Today we celebrate our traitorous rebellion from the legitimate rule of Great Britain, carried out in the name of “freedom.” The rebellion enabled us to continue chattel slavery and stealing land from Native Americans west of the Proclamation Line. Let’s consider our current state of “freedom” as we all take a break from cashing our unemployment checks on this holiday of July 4th.
From Martin Luther King, Jr., whose first book was titled Stride Toward Freedom:
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.
All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper.’ If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. …
MLK, Jr. was one of our greatest thinkers, but even his mind could not stretch to the idea that people in Massachusetts, California, and New York would actually welcome being locked down for more than a year:
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.
(When exactly?)
Reasonable people, of course, would point out that healthy young people in these states were denied what had formerly been considered their rights for only 16 months or so. And maybe this coming fall or winter too, depending on what the public health technocrats recommend.
A right delayed is a right denied.
Let’s see how the ideas of our greatest thinker on the subject of freedom have been reinterpreted during the ongoing coronapanic…. some photos from an April 2021 trip to Atlanta and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park. The “Freedom Hall” was closed “out of an abundance of caution regarding the COVID-19 virus”:
How about the Freedom Walkway? That’s now a “Restricted Area”:
Even before coronapanic, the architect’s original vision for the reflecting pool had been disfigured with plastic barriers, which I was told were essentially permanent fixtures, to keep the public away:
Compare to my photo from the summer of 1994:
What words were important enough to be on MLK, Jr.’s grave?
“Free at last! Free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
At least as of June 16, according to the web site, all of the park buildings remained closed.
Keep in mind that Dr. King’s single most famous speech said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
So clearly he was a white supremacist, and it’s only a matter of time before the mob comes for his park.
Nobody wants to take up a collection to hire a professional, Black-owned cleaning service to blast all the grime off the Freedom Walkway? Until September 4th, people can sit at home all day and use their unemployment check money playing Power Wash Simulator (until July 8th it’s only $16.99 on Steam) but nobody thought to use the down time to wash the place off?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290000/PowerWash_Simulator/
Nobody wants to play for real. Sad!