Martin Luther King dreamed that one day people would be judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” If you listen to that speech again, it is difficult not to be moved by the notion that the United States as a country has established an ideal of equality and justice for itself; that “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” We are a long way from such an uprising …
As we mark the second anniversary of hurricane Katrina, the disjunction between our ideals and our reality is ever more poignant. The plight of the least advantaged among us is ever more difficult. We as a nation should aspire to be judged by the content of our character, and our response to the disastrous storm, two years ago and still today, is a powerful testimony to our lack of character as a nation.
If we are to begin to live up to the ideals King himself understood America to have set for itself, we will need both vision and eloquence. I see and hear something of both here:
The Poetics of Politics
Last year on the anniversary of hurricane Katrina I wrote about Martin Luther King and the content of our Nation’s character. In that post, I embedded a YouTube video of about Barack Obama because I heard in his voice an…