Remember MLK?

Today, E.J. Dionne offers a powerful riposte to fellow Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson’s claim that Barack Obama had chosen the Path of Wright rather than the Path of Martin Luther King, Jr. The telling words of King, as presented by Dionne, are: Listen to what King said about the Vietnam War at his own […]

Today, E.J. Dionne offers a powerful riposte to fellow Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson’s claim that Barack Obama had chosen the Path of Wright rather than the Path of Martin Luther King, Jr. The telling words of King, as presented by Dionne, are:

Listen to what King said about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1968: “God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place.” King then predicted this response from the Almighty: “And if you don’t stop your reckless course, I’ll rise up and break the backbone of your power.”

Terry Mattingly, among many others, should take note. Here, recall, is the, uh, parallel passage from Wright:

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.

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