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"In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check, a check I will personally take a percentage of as the agent for all racial matters in this nation."

Rare.us: Sharpton takes the edit pen to MLK’s ‘dream’ speech



From our friends at Rare.us, what would it look like if Al Sharpton took the edit pen to Dr. Martin Luther King's iconic "I Have A Dream" speech? Probably very much like this. Here's a taste:
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 of my career as a professional race-baiter. 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 trust me, I will make this solemn fight into nothing but a new, profitable business. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights, and I get public credit for it on the news. 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. (Lying and media manipulation excepted). Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. Let us simply serve that cup of bitterness and hatred to future generations.

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We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline, coupled with false claims and profiteering. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence, but it is fine to move others to violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force, with a good dose of heavy-handed emotional blackmail. 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. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. OK, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. We all know division is the real path to unity. Just trust me on that one.
All good humor has an element of truth, and what this satire lays out is the undeniable distinction between King - an iconic figure who was flawed like the rest of us but whose only agenda was freedom and justice - and the men of today who claim to be his heirs, but who in fact have merely propagated King's message for their own enrichment and for the advancement of an ideological agenda that can clearly be shown to have served blacks as poorly as anyone. I am not so interested in the discussion about whether Dr. King was a Republican, although his niece Alveda King is a good friend of ours and tells us without hesitation that he was. My read on it is that Dr. King was a man of God first, and because of that he could not reconcile himself to some of the stances of the Democratic Party as it existed in his time. But it doesn't really matter to me what his party registration was. King rose up from amongst a group of Americans who had been oppressed for too long, and yearned for a leader with courage, conviction, moral clarity and God's anointing. King was that man, and his cause was righteous. The D or the R after his name was irrelevant. For people like Sharpton, by contrast, the partisan identification is all-important because he stays in business by pandering to the resentment of those who will embrace any excuse for the exercise of rage. That's why MSNBC gives him a platform, because its only hope is to piece together a patchwork of grievance groups who will tune in to hear people feeding their resentment. The most despicable thing about Sharpton's act is that it denies the real progress America has made as a direct result of Dr. King's leadership. It is certainly not acceptable that we still have the high rates of black poverty we see in this country, but we should absolutely celebrate the decimation of Jim Crow. In his Best of the Web Today column yesterday, the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto points out that blacks are now moving back to the south after seven decades of migration to the north. That's because the oppression they used to face there is mostly a thing of the past, and what remains is societally unacceptable and scorned by most whites as well as by blacks. In order for Sharpton to remain relevant, he has to convince people that Dr. King accomplished nothing, and that America is just as racist as ever. For that, he certainly deserves this little bit of mocking from Rare.us, and far worse. Around here, we're proud to celebrate Dr. King's real achievement, as the boss did so eloquently the other day. Of course, our boss has always believed he had an obligation to Civil Rights heroes like Dr. King to work hard and do his best, because they fought to give him the right to do so. That's how he became so successful in business before becoming an influential voice in politics - and that's the legacy he will leave. The only legacy Al Sharpton will leave is as a race-baiting blowhard who got a lot of attention for himself but didn't impact anything for the better.


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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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