Inescapable

A segment on NPR yesterday had me going back to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From Birmingham Jail." What an astonishing and rich document that is. The epistle of Martin to the churches that are in Alabama is inspired and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness.

Which may explain why King's words these days are treated with the kind of disingenuous but-of-course lip service usually reserved for the Bible or the Constitution. Martin Luther King Jr. is frequently cited as something like a talisman — as an invocation and a protective inoculation.

King is invoked most often these days defensively, as a counter-balance to some statement or stance that would otherwise seem to contradict the great revival of civil rights that King the preacher and person and actual historical figure embodied.

And I don't think such invocations ought to be allowed to go unchallenged or unexplored.

So here's one antidote and an assignment for journalists. Memorize the following three sentences from "Letter From a Birmingham Jail":

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.

That's far from the most radical or controversial or threatening or shocking thing Martin Luther King Jr. ever said, but it still gets to the core of his revolutionary philosophy and of his life's work and achievement.

So memorize this and have it at the ready. And the next time a Chuck Colson or a Rand Paul defensively name-checks Martin Luther King Jr., lavishing praise on him and asserting their unqualified agreement with all that he said, recite this to them.

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.

Politely ask them to explain what this means to them. Ask them how this idea of "inescapable … mutuality" influences their own thinking.

Politely ask them to reconcile this mutuality with their advocacy of radical deregulation or of the primacy of anti-gay legislation or whatever it is they were arguing that caused them to pause and shore up their defenses, inoculating themselves from predictable criticism by invoking King's name.

Politely ask them if they understand that others might view these opposites of mutuality and exclusive irresponsibility as difficult to reconcile. Politely ask if Martin Luther King Jr. is really the best person to invoke when what they're advocating is an escape from his "network of mutuality."

Rand Paul seems a particularly unconvincing admirer of King. Paul's central belief is an enthusiastic denial of mutuality. He is a disciple of his libertarian namesake, Ayn Rand, the author of The Virtue of Selfishness. Yet Paul insists he's a fan of King — calling him a great "idealist."

That won't do. King did not regard himself as an idealist. He did not think of that "network of mutuality" as an ideal, or as a lovely suggestion, or aspiration or mere dream. He did not regard it as a thing to be admired when convenient, but as a thing that was and is and will be regardless of whether or not we choose to admire it. He saw it as a fundamental law of the universe.

That's what he meant by "inescapable."

We can no more ignore this law of the universe, King believed, that we can the law of gravity. Denying our mutuality he said would be like stepping off the highest building in Detroit — it would result in inescapable consequences.

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.

That is either true or it's not.

If it is true, then Ayn Rand was colossally wrong and her followers are fools, leaping one by one from the roof of the Renaissance Center.

If it is not true, then King was colossally wrong and his followers are fools, their admiration of him is in vain and they are of all people most to be pitied.