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January 15, 2018
Some new quotes at the end of the latest MLK day
I was stuck in a car for most of this day for celebrating the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, and thus I am only now getting a chance late in the day to honor this great man. Many years, I make sure to spend time listening to the full "I Have A Dream" speech Dr. King delivered in the "symbolic shadow" of Abraham Lincoln in August 1963. I have previously flagged some quotes from that speech, but this year I figured I would look to another MLK source for inspiration. Specifically, as I gear up to go back to teaching, I thought interesting a few lines from this MLK college essay titled "The Purpose of Education." A mere eighteen years old, MLK shows himself to already be wise beyond his years (and enduringly timely):
Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.
The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals....
We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character -- that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.
Links to some prior MLK Day posts:
- Should criminal justice reform be the new civil rights movement?
- Honoring MLK by asking hard questions
- Reflecting on race and criminal justice realities to honor MLK's legacy
- Another reminder of race and criminal justice realities to honor MLK's legacy
- Is there less discussion of race and criminal justice since Obama's election?
- NPR's Fresh Air celebrates MLK Day by discussing The New Jim Crow
- Fittingly for MLK day, Prez Obama laments class and race disparities from pot prohibition
- MLK marijuana mash-up: "I Have A Dream..." we are free at last from pot prohibition
- Some still timely phrases from MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech for advocates of criminal justice reforms
January 15, 2018 at 09:18 PM | Permalink
Comments
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Posted by: Docile the Wimpy Terrorist In OR | Jan 15, 2018 9:21:19 PM
Pointless, horrifying problems, 100% the fault of the lawyer profession.
Lawyers started the American Revolution. They did so as taxes rose to 2% of GDP. These were needed to fund the military protecting them from vicious, Stone Age savages that took no prisoners except for blonde little girls to be used as sex slaves. This lawyer revolution prevented the end of slavery in 1833, by British law, enforced by sheriffs.
Roger Taney, a lawyer, ended the Missouri Compromise, and violated a ratified treaty with Canada. He also violated Article I Section 1 by his first historic application of judicial review from Marbury v Madison, inventing substantive due process, from nowhere. That traitor set off the Civil War.
Then lawyer Lincoln was given many alternatives to prevent war. Mr. "Please, Do Not Sue Your Neighbor" chose a war that killed 850,000 people.
Lawyers and judges founded the KKK. The military, non-lawyers, hanged them by the dozens. Immediately, black people thrived with no affirmative action.
Lawyers did a deal. Give the Presidency to the Republicans, remove the military from the South. The KKK returns. It kills 5000 lynching victims with hundreds of witnesses, and is immunized by the discretion of the local prosecutors.
Discrimination can be destroyed by the marketplace. Exclude a third of the population, you will go out of business. So, lawyers enact big, really big government laws excluding black people from all white businesses, to cancel the effect of the market.
So blacks under the thumb of big government lawyers still do pretty well. Their social pathologies are a little worse than those of white people.
So, the lawyers pass a Civil Rights Act. It violates the free association privilege inherent in the Freedom of Assembly Clause. Instead of repealing stupid Jim Crow laws, it rams people into other people who do not want to hang out with them, causing massive conflict, and hideous effects on their rates of social pathologies. The black family is destroyed. Bastardy rates soar. The social consequences include massive increases in criminality, and an excess of 5000 murders a year. What the KKK achieved in 100 years, the modern lawyer achieves in one year.
In the face of this history, 95% of black voters support the Democratic Party, the party of the lawyer and of the KKK. MLK was, of course, a registered Republican. He formed a patriarchal family, with a beautiful, feminine woman. He raised fine children. He supported black enterprise, and joining the capitalist system. He did not support big government interference and socialism as the myths now claim.
If this history were not so deadly, so tragic, it would be a ridiculous, unbelievable episode of the Twilight Zone, with ridiculous lawyer irony upon lawyer irony.
Posted by: David Behar | Jan 15, 2018 10:44:01 PM
Behar, how did you escape again from the asylum?
Posted by: Emily | Jan 16, 2018 1:28:02 AM
Mr. Behar, congratulations! You win the incoherent drivel award for 1918. I regret, however, that because you are still in a straighjacket, you are ineligible for the lunatic screed award. Better luck next year.
Posted by: anon1 | Jan 16, 2018 1:33:32 AM
Hi, Emily. Did you know any of those facts?
Posted by: David Behar | Jan 16, 2018 4:11:21 AM
Anon1. Are you a licensed lawyer?
Posted by: David Behar | Jan 16, 2018 4:12:22 AM
Emily. Do you know why these facts are news to you? You attended law school. It made you among the stupidest person in the country. Law school erased your memory of high school American history. You are now stupider than a Life Skills student, learning to eat with a spoon. There are people stupider than you are, Harvard Law School radicalized lawyers. Among them, the stupidest sit on the Supreme Court. Put that Life Skills student on the Supreme Court, you would get an immediate upgrade in the intelligence of the decisions, not to mention much more clarity of the writing of the opinions.
If you are dirty feminist, you are as vile as a member of the KKK. Both movements were lawyer scams, pc, and totally accepted by the lawyer profession in their day.
Stupid and vile is no way to go through life.
Posted by: David Behar | Jan 17, 2018 7:50:32 AM
