Why Republicans Will Be Fine with Donald Trump in the General Election

Posted on by
3

Donald Trump and the ReformoconsBrian Beutler wrote an interesting article yesterday, Anti-Trump Conservatives Are Embracing the Liberal Critique of the Right. But you get a better idea about what it is about from the subtitle, “And they will disavow every word of it on the first day of the general election.” This, of course, is one of the most entertaining reasons for wanting Donald Trump to win the nomination: it’s going to be great to watch Republicans tie themselves in knots explaining why it is that the demagogue who was totally unacceptable is still the better general election choice than Hillary Clinton.

Of course, as Beutler noted, there aren’t that many Republicans making a real argument against Trump because to do so would be to make an argument against themselves. How is it that Donald Trump is so different from the other Republicans? For a while, I did think that Trump was a real populist. And then he came out with his tax plan. And what do you know?! It was just like Jeb Bush’s tax plan and Marco Rubio’s tax plan — except more so. It was a big giveaway to the rich. There is nothing that more defines a modern Republican.

So what are Republicans going to say against Donald Trump? Almost none of them are willing to say that his tax plan is unreasonable because there is nothing in it that is qualitatively different than what is Republican orthodoxy. In fact, the worst things in it are what Republicans love most. It gets rid of the estate tax and lowers the capital gains tax. The estate tax cut doesn’t just help the rich, it helps only the super rich. The capital gains tax cut isn’t as bad, but it would be a highly regressive cut.

So instead of substantive attacks on him, we mostly get stuff like this:

Now this is a liberal critique. And as Beutler noted, “But if and when the Republican campaign against Hillary Clinton descends into misogyny, you will hear these same conservatives dismiss accusations of sexism as unfounded liberal intimidation.” Indeed, Frances Langum over at Crooks & Liars brought my attention to a hilarious letter sent out by a pro-Cruz group to Reince Priebus. The letter itself is about how he better not allow anyone but Ted Cruz to be nominated if Donald Trump doesn’t get the necessary votes. But it included this bit of delusion:

Equally important will be an aggressive appeal to young voters and minority voters. We believe the GOP has the policies to successfully appeal to all these voters and should welcome them into the coalition.

Other than Trump being more vulgar (and we always knew this about him), he’s no different from Cruz. At least Donald Trump has some amount of charisma. Compare that to the fact that, Ted Cruz Doesn’t Believe You Have the Right to Masturbate. And then, I like Steve M’s analysis of Cruz’s notion about states and marriage, Ted Cruz: States Should Be Able to Ban Interracial Marriages. Ted Cruz: moderate!

Let’s look at one of the vaunted reformocons: Reihan Salam. Yesterday at Slate, he wrote, Why I’m Voting for Ted Cruz. And his only substantive policy point is that he is just as much of a xenophobe as Donald Trump, but that he doesn’t think that Trump is up to the challenge. That is: Ted Cruz would be a more effective xenophobe. (Obviously, Salam doesn’t put it that way.)

But Salam’s other big reason for voting for Cruz is that it would be good for the Republican Party. Fair enough. But do you think that Reihan Salam — who is, again, a reformocon who Ryan Cooper gave a 7/10 on his reformish scale — will sit out the general election if Donald Trump is nominated? No, like pretty much every Republican everywhere, he will get behind him. Sure, Trump’s an authoritarian who doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’s better than anyone from the other side.

I’ve only ever seen two reasons why the Republican establishment dislikes Donald Trump. The first is that he’s too blunt: he says things that are only supposed to be implied. The second is that they think he can’t win. Neither of those things will make them abandon him in the general election.

“Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore” by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Democracy and Humanum Genus (Anniversary)

Posted on by
2

Pope Leo XIII - Humanum GenusI know I’m recycling a lot of stuff these days, but you should give me a break. First, I’m overworked and really tired pretty much all the time. Second, much of my old work is really good! Like this article. Humanum Genus is important stuff!

On this day in 1884, Pope Leo XIII released the papal encyclical, Humanum genus. Oh, that Catholic Church! It is always angry about something. And at that time, it was angry about, well, democracy. Or more precisely, it was not keen on popular sovereignty — the idea that government has the right to rule because of a mandate by the people and not because God decided it. Or as Dennis puts it in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!” Pope Leo begged to differ.

It also isn’t keen on separation of church and state. So basically, the whole damned thing was very un-American. The funny thing is that now a good 35% of the country — almost exclusively protestants — would totally agree with Leo the Pope. Among conservatives, democracy itself is out of favor. And most of these ninnies think the Constitution itself — you know, that document that rather pointedly doesn’t mention God — is divinely inspired. I really do wonder what kind of American history these people learned. Or is it just anything to justify getting what they want?

Anyway, back to the Humanum Genus, most of it was presented as an attack on the Freemasons. That makes sense, because they were a secular force. And they were of what is fast becoming my favorite American religious group: those who just don’t care enough to have much of an opinion about God. They are much more sensible than atheists like me who spend a lot of time on it. I mean, I would save a lot of time if I just became a Catholic and went to Mass each Sunday.

The Pope was also concerned about public education. Basically, the Pope was concerned that the people would be self-reliant and not dependent upon the hierarchy that God himself set up. In other words, Pope Leo was the same as the power elite at any time: he was just complaining about trends that were threatening his power. I think people should give Pope Francis a little slack in that regard. But it’s a different time. At least in America, it isn’t the pope who is oppressing us. It is the corporate state. And just like the many Catholics in 1884 who loved the oppression of Humanum genus, so there are many today who love their modern subsistence wage economy.

Happy anniversary Humanum genus!

Disciplined Minds All Think Alike

Posted on by
22

Disciplined MindsOne of the books that Thomas Frank references in Listen, Liberal is Jeff Schmidt’s Disciplined Minds: a Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives. I’ve requested the book, but I know what it is about. He argues that the “intellectual class” is really a system that constrains thought. This is my experience. In fact, getting a PhD is not about showing that the student has reached some intellectual height; it is about proving that they are a member of the tribe.

One could use this idea to argue against global warming, “Everyone is involved in group think and can’t break out of it.” But I know this isn’t the case because I saw the consensus on global warming grow and it wasn’t like that at all. Acceptance of the theory accumulated with the data. But there is another issue when it comes to global warming. It’s just science and it spans many different fields. Everyone has and had a big incentive to find data that broke the theory. Instead, what you find on the denial side is cherry-picked data and conspiracy theories. So the issue doesn’t really need to be discussed regardless.

But the way a PhD trains a mind is not by making sure that it believes the currently accepted theories of the science. It trains a mind to think in the same way. Consider a theoretical case of a department of sociology where no one did field work. Everyone there only studied their science by looking at how student volunteers interacted. A graduate student who was determined to live at a retirement community for a year to study the people there just wouldn’t get a degree. It wouldn’t be because the faculty were afraid of what the student might find. It just wouldn’t be seen as sociology. And from a practical standpoint, who would the thesis adviser be?

We’ve seen something very much like this in the field of economics where the Chicago School determined somewhere along the way that their models were more important than reality. And that would have been perfectly okay. I’m all for useless science in the same way I’m for art or any other creative activity. But artists don’t go to Washington and pontificate about how there will be hyperinflation unless massive cuts are made to Social Security. It is not a coincidence that Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty did not go to the University of Chicago. If they had, they would have washed out or been co-opted by the hive mind.

I’ve been in academia enough to know that this is true. So Thomas Frank’s book has real resonance for me. Perhaps the most compelling part of the book is where he compares the people who FDR surrounded himself with (the “Brain Trust”) and those who Obama surrounded himself with. No one doubts that in both cases, these people are brilliant. But FDR’s geniuses came from different places. Obama’s (and Clinton’s before him) were all from the same place (generally, the Ivy League). And so whereas FDR got advice from people with different experiences, Obama does not. Obama gets advice from people who have all done very well by our “meritocratic” system and so see no cause for alarm.

I often marvel that I got a PhD. But I know how I did it: I am capable of seeming very normal for years at a time. Eventually, the truth will out. So they blew it. But even still, I didn’t go to the Ivy Leagues, even though I know I could have. I think there is something wrong with smart people who make that kind of boring choice.

Of course, for the people who have pursued that kind of life, it just makes sense. They see themselves as the best and so they want to surround themselves with other people who are “the best.” But instead, they end up surrounding themselves with people who think in a very similar way. And the experience of putting them all together makes them think even more strongly that the way they think is the only way to think.

It makes me think that the best thing that could happen to humanity is what happens at the end of The Psychic Parrot, where all the best and brightest are killed. We might (and I do me might) lose some intellectual firepower, but at least we’d have more diversity of thought.

Book cover image taken from Amazon and licensed under Fair Use.

Oklahoma City Bombing and Loose Talk

Posted on by
10

Oklahoma City Bombing - Loose TalkI was going to talk about juggling babies or some such nonsense today, but I noticed that it was on this day back in 1995 that the Oklahoma City bombing took place, killing roughly 169 people and injuring very many more. I remember in the early 1990s that conservatives, libertarians most especially, were very upset about Ruby Ridge and Waco. And there was a lot of loose talk about armed revolt.

At the time, I felt that the Waco siege had been mishandled. I never had a great deal of sympathy for Ruby Ridge, probably because of its association with white supremacists. I always thought that reaction of people was a bit extreme. This wasn’t exactly Nazi Germany. But regardless, after the Oklahoma City bombing, most of that loose talk of rebellion stopped. Things got very real.

Looking back, I think that had Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols not gotten around to the Oklahoma City bombing, some other pair of “patriots” would have done something similar. But the quiet and reasonableness that this horrific act brought to conservative movement was short lived. I haven’t made a study of it, but you can hear this kind of loose talk any day on The Alex Jones Show. But you will hear the same thing in a less extreme manner from Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh.

Everyone is guilty of loose talk. Children say they want to kill their parents when they get angry. But there really was something different about things in the early 1990s. There was very much a feeling of, “They raped our queen, so we raped their city, and we were right!” But in this case it is hard to see who “they” were. If McVeigh had decided to assassinate Janet Reno (and I certainly heard people talk about that), it at least made some sense; you could argue that she was culpable. But what the hell did the people who happened to be at or near the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building do that deserved death?

But that’s the problem with loose talk. When you live in a realm of theory, people become like chess pieces on a board. It’s like that kid who killed those people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church: he thought he was going to start a race war. Those people were just pawns in his grand plan. Ultimately, people have to trump any kind of high ideal — regardless of how great you think it is.

Ted Cruz Knows 1 Thing About the Carbon Cycle

Posted on by
25

Ted Cruz appears to have a vague notion of the carbon cycle in this tweet. It is indeed true that humans breathe out CO2 and that plants consume it. But, of course, he’s trying to use this to say that CO2 is no problem in the atmosphere. This I suppose is a step up from the notion that humans create CO2 — an issue that I’ve dealt with before, Humans Do Not Create CO2.

So Cruz seems to be aware that the carbon atom is just being swaps from animals to plants and back again. But if this is all that is happening, then why is it that CO2 levels have gone up over 20% since 1960? I mean, this is not one of those cases where Ted Cruz can pick one early high year and claim it is actually going down. Temperatures are highly variable, but CO2 stays in the atmosphere so long that its concentrations are very smooth. Here is the CO2 concentration as measured at the Mauna Loa observatory over the last six decades. (The squiggling is the annual cycle.)

CO2 Mauna Loa - Carbon Cycle

So if animals (not just humans) are swapping all this CO2 back and forth, why is it that the level of CO2 just keeps going up? That would be a good question for Ted Cruz and all of the rest of the anti-science conservatives. Even if they know, they would not be keen to admit it. You see, there is lots of carbon that is in the ground. While it is in the ground, it shockingly doesn’t have an effect on the atmosphere. But once it is released from the ground, it interacts with animals and gets turned into CO2 — eventually. And so we get to the atmospheric carbon cycle.

Now most of this is just plants taking it out of the ground. But that is just more of the carbon cycle. And it is ridiculously complicated. Animals eat plants (directly or indirectly) and use the carbon to build their bodies. Part of living is taking in oxygen and breathing out CO2. The plants take the CO2 back in. And when the plants die, they get buried and the carbon is sequestered. The same thing happens to the animals, of course. This is all be very simple stuff that should be taught to all children by the time they finish grammar school.

The Deeper Carbon Cycle

What’s more interesting is what happens to stuff that gets buried. That carbon still reacts with its environment. But in general, those reactions will be anaerobic — without oxygen. And so that carbon, under the right conditions, turns into hydrocarbons. And we have been busy over the last two centuries, pulling those hydrocarbons out of the ground and burning them, thus releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. And that is why the concentration of CO2 at the Mauna Loa observatory is so much higher today than it was in 1950.

Now I know: this is all kind of complicated and very science-y. It’s much easier to say, “CO2 is what every human breathes out; every plant, in turn,consumes CO2.” And if you are an incurious person — or just a demagogue — that’s where you stop. But it offends me. If Ted Cruz wants to deny science, fine; that’s his right. But I wish he wouldn’t use some minor bit of science to justify his science denial. Science isn’t about saying, “I know one thing, so let’s stop talking.” The carbon cycle is a beautiful thing. Ted Cruz is a great symbol of everything that is ugly about humanity.

Fake Anniversary: Invention of the Clarinet

Posted on by
7

ClarinetOn this day in 1623, the Comité pour l’Invention de la Clarinette was formed. There was widespread dissatisfaction with the flute. For example, the fingerings of the notes in different octaves were pretty much the same. This made learning the flute fairly easy. It was, in the words of one Comité member, “Too logical!” And so: the clarinet.

The problem was physics. The flute has holes on both ends and thus, it is based on the octave. But by closing one of the ends, it was possible to make the clarinet based on a 12th — an octave and a 5th. In this way, the upper registers were fingered in totally different ways. It was, in the words of one Comité member, “A perfect mess!”

But the Comité was not finished. They added various keys at random, just making the whole instrument a nightmare of complexity. But still, their work was not finished. They found that by placing buttons very close to each other — buttons that did very different things — they could normally get a 12 year old clarinet student to cry in under three minutes.

In the clarinet community, it is often joked that the instrument was invented by eight people who never met each other. But that’s not actually true. The Comité pour l’Invention de la Clarinette worked very hard to make the clarinet the bane of woodwind players everywhere. But it has been great for the clarinet instructors who have avoided suicide.

Socially Responsible Companies: be Socially Responsible

Posted on by
Reply

Erik LoomisI like this strategy from the Teamsters, handing out flyers outside of Chipotle because one of their big tomato contractors refuses to recognize IBT organization of their processing plant. Particularly when dealing with the out of the way parts of the supply chain where there’s no good public way to raise awareness, such as get journalists to pay attention and write a story like this, targeting the big buyers makes a ton of sense. Moreover, if Chipotle claims to be socially responsible, prove it. So often in the corporate world “social responsibility” means “making consumers feel good about their issue of the day,” thus GMO based activism. But actual social responsibility means treating workers with dignity throughout the supply chain. Chipotle needs to step to the plate here and pressure the contractor to recognize the Teamsters.

—Eric Loomis
Pressure the Big Companies on Conditions in Their Supply Chains

Thomas Frank Is Too Nice to the Democrats

Posted on by
14

Listen, Liberal - Thomas FrankI just got Listen, Liberal, Thomas Frank’s new book. I have only read about a quarter of it and I don’t intend for this to be a review. It is, well, a Thomas Frank book. He’s such a fine writer and polemicist. The way he builds an argument is thrilling. It’s easy to get taken away in the same way that you are by a Martin Luther King Jr speech. But there is, I think a fundamental problem with his argument: he still blames the economic conservatism of this country primarily on the Republicans.

Don’t get me wrong, mostly the Republican are the direct cause. But the issue is kind of like when Derek Bentley told Christopher Craig, “Let him have it!” In that case, Craig pulled the trigger, but the court (incorrectly in my opinion), found Bentley guilty of murder and hanged him. The Democrats have been Derek Bentley. Throughout most of my life, the Democrats have moved to the right on economic issues. This has pushed the entire political playing field to the right. And this is not surprising. The DLC and similarly minded conservative Democrats wanted to do just that. It wasn’t about winning elections, it was about changing policy.

But the conservative turn of the Democrats started long before the DLC and Bill Clinton. It was not Reagan who started the deregulation trend in this country; it was Jimmy Carter. Republicans like to paint him as an ultra-liberal, but that is based upon nothing but the Iranian hostage crisis. Of course, today, Carter is extremely liberal. It just goes to show you what happens when the liberal party in a two-party country starts lifting policy from the conservatives. I don’t blame Carter; I think he was and is an honorable and decent man. But he was the start of our big right turn.

And think about that. The Democratic Party turned to the right because of two southern Democratic presidents. So by the time we had a chance to elect a president after an economic crisis unlike any in my lifetime, the “liberal” northern president can’t even think outside of the box created by those earlier southerners. Remember how people talked about how “liberal” Gore was? I remember when he ran in 1988 and he was far too conservative for any Democrats outside the south. Today: he’s a liberal hero.

I think that a kind of con has been done to liberals in this country. You see it most clearly on MSNBC (the small part of it that is still liberal). Liberalism becomes redefined as a subset of its former self: social liberalism. I think this was meant to just take economics out of the question. We would all just meet in that great Thomas Friedman center because for a certain class of people, it isn’t a question of opinion, but of Truth™. But that didn’t happen.

Instead, the Republicans felt the need for their own economic turf. So they moved further to the right (today into a fantasy land). So now the center is considered liberal, and someone who would have been called just a Democrat in 1965 chooses to call himself a socialist today. It’s a bad situation. I don’t think that Obama is as conservative as he is because he’s reasoned himself there; I think he’s that conservative because it doesn’t even occur to him that any more liberal position is possible. (I think showing that something else is possible is the greatest favor that that hippy socialist Sanders has done for the country and the party and, hopefully, Hillary Clinton.)

I suspect that Thomas Frank would agree with everything that I just said. But what I don’t think he fully comprehends is that the Democrats really didn’t give the Republicans any choice. There was never going to be a Kumbaya moment where the Republicans met with the Democrats in the middle. That’s not the way that politics works. Good lord, a third of this country is still trying to litigate the Civil War!

Of course, Thomas Frank knows who he’s writing for: liberals. And I’m not sure that most of us are ready to admit just how culpable we’ve been for the mess that this country has become on economic issues. They hanged Derek Bentley. They didn’t hang Christopher Craig, who was released from prison in 1991 and was still alive as recently as 2006.

Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank cover taken from Amazon and licensed under Fair Use.

Anniversary Post: Daffy Duck Is Born!

Posted on by
Reply

Daffy DuckI’ve gotten rather tired of doing anniversary posts. So tomorrow, I’m going to start doing at least some fake anniversary posts: things that didn’t happen, so far as I know. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do them every day. But it will make it easier when I get a bad day. Not that tomorrow is a bad day! I haven’t looked. Anyway, I’m rerunning last year’s anniversary post, because it deals with a really important event. At least to me. Daffy Duck!

On this day in 1937, the first appearance of Daffy Duck was made in the Looney Tunes short, “Porky’s Duck Hunt.” In those early shorts, Daffy is a much more likable character. He’s kind of like Bugs Bunny, but absolutely insane. He’s also a lot more like a real duck. I find him quite charming. And this sets up a long collaboration with Porky Pig. Although in subsequent shorts they are more friends or, as was more true later on, Daffy was often trying to con the trusting Porky. My favorite is “Fool Coverage” where Daffy sells Porky accident insurance that will pay a million dollars, “Provided the accident occurs as the result of a stampede of wild elephants in your own living room, on the Fourth of July — of any year — between the hours of 3:55 and 4:00 pm, during a hailstorm.” Which of course is exactly what happens.

Daffy Duck V 1.0

Anyway, here is the short that started it all:

Daffy Duck V 2.0

There is a middle period where Daffy is still kind of duck like, and still mostly insane. “Yankee Doodle Daffy” is a good example of it:

Daffy Duck V 3.0

Later, the portrayal of Daffy Duck turned very meta — with Daffy constantly jealous of Bugs Bunny. These are still quite good, but I don’t really like the two characters being pitted against each other. It doesn’t show either of them in the best light. My favorite later Daffy Duck cartoon is “Duck Amuck” where he is all alone. Or is he?

Happy birthday Daffy Duck!

See Also

Joe Miller Joke Book
Bugs: Rabbit or Hare? (One of my favorite and most popular articles!)

Writing and the Meaning of My Life

Posted on by
12

Writing and MeaningI’ve been having this strange experience after I go to bed. I lie there and think of nothing in particular. But I know that I’m thinking about my life and it’s lack of meaning. That’s especially true regarding work. What is the point of it? Work has always been very important to me — central to my sense of meaning. But I no longer think that way. Work is a means to an end. And that end is…

You see the problem. We get to the usual issue that Schopenhauer explained so well. We continue on so that we can continue on. Until we don’t. The ultimate goal of life is to die. So why not today? It’s not that I’m suicidal. In fact, my will to live is extremely healthy. But that’s the thing that bothers me. It’s so irrational.

When I was younger, I determined that the meaning of life was to have a good time. That is about the only thing that you can use to push back against Schopenhauer. Life isn’t a total drag. But more and more it seems to be. I keep thinking about this one little speech that Aaron gives in the film Broadcast News.

As you may recall, Aaron got his big chance to anchor the evening news. But he broke out in a fit of sweating. It’s a funny, but tragic scene:

Afterward, Jane comes by his house and finds him happy. She asks why, if things went so terribly wrong, is he so chipper. He replies:

I don’t know. At a certain point it was so off the chart bad — it got funny. My central nervous system was telling me something. Jane — sweat running down my face — makeup falling into my eyes — people turning this fusillade of blow dryers on me — all so I could read introductions to other people who were covering stories which is what I like to do anyway.

Now in the film, the truth is that he’s in love with Jane and that’s where the scene goes from there. But I think he’s dead on when he says that he’s providing introductions for people doing what he most likes to do.

I like writing. I can’t not do it. And I’m a professional. I can do it at any level you ask. If you want something cheap, I can do that. If you want something finely tuned I can do that. I can write ad copy. I can be clever. I can be technical. I can write something so boring no one will ever read it if that’s what you need. I like writing. I’m good at it and it makes me happy to do it.

But I don’t really write for a living. I manage other writers. I make sure that they do an acceptable job of what I would prefer to be doing. Sure, I get to do some writing: for the other writers. And I put more style into this writing than I ought to. I write it off as the price that has to be paid for my not going totally insane.

So what is the point? I know this is a meta-grumble. I’m doing very well. This is why I’m lying in bed wondering about meaning — because I’m not lying in bed wondering how I’m going to pay my phone bill. Still, there ought to be more. And I could pay my phone bill through writing alone.

Morning Music: The Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp

Posted on by
Reply

Sing Me Back Home - Hickory Holler's TrampAs I’ve been picking through these early years of Merle Haggard, it’s hard not to get angry. To most people, he is remembered by his most vile and largely artless work: “Okie from Muskogee” and “The Fightin’ Side of Me” and “Are the Good Times Really Over.” Those three reactionary songs are hard to get past. And it isn’t all. I like the song “Workin’ Man Blues,” but he has to ruin it with that crack about welfare. But there is a depth of feeling in his early work that is irresistible. Take, for example, “The Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp” off Sing Me Back Home.

Story songs are tricky, especially when you don’t have much of a story to tell. And the story of “Hickory Holler’s Tramp” is a simple one. The singer’s father turns to booze and runs away with another woman, leaving his mother with 14 children to raise. So she becomes a prostitute, and the song is a celebration of that. And of course it should be. You do what you must for those you love. The song is highly sentimental, but it is hard not to find it touching.

Of course, there really is no disconnect between “The Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp” and “Okie from Muskogee.” It’s just a question of empathy. Haggard understands a mother abandoned with children to raise, since that was the story of his mother, although under very different circumstances. But the stereotype of hippies he used again and again indicate that he knew nothing of the young people he stood in opposition to. The key issue is that songs are very personal. If you don’t have empathy, you lose something really important. And what you are left with are less edifying emotions.

But “The Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp” is a really beautiful song:

Album cover licensed under fair use, via Wikipedia.

Anniversary Post: Letter from Birmingham Jail

Posted on by
4

Martin Luther King Jr - Letter from Birmingham JailI am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

— Martin Luther King Jr
Letter from Birmingham Jail
16 April 1963

Image cropped from Martin Luther King press conference 01269u edit by Marion S. Trikosko. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.