The Man, The Dream, The Appeal

MLK’s “I Have a Dream" speech is divided into three parts. Part one is an appeal to the nation to live up to its great founding principles. Part two is an appeal to black Americans to rise and act accordingly in the noble cause of the pursuit of liberty and justice. Let’s not drink “from the cup of bitterness.” Part three is an appeal to the ideals of the Christian soul of the nation. Dr. King quoted the prophet Isaiah that “the crooked places will be made straight … and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” Biblical truths and ideals have been regrettably lost to “wokeism”, which has for all practical purposes become an irreligious religion. The indictment of the “woke” movement is that America is the problem. King offered up America as the solution. He talked about the “magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'” The problem is not America or the eternal truths that were brought to bear in its founding. The problem was the failure of the nation to live up to the challenges of its great founding principles. That was the heart of Dr. King’s message. He appealed to the nation to realize the dream of its Founding Fathers, not to crush it and bury it, as we hear today.

The problem is not white people. “The marvelous new militancy … must not lead us to a distrust of all white people,” he said. And, of course, the most memorable and oft-quoted line of the speech, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Let’s honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by revisiting and taking to heart the great truths he spoke in his “I Have a Dream” speech. They are great truths that have very sadly been cast to the side and replaced with the religion of politics and power. Let us honor King by seeing America as he presented it then, as embodying the ideals of a free nation under God.