This is an MLK day Message from Steve Kubby, Libertarian for President with markup links by me, paulie cannoli.
FREE AT LAST?
I wonder what Martin Luther King, Jr., would think of the America we live in — how he’d feel had he and his assassin not met on that fateful April morning and if instead he had awakened this morning to his 78th birthday.
I wonder how he’d characterize a country that imprisons more of its own people than any other nation on earth.
I wander what he’d call a country that incarcerates one in four of
its young black males.I wonder if he could tolerate a country that differentiates between
“white people’s cocaine” and “black people’s cocaine” in its sentencing laws.I wonder if Dr. King would have the moral strength to stick to his philosophy of non-violence in this era of militarized police, “no-
knock” raids, death sentences for self-defense, and the cold-blooded murder of elderly black women by their alleged protectors.I wonder if Dr. King would even recognize the America we live in today.
I don’t think he would. I think he’d still be leading marches and working for justice — demanding that America make good on what he called the “architects of our republic['s] … promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. … a promise that all men
would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”Dr. King is not often described as a “libertarian” when his work for racial equality is remembered — and maybe there are other, better words to describe his ideas. Certainly the movemement he led for so many years has sometimes struck out in directions he’d likely not
have supported. But, just as clearly, he understood the importance of freedom. On this, his birthday, I like to take a few minutes to remember the closing words of his famous 1963 speech in Washington:“When we let 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!’”I hope that you’ll spend a few moments pondering those words with me — and the coming years working with me to renew them and to make them real.
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/steve-kubbys-mlk-day-message/
Less
aynrkey
bostonteapartygoer
Kenn Jacobine
mattdharris
Mike Seebeck
Miche
paulie
Jim Davidson
ponggod
Stuart Richards
Todd Andrew Barnett
We certainly are not free, and Dr. King would be upset to see that. Thus we must ask ourselves what the most we can do for liberty is. That is to reach out to those who currently do not believe in it, not to preach to the choir.
Well, feel free to pass this around to your non-libertarian friends and acquaintances.
I like doing the mark-up on these things to turn them into resources for further study.
We can make it a collaborative project.
BTW who’s doing state convention scheduling for Phillies? I’m starting on that for Kubby but so far we haven’t identified when most of the states will have their conventions.
If you all want to work on that together, and setting up a schedule for debates at state conventions, let me know – we’ll be firming up more travel plans in about a month, and any info we get in the meantime would help.
And, uh, no, you don’t have to point out you’re ahead in that department, since you started months earlier. I’ve only been working on this project for a few days.
For any of those who care, the Michigan State Convention is April 28th in Grand Rapids, Mi. I don’t have alot of info other than a date and location, but contact me at jasongatties@gmail.com and perhaps I can put you in touch with someone who could set things up for ya.
Thanks Jason, I’ll be following up on that but not right away…for right now the dates is all I’m researching. I meant more who on the Phillies campaign has been in charge of finding out when all the state conventions will be and whether they want to co-operate on sharing
that info, and setting up debates. We still have a month or so before we can firm more travel plans up, but we can work on the info aspect of things in the meantime.
BTW did you have any links you’d like to suggest for the mark-up? It’s supposed to be a work in progress, but so far no one has come through with any link suggestions.
Oh and if you’re still with me here… what’s up with Allen Hacker teaching at Gene Chapman University – do we have any independent confirmation on that besides Gene and Dougie? LOL.
Hopefully Hacker won’t teach “Running a Winning Campaign 101″. As far as the Phillies/Kubby Debates, I would love to see that happen. I’m no longer actively involved with the Phillies campaign but I would certainly like to see a debate happen soon. Is Kubby going to the Nevada Convention in February? That seems to be the “kick off” for all the campaigns.
I think Hacker might be teaching an advanced course “How to Donate to Allen Hacker 400″ plus the graduate-level seminar, “Freedom in the Next Ten Thousand Years.”
Yes, Kubby will be in Nevada.
Oregon, New Mexico and California have also already been scheduled, along with an interview on Liberated Space. But like I said, we’re just starting on all that now, so it’s no big deal that Phillies is ahead on that kind of thing at the moment.
Debates would in fact be interesting.
If Hacker is involved with Chapman, that would make him even less trusted – which is good; I don’t want to hear of him ever again.