I hate it when people here make assumptions about me and I really do hate it more if I do it to others.
I’m glad you are not a Marxist and I hope we can repeal Obamacare very soon, it is holding back a whole industry and the economy. We can work together to this end by spreading the word that Marxism doesn’t work and the Democratic Party needs to turn away from it.
Again, I’m sorry.