Andrew Busch has an intriguing piece on what conservatives have in common with Martin Luther King. Busch is sober enough to point out that many (if not most) conservatives were opposed to King in the 1950s and 1960s, nor does Busch attempt to argue that if King were alive today he'd be voting Republican. But Busch notes three items with which conservatives are in harmony with King.
1. Like the early King, conservatives are against racial "bean counting," preferring the standard of color-blindness.
2. Like King, conservatives argue for a standard of justice above public opinion or what is useful.
3. Like King, conservatives are comfortable shrouding some of their causes in religious language.
Here's a Busch:
Second, King based his struggle on a moral and religious view that eschewed relativism. Indeed, his use of civil disobedience was predicated on his belief that one could distinguish between just human laws and unjust human laws, the latter consisting of those human contrivances which violated the “moral law,” the “natural law,” “God’s law,” or the “eternal law,” as King alternately put it. Yet the social thrust of liberalism today has as its foundation the dismissal of notions of absolute truth or the notion that human law must strive to meet some transcendent moral standard. In this respect, liberalism now has more in common with famed post-modern philosopher Stanley Fish than with King.
Finally, in a related vein, King, like the abolitionists and the Congregationalist clergy of the 1770s, had no qualms about bringing religious language and arguments to bear on the issue at hand. To the contrary, it was perfectly natural to him. It is rather difficult for liberals today to embrace King while attacking conservatives for moral absolutism and for daring to mix religion and politics.
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