One man does not deserve the adulation of the concerted efforts of a diligent minority.
Dr. King is the symbol, though still very much mortal one, of the drive by this country's citizens who wanted to be treated just like anyone else. Yet the federal government, in fighting one form of corrupting discrimination, created another more damaging one, programs which ironically exacerbate the very "social" problems which they purported to fight.
No one should have to beg for a cup of coffee, no one should have to wait in long lines of substandard services, nor drink from different fountains, sit in decrepit sections of private establishments, nor sit at the back of the bus unless he or she chooses to. The treatment that minorities endured in the South in other municipalities throughout the country should never be tolerated or repeated again, yet a more subtle yet virulent strain of discrimination is doing more harm than the black codes of the Jim Crow era.
The biggest culprit who initiated and instigated these crass and depraved diminutions of Americans was not the white voters, or even the crass KKK, but the government that taxed and harassed every citizen. Residents of Alabama were forced to subsidize and sub-standard bus line, one which did not even serve the white riders adequately, for prejudice against one group will harm the welfare and well-being of other riders and interest in a community.
When public safety laws which forced local businesses to discriminate against black citizens went into effect, shop-keepers protested the latent attack on their profit margins, for a businessman enjoys no incentive discriminating against on class or race of customers. Only in a truly free market, freed from the arbitrary fetters and force of state power, does the member of a minority community receive the greatest protection for predatory peddlers.
Yet the Federal Government has now promulgated and promoted another form of segregation, one which still harms minority students, impeding their potential in a world whose dwindling option intimidate even the well-connected. The welfare state, which targets African-Americans in growing numbers, has contributed more to the illegitimacy and degeneracy which has harmed the integrity of the black family than the peculiar institution could ever do. Subsidizing births has contributed to an underclass of teen pregnancies and fatherless youth, which has fed into drug use, gang violence, failing schools, and the trap into a cycle of poverty which perpetuates with adolescents' engaging in high-risk behaviors at increasing costs to the state.
Add to the de-legitimization of the black family the forced segregation of public schools, where minority students are not permitted to enroll in other schools because of powerful and well-financed school boards and teachers' unions, subsidized by state coffers, who have discouraged vouchers and meritorious reforms in public education.
The federal government of today has added layers of bureaucracy to a government monopoly top-heavy with centralization and regulation. The state has no interest, no wisdom, no merit to be so deeply involved in the education or our local youth.
The incumbent, the first President of Black ancestry, should be commended for his relenting stance on No Child Left Behind, as well as promoting competition for taxpayer dollars through "Race to the Top." However, the extended investment to a monument celebrating one figure in the Civil Rights Movement smoothes over the many bumps still harvested and thickened by a federal government convinced that state power, and state power alone, can cure the ills which it has created time and again, even with the best of intentions.
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