Merlin said:
Everyone I know celebrates his death, not his birth. He should have been thrown out with the afterbirth. He was a drunkard, womanizer, bigot, hate monger, and he definitely wasn't a Reverend of the cloth. His Dad gave him that title. I won't even drive on a road named after him if I know that is the name of the road.
That is just truly a sad, pathetic statement.
The man was not perfect by any means, we are not here to debate that.
We are here, or apparently have gotten here now, to debate his importance and value to America.
Without Dr. King, could we be the country we are today? Perhaps Dr. King's incredible success spoiled us... he could only lead us to the door of reason, but a sizeable minority among us (both black and white) hold us back from opening it and walking through.
How many of us can imagine America's entire social fabric being turned upside down in less than 10 years and the country come out of it for the better in the long run after immense growing pains that still exist to this point, decades later?
Gay marriage won't do that, neither will prayer in schools. The right to euthenesia and the end of abortion won't either.
The achievement of unalienable rights for all Americans sparked this. The end of apartheid in America meant a new birth for liberty, ushering in a society where everyone has an honest chance, somehow, someway to make it. Where 20-30% of the citizens in the nation are not held back in some sort of underclass with few rights. Where the full energies and potential of Americans are optimized finally.
Dr. King made this happen. Without him, quite simply, we might have had a Bosnia or South Africa type of low-level civil war and/or ethnic cleansing, with a body count potentially in the tens of thousands or higher. We would have lost our soul, and in a short-term light, probably ruined our chance to win the Cold War peacefully.