Who really inspires the political left?

Katie van Schaijik | Jul 22, 2009

Over at the American Thinker, Kelcy Allen provides an eye-opening (let us hope and pray!) comparison of the rhetoric and principles of liberal sentimental favorite, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Saul Alinsky, whose political philosophy and program shapes so much of the American left. He uses quotations from both to imagine a verbal boxing match between them.
Here is just a taste:

Round One: Saul Alinsky opens with, “To hell with charity…morality is but rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest.”

Martin Luther says, “Now is the time to make real the promises of Democracy.”

Round Two: Alinksy fires, “Ours is a world not of Angels but of ‘angles’. Reconciliation is when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it, then we have reconciliation”.

MLK parries, “Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children”.

Round Three: Alinsky jabs, “Radicals…have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt…they are right.”

King fades right, “...Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”

MLK, Jr. was a moral hero, deeply influenced—even in a sense “saved” from the temptation to violence, radicalism and revenge—by the encounter with Christian personalism, which shaped his theory of non-violent resistance.