Quite possibly the best thing I’ve heard regarding faith in government in a long, long time.

Check out Utah House Bill 139 - yet another misguided crusade in the name of the welfare of our children.

I can finally rest at home - kids in the wild - resting assured that Uncle Sam is finally taking responsibility for raising my children.

I don’t even know how to address this. It’s fundamentally flawed on all sorts of levels:

1. First, it’s morality by committee. Thanks but no thanks - I’ll decide what’s wrong and right for my kids.
2. Content filtering is wholly useless. Kids know this stuff better than the library IT that administers it.
3.  This effectively nixes any chance of free, public wi-fi.

Can’t we focus on preventative measures like parent/teen education, rather than having to resort to this reactive type of legislation?

This post is in response to an article brought to my attention by a friend. The author has cross-posted on his own personal blog as well. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has always been a hero of mine, and I’ve seen enough trash on the net (and in shock-umentaries) that I’ve finally decided to buckle down and clear it up all in one spot.

**Update: My comments aren’t being approved for some reason over at alanstang.com. Others who have commented after me are getting approved for some reason. How’s that for intellectual honesty?

I want to address some of Stang’s talking points here, mostly because I thought he was incorrect both in fact and in perspective. The quotes below appear in Mr. Alan Stang’s article, linked above.

Let’s start out with Mr. Stang’s opening statement.

Because of intense, lifelong brainwashing, not enough Americans yet understand that Mike (Martin Luther) King, Jr., is an even bigger fraud; that in fact everything we have been told about him is phony, even starting with his name, which his father changed to enhance their career in religion. As part of the uncelebration of the phony holiday inflicted in his name, here again is our annual rendition of the facts.

First, let’s establish the fact that Mr. Stang is unquestionably exaggerated in his claims. Note the exaggeration in his leading statements. “Intense,” “lifelong,” national brainwashing. Everything we have been told about him is phony. One must wonder whether what other points he might have overstated.

Oddly enough, one of Mr. Stang’s leading points is how Dr. King’s name was actually Michael. Does a name change mean someone is immoral or insincere? I don’t really think so, and I find it odd that Mr. Stang needs to bring it up to try to support his points. Sir, you might as well accuse father Abraham (or Abram, if you prefer) of being a phony.

Next, Mr. Stang shares with us the pinhole of History from which he views Dr. Kings life and works:

There are five aspects of the King career: his Communism, his violence, his plagiarism, the fact that he was a sexual predator… and the fact that he did not believe in Christianity.

This is really where I want to focus. Mr. Stang, I believe you may have somehow left out his campaign of non-violence and his crusade against segregation, racism, and the Vietnam war.

Oh, and he was the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

How odd of you to focus on everything but the good. Why is it you purposely overlooked the mountain of good Dr. King did, and instead focused on the alleged weaknesses of the man instead? What could be your motive, sir?

Most of the rest of the article is rumor and conjecture, from spotty sources. For example, Drue Lackey seems to be the authority on Dr. King’s campaign efforts. Lackey was in fact a police chief in Montgomery, Alabama. Since his performance was under fire as a result of Dr. Kings efforts, one might wonder how skewed Lackey’s views might have been.

Interesting history fact of the moment: The name of the police officer who booked Rosa Parks was named Drue Lackey.

Next are the non-issues of the FBI tapes and Dr. King as a “sexual predator.”

The FBI tapes mentioned were a result of the current administration being paranoid about Dr. King’s alleged communist ties. One of Dr. Kings speech writers and advisers, Stanley D. Levinson was suspected of having ties to the movement in the US, so they wiretapped phones as Dr. King moved across the country. From wikipedia:

The attempt to prove that King was a Communist was in keeping with the feeling of many segregationists that blacks in the South were happy with their lot but had been stirred up by “communists” and “outside agitators.” Lawyer-advisor Stanley D. Levinson did have ties with the Communist Party in various business dealings, but the FBI refused to believe its own intelligence bureau reports that Levinson was no longer associated in that capacity.

Some of the late-night conversation was recorded. Some of it included “midnight talk,” which sounds to me like it amounts to what teenage boys sometimes indulge in around the campfire late at night. The FBI, and the administration used these tapes to accuse Dr. King of extramarital affairs, and Mr. Stang accuses him of much more.

Once major “source” of this information was published in 1989 by a friend of Dr. King, Ralph Abernathy, in a book called And The Walls Came Tumbling Down. The book was reviewed in The New York Times, and the allegations were discussed in that review. Abernathy said that he only wrote the term “womanizing”, and did not specifically say King had an affair.

…He freed many white people and poor people who were black, American Indians, the native people of this country and he was just a marvelous and fantastic leader and I am surprised that they would center on four pages and I didn’t ever say that he had sex with anybody.
Booknotes Review

Also, evidence indicating that King possibly engaged in sexual affairs is detailed by history professor David Garrow in his book Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, published in 1986 by William Morrow & Company; though it was not proven whether he agreed to have sex with a woman the night before his assassination as Mr. Stang asserts.

If anything I think you’re grasping at straws, Mr. Stang. I don’t see how some loose midnight talk with the buddies somehow negates a career and life literally sacrificed for equality and non-violence. Sure, it’s wrong, but is it as bad as you paint it to be, and can you really make the rock-solid claims you pretend to?

Next is the claims about plagiarism. Mr. Stang exaggeratedly reports that Dr. King “was a world-class plagiarist who stole just about everything that appeared in his name.”

Turns out he did copy some work he did in graduate school while at Boston University. He copied about a third of a paper he submitted. One needs to also note, however, that university officials decided not to revoke his degree, since the paper still “makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship.”

Other claims about copying ideas for his famous I Have a Dream speech are essentially urban legend.

Dear goodness Mr. Stang - he cheated on a paper in college AND he was joking around about the ladies at night with a friend? Does that really stand out to you amongst his accomplishments?

I’d address the claims about Dr. King’s Christianity, but I think it’s enough to say that a man’s faith is is own affair, and the judgement of it (especially by non-contextual quotes and your own opinion of them) isn’t in the least bit productive. One also must note that even non-Christians somehow manage to contribute to society. I think Ghandi may take offense to your premise that Christianity is a pre-requisite to greatness.

Mr. Stang, congratulations. You’ve succeeded in your quest to reduce greatness to garbage, but I think you’ll find it’s a result of your perspective rather than your premises. Somehow you’ve forgotten all that Martin Luther King Jr. stands for in your quest for his weaknesses and faults. I also think you’ve been trusting too much in urban legend and biased witnesses.

As for me, I’ll continue to enjoy the legacy of the movement Dr. King started. His wisdom his passion - in light of all his faults - I think he was truly a great man worth celebrating every year.