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Dr. Aveda King, niece of MLK, answers the charge of socialism:
My uncle was a Christian. Certainly, the values that the Communist Party (on paper) talked about – the Socialist Party – sounded really good on paper. But, my uncle was not guided by those principles nor standards. When he talked about taking care of the masses, feeding the hungry, taking care of “the least of these,” that was from a foundation following Jesus Christ, not the Socialist Party.
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When I ask people like Al Sharpton or [former NAACP chairman] Julian Bond, anybody who was saying that they knew what Dr. King’s dream was, I just asked them to go back and visit it. My uncle wanted justice to roll down like water, and righteousness as a mighty stream. That’s totally different from “economic justice” and making sure that I have enough money – you give me your money. [Redistribution of wealth] is not what my uncle taught. It’s not what he believed.
If King was a radical socialist, why was there contention with Malcolm X? Why did former SEIU president Andy Stern tell the Washington Post in 2004 that King’s contribution to the Civil Rights Movement paled next to that of Black Panther Stokely Carmichael? The Left cannot have it both ways. Either King was a radical socialist, or he was not. The contention between King’s philosophy and that of conspicuous radicals indicates the latter.
The same contention exists today between we who revere the natural rights of each individual and the “progressive” Left who revere only power. Equal justice has run up against “social justice,” prompting a philosophical battle to claim the Civil Rights Era. This debate is welcome, as the record needs correcting.
Despite their sacred place in political discourse, civil rights are not inherently good. Civil rights are a creation of the state, a tool which can be utilized for good or for ill. The Soviet constitution was replete with civil rights – the right to work, the right to rest and leisure, the right to maintenance in old age, the right to education. The list goes on. The value of a civil right is in its support of natural rights. When a civil right infringes upon natural rights, it is unjust.
For this reason, the movement necessary to combat today’s nascent institution of racism must focus on natural rights. Just as a hammer might be rightly used to pound a nail or wrongly used to smash a skull, civil rights are appropriate only when they affirm equal justice under the law. Redistributive taxation, coercion in markets, and encroachment upon individual liberty are never just, and always immoral.
Arguments to the contrary are replete with the same balkanizing rhetoric King struggled to overcome. There is no brand of justice – social, economic, or racial. There is nothing noble in excusing black defendants, or segregating “black history”, or lowering black standards. These practices perpetuate division, resentment, and stagnation. King dreamt of unity. King dreamt of love. Above all, King dreamt of freedom.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom [to] ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty…
… everything is equal in everybody’s home? Not quite.
