new MLK statue in DC made in China

[cordilleran]

I'm sure we'll continue to assist China along the way in acheiving its manifest destiny of global dominion. But "human rights"? Well, that's a relative term isn't it Gunther? One to be bantered about as casually and incautiously as small talk during an Everclear chugfest?

 

[CALDIGR2]

Andy it IS NOT a Rebublican caused problem that many products are made in China. Rather, it is ENTIRELY a Democrat, and their union handlers, wrought issue. The stranglehold that ruinous unions have over US workers, and their insistence on exorbitant wages, have forced many US manufacturers to fail. When the Dems become business friendly and cease their job killing legislation we might see a return to "Made In USA" goods.

 

[madpaddla]

The funniest, ironic, or most horrific thing about this statue to a great American ...............is that his family was paid over $800,000 to use his words and likeness ....for his own statue.......The MLK family should be ashamed. He was a great man but they suck ! ! !

 

[RICKJJ59W]

ORIGINAL: GuntherHess

if you are trying to creep towards a conclusion that US government is just as bad as the Chinese government I think you are on a wild goose chase.

don't for get the dogs, they chase them too.

 

[GuntherHess]

The funniest, ironic, or most horrific thing about this statue to a great American ...............is that his family was paid over $800,000 to use his words and likeness ....for his own statue.......The MLK family should be ashamed. He was a great man but they suck ! ! !

obviously greatness is not hereditary[]

 

[PrivyCheese]

ORIGINAL: cordilleran

Diplomacy and Most-favored Trade status are world's apart. Here's the conundrum. It's the 1960s, and you are a poor white trailer trash boy who jumps the fast tracks of Johnson's Great Society to get a ticket to Harvard. You hook up with upper middle class kids who hate the privileges they've been afforded and frankly, you hate your parents. Mao, Che, and Castro are fashionable because they also hate your government for its free market success and by default, they hate your parents, too. Loco parentis ad extremis. Killing innocents through the SLA, SDS, Weathermen, et. al, gets a little blase with the fall of Saigon, and the Killing Fields is not a star you want to hang your Chairman Mau cap to. After all, you do not want to interfere in Khmer Rouge shennanigans as these are ideological brothers. Go underground and infiltrate the cornerstones of U.S. society: media, government, arts, education, religion. Lambaste traditional mores. Redefine the family. Situational ethics, Moral relativity. You get the picture. Fast foward 20 years. You are now in the thick of the mainstream. You represent a candidate who reinvents democracy. You've finangled yourself into a position as Arkansas governor. It's a stepping stone to greater ideological goals. Its the early 1990s and everyone is drunk on the malaise of good times and amnesia. You are John the Baptist, preparing the way for the new secular messiah. You are elected president because a spoiler by the name of Perot. You are the first president to forge a strict trade relationship with communist China. You are the first president to bolster up every sagging communist country globally and the first to spread the intellectual/industrial/military knowledge around to our adversaries claiming to "level the global playing field". You provide taxpayer dollars and technology to have constructed nuclear reactors in North Korea. Not surprisingly, the same nuclear capability we are now concerned with (but hear little about by the apologist media who largely bought into the "dream"). Of course the Messiah, despite having worn the face of Al Gore previously, a man whom leftards so desperately desired to usher in the age of chains and constraints, was defeated in 2000, would manifest himself as the great usurper to kow-tow the intellectual/developmental/industrial/economic might of the United States, hanging chads notwithstanding (you paid for the recount in the tens-of-millions of dollars). So here we are. The tolerant, diverse, and morally downtrodden superpower about to be eclipsed by an ideological foe who despises freedom. Guess what? While you were trying to convince yourself how great you were by allowing the flotsam and jetsam into your living space, you have brought about your own destruction. Your adulation of the mediocre, the mundane and the uninspired as exemplars to be emulated societally has resulted in a Bevis and Butthead reality. High art is whomever can outgross the next posuer masquerading as an enlightened soul and the soul is reduced to a feeling, highest bidder gets the prize for pot or poontang. After all isn't the Cubs, Red Sox, Giants. Green Bay Packers the mostest?

So do you expect me to care one iota about the hardships to come? Doesn't matter to me. Been there done that. Your enlightened, progressive society marginalized people like me eons ago. Aristotle said it best in Ars Poetica: "The ignorant masses are most easily swayed by appeals to emotion". You've made your pudding. Now eat it and don't complain to the headmaster that it tastes like offal.

BRAVO........BRAVO.....BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Steve/sewell]

In all of this, here is what has been missed.

I think he should have had a seat right next to Abe Lincoln in his house and the Memorial should have been renamed the Lincoln and King Liberty memorial. How fitting to Kings cause would this had been had it happened this way.Imagine both men sharing the same place and Ideals. What better way to show the progress that has been made through the years then having these two men seated next to each other immortalized forever.Think of the symbolic image this would have portrayed to the African Americans who still feel slighted today.Both Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther had difficult tasks ahead of them in their days and met them head on.Abraham Lincoln was Martin Luther Kings greatest inspirer and motivator and had they known each other personally the other way around would also have been true.King chose the place to make his great speech for obvious reasons and where he made it should always be remembered for it.


The Speech,August 28th 1963

No where in his great speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 'is he asking for our Governments help in this cause period. He is simply only asking for equal opportunity and dignity for his fellow Negroes yes he used the word Negro not African American.All he wanted was a level playing field and respect for his race.He demanded nothing more nothing less.Martin Luther King was a great man with a large set of B A L L S who told it like it was and encouraged all Americans PEACEFULLY to see the injustices inflicted upon his relatives and his family still to that day and to rewrite and correct the wrong turn down the wrong road,this country had taken when slavery and prejudice was the norm. The arrogant likes of Malcolm X ,Al Sharpton,Jesse Jackson and others only stand to further divide the cause Martin Luther stood for as they will never be satisfied and will never forgive.

It is time to forgive the White folks.The opportunity is there for the taking for anyone willing to work for it, in this still greatest country the world has ever known.I see the problems and end results you have written about Cord and agree with you. Martin Luther King was a motivator,the Great society Johnson implemented and the welfare it created,was and still is a divider.Permanent Government assistance encourages mediocrity plain and simple.It takes the fighting edge away from you.That fighting edge is what made this country,once gone it will be tough to get back

When I see the men mentioned above marching on behalf of a crack crazed Rodney King (who was over beaten by the police) but was acting out aggressively enough,that some of it was deserving to quell him,I say to myself why are they not marching on behalf of the High School athletes,Honor Students and all the other good citizens caught in the drug turf crossfire whose lives were cut short by their own kind,who were trying to better themselves and their families,and were also trying to set a good example to show their neighbors that there was in fact a correct and moral way to climb the gate out of the Ghetto.

Ask yourselves this? Why are the good Muslims not protesting peacefully when a small group from their culture wreak havoc and terror giving them a permanent black eye and lumping them all as not being very trustworthy.Why wont one single Muslim Cleric publicly denounce the terrorists for what they are CRIMINALS plain and simple.
Why ? Because they have no B A L L S,Martin Luther King had them big brass ones and he paid to wear them with his life.Martin Luther King was a great American and deserves a place with the founding fathers in their park on the mall.

Here is his speech delivered 48 years ago yesterday



I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom 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, we are free at last!

Better yet,where would have been a better place to have erected a memorial of King then right where he gave the famous speech on the steps Of the Lincoln Memorial..Had it been located there all vistors wanting to see Lincoln would have had to go by King first,acknowledging his presence and all he stood for.................................... Steve

 

[Penn Digger]

This has been a very interesting read. Thanks.

 

[morbious_fod]

ORIGINAL: RED Matthews

(in reply to morbious_fod)

I was not saying he shouldn't be given a recognition for he objectives. He was a great American in my book. RED Matthews

That wasn't in a direct reply to you or anything, just a bit of personal musing.

 

[carobran]

ORIGINAL: Steve/sewell



















I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, .
















Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

ahhhh,the great state of Mississippi,arguably the greatest state in america..............................and its true,we gots lots of mole hills[][sm=lol.gif]