Apparently someone is getting inaugurated today at 12 noon EST to become the next President of the USA; or so I have heard.
I have also heard from many people the media has plucked out of nowhere to discuss the "significance" of the event refer to it as a "down payment" or a "ratification" of Martin Luther King's famous "Dream". It is actually nothing of the sort for King's Dream was a far more radical and prophetic vision of what freedom and a nation ought to look like if it is a nation deserving of God's good will towards it.
First, Martin Luther King's Dream is rooted in a pragmatic ideological vision that is at once prophetic and socially robust. It is eschatological in scope, quite literally with the biblical prophecy that he unabashedly associates with the nation. The message is actually quite simple: God's justice will prevail and we can either resist it, or join in "making the crooked places straight". To that degree, no one alive or to be alive will see that vision actually occur until the vari0ous eschatological biblical prophecies are fulfilled.
Second, it is a vision that is far more encompassing than how minorities are treated in a system of government. It is a vision that calls into question the very nature of freedom in a nation that does not support individual freedom for all of its citizens. That is to say, if we live in a society that does not support everyone equally and contribute to their merits as active participants in that society to achieve greatness though solid effort and hard work, we are all captive and imprisoned by that ideology.
This is where King, in my view, is radical. A society that arbitrarily limits the ability of persons to contribute to the greater good of the society based on secondary attributes like skin color or religious preference or sexual preference as opposed to "the content of their character" is one that cannot truly be free. Thus, even those who arbitrarily limit freedom and produce unjust systems are in that respect limiting their own freedom. One cannot be truly free if they are not only beholden to but emboldened by systems that do not produce equity and fairness among all members of a society. In that sense, we can become slaves to our own ideological commitments rather than liberated free men and women who work together to constantly change the society in order to produce just and fair outcomes for all citizens.
This inauguration, which is historical to be sure, can only be considered a real downpayment on King's radical vision if the ideological commitments that exist in Washington politics that inherently produce inequity and foster it are made "plain" in order to produce pragmatic change that is fair and just. At base, it means putting enough incentive into practice so that everyone takes personal responsibility for their neighbor. For King, we are all keepers of our brothers and sisters who are all related to each other through the common bond of the commonwealth. This does not mean a welfare state, it means a working state. It cannot exist without hardwork and owning up to failure in order to improve one's self. On this fundamental point that governs all discussions about skin color, tell me, pretell, where the downpayment has been made?
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