I have no doubt that this will be one among thousands if not millions of posts about the 50th Anniversary of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. In human history, I think the three most important moments happened here in America, The Declaration of Independence, The Gettysburg Address and Dr. King's speech. Whenever I think of King, I also think of his Mountain Top speech, and truth be told, I sometimes conflate the two. The things he talked about in his Dream, are the conditions that exist in his Promised Land. Fifty years on the answer to "Are we there yet?" is clearly, No.
In addition to the actual 50th anniversary, there were commemorative activities on the Saturday which preceded it. Many on the Right (AKA Fox News) complained that these commemorations were more like grievance festivals. They wondered where the optimism of the Dream went? This ignores two basic facts: To wit- Dr. King's speech (much like the Declaration of Independence) was a list of grievances until Mahalia Jackson encouraged him to talk about the Dream, and that it is a specified purpose of the First Amendment: the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I find it ironic that the very people who are addressing their grievances about Obamacare claim he hates the America that allows them to do so. But this post is not about the Tea Party. I want to discus Dr. King's Promised Land. The Right wants us to believe that we are there now that we've elected a black president. They want us to believe that they do not judge people by the color of their skin even as their presidential candidates say that they don't want to give blah people welfare, and they want to tell the NAACP that they should value paychecks over food stamps.
I have a much broader vision of "There." The Constitution's mission statement says that the goal is to "form a more perfect Union." The Perfect Union is the "There." Perfection is an unattainable goal. That is why they strive for something that is "more perfect." Every day we have an opportunity and a challenge to make our Union "more perfect." I don't want to be a buzzkill to the greatness of Dr. King, but whereas the promised Land he saw is more perfect, it is not the end of the road.
The truth is that we NEVER get there! I think this is a good thing. Imagine for a second that we did get there. What would that leave for our children to achieve? Even if I am now walking in the Promised Land that Dr. King spoke of, there is another mountaintop in the distance. What lies beyond that?
Before scientists new that matter was composed of atoms, they were incapable of conceiving what atoms were made of. Before we realized that we were not the center of our solar system, we could not imagine the galaxies that we now know exist.
I cited the Preamble to the Constitution's exhortation that we create a "more perfect Union." That preamble ends by stating that we "ordain and establish" that Constitution to "ourselves and our posterity." Our legacy is that we NEVER get there. We bequeath to our children the same challenge and opportunity to form a more perfect union. When we achieve all that we can imagine today, what will we imagine tomorrow? What will "There" be for our children? I get jazzed just thinking about it.