between the lines Joseph Farah WND Exclusive Commentary I have a dream, too
Posted: January 16, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
I have a dream that America will return to its heritage of freedom.
But before that dream is realized, we've got to stop miseducating kids at every turn. What do I mean? Take what your kids are learning today about Martin Luther King and the principles of American freedom.
They learn that "civil rights are the freedoms and rights that a person has as a member of a community, state or nation." That's what Scholastic magazine, distributed through schools all over the country, published six years ago. "In the U.S., these rights are guaranteed to all citizens by the Constitution and acts of Congress."
That is not true. Civil rights, America's founders taught us so well, are God-given, unalienable rights. They don't descend from government. They are not given out through acts of Congress. They cannot be invented by man. They are inherent, universal, permanent.
This is such a foundational point of understanding American civic life, history and government that it cannot be a simple mistake by an educational publisher. This is deliberate brainwashing – an example of the dumbing-down process we hear so much about in government schools. What these institutions produce are not educated students so much as spare parts for a giant statist-corporate matrix called America.
As if to underline the point, the Scholastic article writer added: "Since the 1960s, many laws have been passed to guarantee civil rights to all Americans. But the struggle continues. Today, not only blacks, but many other groups – including women, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, people with disabilities, homosexuals, the homeless and other minorities – are waging civil-rights campaigns."
If Scholastic is correct about rights simply being extended by legislative decree, then rights can be taken away as easily as they are bestowed. Those are not rights, folks. Those are privileges.
Notice the subtle way the struggle by blacks is equated with agitation by "the homeless" and homosexuals. This is Marxist Indoctrination 101. I know, I used to use such techniques myself. But now it is thoroughly permeating not just academia, but elementary schools and private educational companies that must sell their products to the government educational monopoly.
"Most people agree that decent housing is a basic right," the article continues. "Yet millions of Americans live in substandard housing – or have no housing at all. They live that way because they cannot afford better – or are kept out of better housing by discrimination (unfair treatment)."
Oh, really? That strikes me as a pretty strong statement to make without citing any evidence. "Most people agree that decent housing is a basic right." Hmmm. I would challenge that supposition. Even in America's advanced case of intellectual, moral and cultural decay, I don't believe a majority would now say that decent housing is a basic right. At least I hope not.
But, even if some poll showed that the statement might be technically true, I have to add a big, "So what?" Who cares what people think about rights? It doesn't matter. Once again, rights – true rights – descend from God and cannot be given to man by anyone else nor taken away.
We also learn from Scholastic materials that King got his ideas for peaceful resistance from two sources – Mahatma Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau. Gee, you know, I don't deny that those folks were influences on King, but to ignore King's inspiration from the Bible is ludicrous.
After all, it was Jesus who taught us – Gandhi and Thoreau included – about loving your enemy and "turning the other cheek."
Ah, but then, of course, you have the old sticky wicket of religion in the classroom. Better to simply ignore reality – the truth that Martin Luther King was a Christian minister. I have a feeling that not many kids in government school will hear this part of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech:
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, 'My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.'
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom. That was the King message. Martin Luther King talked a lot more about freedom than he did rights. He was clear on where true freedom and rights came from. That distinction has been obliterated in today's teaching about him.
Why? Because freedom cannot be controlled by government. Government would prefer to define the limits of your freedom by arbitrarily creating new "rights" and disabusing us of the notion that rights are God's unalienable gifts to all humanity.
