Diatribune

I think the person we particularly need to look back to, for guidance and inspiration, is that latter day Founder, Martin Luther King. JFK's death is often thought of as the turning point of the sixties, but I think the real turning point was Martin Luther King's death. I think the impact it had the nation's soul was incalculable and that our journey as a nation became much darker after King was killed.

I remember my Mom watching King's funeral. Later on in her life, my mother became a tv-aholic, but she was so young and idealistic in the sixties and watching tv in the daytime was a rarity, unless it was educational tv (Mr. Rogers counted!). She wanted us children to be outside playing creatively during the daytime, as I recall, and she would lead us (and the neighborhood children) in exercise sessions on the driveway, in gardening, in playing house (she always had ideas for building things out of cardboard boxes), etc.. But the tv seemed to be on all day when Martin Luther King died.

I've wondered since if something died in my Mom that day. She tried hard to keep the flame alive, in her life, fighting against redlining with a neighborhood organization and involving herself in other volunteering activities. But, over time, she turned inwards, became more conservative and finally turned into a reactionary, concerned almost exclusively with abortion and no longer with issues such as poverty.

My Dad followed a similar path, much more virulently.

It's often forgotten, I think, that America lost its two foremost left wing religious leaders in 1968: the superfamous Martin Luther King and the comparatively unknown, but widely influential, Thomas Merton. Depending on how anxious one is about Tin Foilery labels, Merton died mysteriously, or bizarrely, by electrocution after a bath, during an ecumenical religious conference in Bangkok. Both men preached non-violence, community and love with an awe-inspiring combination of intellectual rigor and inspirational spontaneity. I believe that they were filled with the awesome spirit of devotion to Nation and Community that filled our Founders, like Jefferson and Adams; our second wave of Founders, like Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln and Susan B. Anthony; and our third wave of Founders, led by FDR. I think thier loss contributed, by their absense, to the rise of the religious right, which in turn helped create the situation we face today. Their loss deprived the left of guiding voices that would have strongly counterbalanced the shrill and strident hate preaching from the right. It also injected pain deep into the souls of many who had been inspired by the practical utopianism of people like Merton and King.

I think King forsaw this, and tried as hard as he could to forstall it with his Mountain Top speech, the speech he made the night before he died, arguably his greatest moment as an orator. It was his way of saying that - like Tom Joad - he would always be there, inside each of us. Unfortunately, I guess, a quiet voice inside is easily obscured, over time, by right wing shouting. Each of us has the potential to be a King or a Merton, so to speak, but sometimes it's easier to be a Falwell, a Dobson, a Robertson, a Hagee. For some reason, the light must be sought; the darkness is always there.

But let us look back, as Lincoln did. It will help us look forward.
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