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From: rkoch@banmlkday.com

By Marcus Epstein
January 18, 2003

There is probably no greater sacred cow in America than Martin
Luther King Jr. The slightest criticism of him or even
suggesting that he isn't deserving of a national holiday leads
to the usual accusations of racist, fascism, and the rest of the
usual left-wing epithets not only from liberals, but also from
many ostensible conservatives and libertarians.

This is amazing because during the 50s and 60s, the Right almost
unanimously opposed the civil rights movement. Contrary to the
claims of many neocons, the opposition was not limited to the
John Birch Society and southern conservatives. It was made by
politicians like Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, and in the
pages of Modern Age, Human Events, National Review, and the
Freeman.

Today, the official conservative and libertarian movement
portrays King as someone on our side who would be fighting Jesse
Jackson and Al Sharpton if he were alive. Most all conservative
publications and websites have articles around this time of the
year praising King and discussing how today's civil rights
leaders are betraying his legacy. Jim Powell's otherwise
excellent The Triumph of Liberty rates King next to Ludwig von
Mises and Albert J. Nock as a libertarian hero. Attend any IHS
seminar, and you'll read "A letter from a Birmingham Jail" as a
great piece of anti-statist wisdom. The Heritage Foundation
regularly has lectures and symposiums honoring his legacy. There
are nearly a half dozen neocon and left-libertarian think tanks
and legal foundations with names such as "The Center for Equal
Opportunity" and the "American Civil Rights Institute" which
claim to model themselves after King.

Why is a man once reviled by the Right now celebrated by it as a
hero? The answer partly lies in the fact that the mainstream
Right has gradually moved to the left since King's death. The
influx of many neoconservative intellectuals, many of whom were
involved in the civil rights movement, into the conservative
movement also contributes to the King phenomenon. This does not
fully explain the picture, because on many issues King was far
to the left of even the neoconservatives, and many King admirers
even claim to adhere to principles like freedom of association
and federalism. The main reason is that they have created a
mythical Martin Luther King Jr., that they constructed solely
from one line in his "I Have a Dream" speech.

In this article, I will try to dispel the major myths that the
conservative movement has about King. I found a good deal of the
information for this piece in I May Not Get There With You: The
True Martin Luther King by black leftist Michael Eric Dyson.
Dyson shows that King supported black power, reparations,
affirmative action, and socialism. He believes this made King
even more admirable. He also deals frankly with King's
philandering and plagiarism, though he excuses them. If you
don't mind reading his long discussions about gangsta rap and
the like, I strongly recommend this book.

Myth #1: King wanted only equal rights, not special privileges
and would have opposed affirmative action, quotas, reparations,
and the other policies pursued by today's civil rights
leadership.

This is probably the most repeated myth about King. Writing on
National Review Online, There Heritage Foundation's Matthew
Spalding wrote a piece entitled "Martin Luther King's
Conservative Mind," where he wrote, "An agenda that advocates
quotas, counting by race and set-asides takes us away from
King’s vision."

The problem with this view is that King openly advocated quotas
and racial set-asides. He wrote that the "Negro today is not
struggling for some abstract, vague rights, but for concrete
improvement in his way of life." When equal opportunity laws
failed to achieve this, King looked for other ways. In his book
Where Do We Go From Here, he suggested that "A society that has
done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years
must now do something special for him, to equip him to compete
on a just and equal basis." To do this he expressed support for
quotas. In a 1968 Playboy interview, he said, “If a city has a
30% Negro population, then it is logical to assume that Negroes

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