This is madness in America, fifty-years after the life of Martin Luther King. Derek Chauvin brutally killed George Floyd. Protests have hijacked the Floyd family’s time to mourn. Rioters have looted businesses in minority neighborhoods. Anarchists have seized the day and killed black law officers. So-called liberals have played identity politics for partisan gain, misquoting Dr King to justify the violence: a riot is the language of the unheard.
That is an out-of-context snippet from Dr. King’s interview on 60 Minutes in 1966, when he was responding to a charge that “an increasingly vocal minority (Black Power) totally disagree with your tactics.” His own words: I agree there is a group advocating violence now [that] represents a numerical minority. The vast majority of [Blacks] still feel the best way is through non-violent resistance. I’ve always said, and will continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating.
The guess here is that Dr. King would still believe an aggrieved minority needs the moral majority to change the “arc of the moral universe” in the voting booth and jury room. Riots organized by Black Power then and Black Lives Matter now alienate the law-abiding majority, who don’t feel social justice and law and order to be mutually exclusive. As a practical matter, Dr. King kept his emotions in check in order to elevate his cause; thereby giving the moral majority an easy choice.
I suspect Dr. King would be (should be) outraged by the video of George Floyd’s death, but in fairness to his legacy, partisans shouldn’t use his name to justify the riots. The Floyd smoking gun video is all King would need to capture the hearts of the moral majority. I can just hear Dr. King in the pulpit and see him with Kanye West in the Oval Office. No way Dr. King supports the (mostly white) Antifa rioters, who promote anarchy.
This is not the 60s: they are shooting black policemen, looting black businesses, and burning black neighborhoods. A former Army sergeant, Jason Pipes, tracked Antifa operatives in Raleigh on Sunday (May 31) and reports:
Rioters repeatedly formed to rush lines of police. While this was occurring, smaller groups used the distraction to break windows, start fires, vandalize and loot. I observed hand-held FRS radios for communication, drones for observation and harassment, high-powered lasers to disable police, rioters designated as medics, and tactical coordinators out of the fray but clearly calling the shots.
Pipes describes a well-organized terrorist organization, confirming what police have been saying for days. I support 100% the peaceful protestors: they are moved by social conscience. I condemn the others I see: anarchists bent on dividing America and destroying free-market capitalism. I am pretty sure they all fail Dr. King’s content of their heart test.