The Martin Luther King speech raised a question that had two
diametrically opposed answers. What the conservatives heard that day 50 years
ago, especially the conservatives in the Plantation South, was not what
liberals heard. We have to focus on King’s speech because other speakers said
different things. Some spoke in the same vain as King while other carried a
different message. In other words, there was a mixed message; however, the
actual message of Dr. Martin Luther King was clear even though they heard the
same words, they did not hear the same message.
King called for affirmation of equal rights. He was asking,
some say he was demanding that all men be treated equally. However, judging
from their reaction, what conservatives
heard was a call for black dominance. They prepared for rioting, a revolution
with an attempt to overturn the government or something equally as sinister.
When it didn’t happen they were puzzled. They were puzzled then and still seem
to be puzzled 50 years later. This is not hyperbole; look at “peaceful” elections
where GOP think they might lose the vote, they use the rhetoric of violence. Conservatives
say, “If we don’t get our way, there will be real trouble” and they carry gun
to political rallies. Can you imagine the impact of seeing tens of thousands of
people standing in Washington against them? Had they been the minority, the one
on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, it would have been a “lock and load”
situation as Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says. Even under the Constitution that
clearly calls for equal rights, it would be a call for a Second Amendment
solution—some sort of macho tough guy stance.
An innate sense in the conservative mind is that there is a “natural
order”. This sense applies to the structure in society wherever you find
organization; in the family, in the neighborhood, in the work place, and in
government; where ever hierarch dominance plays a part. Fairness means that one
person, of course it has to be a conservative, is in charge and then there are
the followers. Compromise means everyone has to agree with the leader, the boss,
or the elect official. This is the only way their approach to politics makes
sense with President Obama in the White House. The only way it is legitimate is
if the President is a conservatives, nothing else can ever be correct. Without
this understanding of innate conservatism, it is impossible to understand
United State Politics. Equally, it is impossible to understand what conservatives
heard what Martin Luther king said in spite of his actual words. George Lakoff wrote
about how the innate feeling of moral order permeates everything conservatives
think and do at length in his book The Political
Mind.
In contrast, in the liberal mind, equality and sharing are paramount.
This is what the majority of us heard Dr. King say. He was not calling for
dominance; he was calling for equality. We
will have inequality as long as we have conservatives. We will have two disparate
answers to the question of what constitutes “proper” social order.
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