On 1/16/06, Tom C <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Not taking anything away from what you said Frank. But I wonder... if
they
hadn't been assasinated, would they be viewed as such stellar figures?
We
shall never know as their works ended abrubtly.
Andd Frank replied>
You're right. Here's my thoughts (not that you asked...):
I think that RFK would have won the Democratic ticket in '68. Had he
done so, I think he'd have beaten Nixon. He'd have gotten the US out
of Vietnam much faster than Nixon was able to. He'd have also brought
in comprehensive social programmes. He'd have increased US support
for Israel. How all of those things would have played out is hard to
say. I think the US (for better or worse?) would have been a far
different place than it is today.
As for MLK Jr., that's harder to say. By the time of his
assassination, he was increasingly being seen as "old guard" in the
Civil Rights Movement. More radical groups and individuals were
pushing him out of the spotlight somewhat. The inner cities of the US
were burning, and he and his fellow-advocates of non-violence didn't
seem to have any answers to that.
In any event, all I was thinking (even if I didn't quite say it <g>)
is that the assassination of those two figures changed America in a
way that we will never fully comprehend: for better or worse, who
knows?
What I do know is that Martin Luther King accomplished more in his 39
years than most of us could accomplish in 10 lifetimes. No matter how
his legacy might have changed were he not assassinated, his life
speaks for itself; in my eyes he was one of the towering figures in
the 20th Century (or any other century, for that matter).
It's interesting, last night I heard some reasons against devoting a day to
memorializing Martin Luther King. One of which was to attack him on a
personal basis (I guess I'll have to stop looking at Picasso's artwork and
listening to Wagner's music, etc.) and the other was a complaint that he is
the only American to have a day devoted solely to him. We have combined
Lincoln's birthday (not previously celebrated in many states) with
Washington's birthday in celebrating President's Day.
I thought about this for a while, and realized that we celebrate a day
honoring the birth of an individual who also had his life terminated in his
30s (and therefore we don't know what he could have accomplished in his
later years) and he wasn't even an American. Yet these same people seem
almost violent in their promotion of celebrating Christmas.
Oops! My bad. I was looking for logic.
Larry in Dallas
