Category: Politics

The Unsanitized Martin Luther King

The popular image of Martin Luther King, Jr. is that of a “safe,” moderate civil rights leader, as contrasted with the unseemly radicalism of Malcolm X and the black nationalist groups. This sanitized version of King, revered every January, scarcely resembles the real man, who was a revolutionary in the best and worst senses of the word. Discussing the real Martin Luther King would force us to examine the unpleasant issues of American militarism and the social consequences of capitalism.

Most hagiographies of King leave a gap between 1965 and 1968, his most radical period. It was during this time that he stridently denounced the current form of capitalism, advocating redistribution of wealth not only on the basis of race, in the form of hiring quotas and reparations for slavery, but on the basis of economic class. Had King lived through the 70s and 80s, he would have been scarcely different in his politics from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton; in fact, he probably would have stood to the left of them.

King spoke powerfully against U.S. militarism, calling his government the world’s biggest purveyor of violence. His speech “Beyond Vietnam” was widely scorned as sympathizing with Communism, a common accusation against those with insufficient nationalist bloodlust.

Contrary to popular perception, King was not of the Christian faith in any traditional sense. In his collegiate writings, he denied the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, and the bodily resurrection of Christ. As St. Paul said, “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” King’s Christianity was hollow as a religion; he followed Christ only in matters of ethics, and even then very selectively. By his own confession, he pursued ministry only as a means to preach his social gospel.

If we were to judge King “by the content of his character”, we should find alongside his saintly commitment to non-violence some evils that cannot be dismissed as mere lapses of judgment. His insatiable adulterous appetites were so perverse, that even the philanderous Lyndon Johnson was shocked by the “hypocritical preacher.” While the full details of his carnal sins will not be known until FBI tapes are unsealed in 2027, we already have ample evidence of another dimension of his deep dishonesty, in the form of systematic plagiarism. His doctoral thesis contained entire pages of verbatim copying; this egregious violation of academic ethics would have resulted in a revocation of the degree if we were speaking of anyone else. Plagiarism remained a lifelong habit, and numerous writings and speeches, including the famous “I have a dream” speech, were systematically plagiarized, far beyond the innocent uncited paraphrase.

Despite these personal failings, King’s message of human dignity, racial equality, and non-violence does not lose any of its luster. Even if historical reality compels us to move beyond the false idol of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was really neither a reverend nor a doctor, nor a particularly honest man, we will nonetheless find in his works, original or otherwise, ideas that challenge the legitimacy of our social structure, and force us to address questions far more disturbing than the innocuous banalities that greet us each January.

The Convenient Silencing of Saddam Hussein

No one should be surprised that Saddam Hussein would be convicted of a war crime, but the particular crime for which he was to be executed was an odd choice, to say the least. The torture and killing of over 100 people in the village of Dujail in reprisal for a presidential assassination attempt by Iranian sympathizers early in the Iran-Iraq war was certainly cruel and unjust, but hardly atypical of war. Collective punishment of towns considered treasonous has been a staple of warfare, and over the last few decades it has been practically a standard counter-terrorist policy of the Israeli state. The U.S., for its part, willingly tolerates the “collateral” loss of thousands of innocent lives in the pursuit of a supposed greater good, such as its own security, so it is hard to see why one would begrudge Saddam a mere hundred reprisal killings.

It is true that this case had the advantage of a clearer trail of direct presidential culpability, but there were far better cases from which to choose in this regard, without the clouding circumstances of war with Iran and an attack on a head of state. For example, during a televised purge of the Baath party, Saddam read names of those who had fallen out of favor, and they were led out to be executed. The footage of this purge exists, and provides unambiguous evidence of purely political executions. Unfortunately, the victims are Sunni and Baath, and the war crimes tribunals were concerned only with crimes against the Kurds and Shiites now in power, the same groups who supported Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.

The Dujail massacre has another advantage, in that it occurred before the U.S. lent its overt support to Saddam’s regime. Through most of the Iran-Iraq war, the United States had removed Iraq from its list of terrorist states and allowed American companies to sell the materials needed for chemical weapons. The U.S. provided aerial intelligence to help Saddam select Iranian targets, several of which were struck with chemical weapons. The American press showed little sympathy for the gassing of Iranians, but there was outrage toward the 1988 gassing of Kurds, which the Reagan administration met with only a terse statement of disapproval, but no sanctions.

It was during this period that Saddam committed his greatest crimes and earned his reputation for monstrous cruelty. This would have been the more obvious period to find a case that typified his crimes, but this would have been a disaster for the U.S. Saddam’s Western lawyers could no doubt have called upon Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and others who aided and abetted Saddam’s genocidal war against the Iranians and their allies in Iraq. The same people who claim that Saddam killed hundreds of thousands neglect to mention that the only way to arrive at such a large figure is to include the Iranian casualties in a war where the U.S. overtly supported Iraq. Naturally, Saddam’s American co-conspirators would have declined to testify, but the public relations damage to this increasingly discredited administration could have been disastrous.

Not that this administration necessarily responds to public opinion. Saddam’s execution has no doubt inspired some more fist-pumping at the White House, and rehabilitated the delusion that success in Iraq can be achieved by an escalation of force deployment. Although President Bush claims the goal is to democratize Iraq, this was an after-the-fact improvisation made necessary by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. The goal in Iraq since the Clinton administration, long before 9/11, has been regime change. If the goal had been security, there would have been no reason for de-Baathification and the wholesale disbanding of the Iraqi army. Those ill-conceived policies (belatedly and partially reversed under Bremer) are the principal reason for the security failure and economic disaster in Iraq, and have made success in those areas practically impossible, as it requires the construction of a modern government from scratch. The failure of Iraq is a legacy of the policy of regime change and the ends-justify-the-means mentality that has prevailed at the policy-making level at the Pentagon and in the White House.

With the death of Saddam Hussein, regime change is complete; that is the only “mission” the U.S. intended to “accomplish” anyway. The socialist structure of Iraq has been dismantled, and restrictions on foreign ownership have been eased, to allow lucrative reconstruction contracts. Careful students of modern history know that the Cold War was about defending capitalism rather than democracy, as the West supported business-friendly dictators and opposed socialism even when it was the product of free elections. The idea that “the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power” seems unassailable in principle, but the reality in Iraq makes that proposition more doubtful by the day. At any rate, that oft-repeated Bush/Blair mantra simply reiterates the morally bankrupt ends-justify-the-means mentality that destroyed a nation in order to “save” it.

The Regulation of Trans Fats

New York City has decided to ban trans fats from being served in restaurants, prompting the usual libertarian argument that this limits consumer choice, as if any consumer would choose trans fats if given a real choice. Trans fats are a serious health liability and add absolutely nothing to flavor. They simply extend shelf-life, so they are a benefit to the producer and the retailer, not the consumer. The consumer’s health is the collateral damage resulting from the manufacturer’s desire to maximize profit. At best, the consumer may benefit indirectly from a slight reduction in the price of goods, but this variation in retail value has been found to be negligible.

Libertarians would have us recoil in horror from the “nanny state” preventing restaurants from serving trans fats, as if this were an affront to liberty, but instead would allow businesses to poison their customers (who never know the trans fat content of the food served) as if this were a sign of freedom. When consumers have no knowledge or control over the content of their food, it is difficult to see how they are acting freely. Given the opportunity, many businesses will poison their customers to the maximum extent permitted by law, which is why the FDA came into existence in the first place. Far from being advocates of freedom, the libertarians would make us slaves to the whims of unscrupulous businesses who would hydrogenate harmless fats into killer fats in order to maximize shelf-life. This is but a minor example of the greater fallacy of libertarianism: that government regulation is evil, but the same level of coercion from business is good. While the tyranny of the state is to be feared, it is no greater freedom to be at the mercy of private enterprise.