Speaking of cultural mythology…

Yesterday, friends, wasn’t just MLK day, but also the birthday of a truly great American, one Robert E. Lee. My apologies for a mental misfire.

What many don’t know is that Lee, after the war, released his slaves—even before Ulysses S. Grant released his slaves. Those of you from the public school system may think Lee fought to preserve slavery, but he did not; he fought for the South, and her right to secede.

(‘Course, most folks don’t know MLK was a Republican, either, but that’s a moot point.)

Yesterday, the Patriot Post shared with us a hopeful Paul Greenberg column about the interesting confluence of national observations.

This is one of those years in which Robert E. Lee’s actual birthday falls on the date of the official observance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s. Ideally, that’s the way it ought to be. They belong together. Both, after all, were sons of the South, and came to represent her highest traditions: courage, duty, faith.

…There is nothing to prevent their being woven together in American mythology, and much to be gained.

To simple minds, myth is just something not true. To the more thoughtful, myth is something truer than fact. As in the Greek myths.

…When different Americans celebrate the same past, that is the surest sign we share the same future.The ability of a King to rise above race, like the ability of a Lee to outlast the Lost Cause, is a tribute to the character of each. So long as both are recognized as heroes, there will be no segregated American future. History is powerless to break asunder what myth has joined.

[We can hope...]

General Lee and Dr. King make a striking combination, like two sides of a single coin, but such combinations are not unusual in American history and myth. A country that can celebrate both Jefferson and Hamilton, Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson, Lincoln and Lee, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Ronald Reagan … already has proved that it can absorb the most unlikely combinations of heroes and their qualities.

…From time to unfortunate time, some will try to create a national identity on the basis of only certain, politically acceptable virtues. They cannot tolerate, much less celebrate, any others. …They will fail because they don’t understand that ours is a nation based not on blood but on an idea…

I hope he’s right; that said, in recent years I’ve wondered if America, the ideas and principles that led to her birth, will always exist in the hearts of millions. Certainly the numbers of those willing to die in order to reach her shores so they can be free to become (not just hop on the dole) testifies to the strength, beauty, and resilience of America, the idea, and America, the dream of our Founders. Though the real America might be destroyed from without or within (as many fear with the new administration), she will always live on; part of that, I believe, is because she reflects the ultimate liberty, that of freedom in Christ and His eternal city of Zion…someday.

I leave you with words from these two great men (though Lee was rather quiet).

The trite saying that honesty is the best policy has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy. The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.

My experience of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them, or indisposed me to serve them; nor in spite of failures, which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge; or of the present aspect of affairs; do I despair of the future.The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.

You must be frank with the world; frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted you mean to do right…Never do anything wrong to make a friend or keep one; the man who requires you to do so, is dearly purchased at a sacrifice. Deal kindly, but firmly with all your classmates; you will find it the policy which wears best. Above all do not appear to others what you are not.

Martin Luther King, Jr., did see a promised land, one that, again, is but a shadow of the eternal Promised Land. Somehow, I think he and Lee would agree on many things.

Many of those carrying King’s banner and proclaiming his name and fight have gone far off his path, and certainly shucked his principles, but that dream still lives and exists in the hearts and lives of millions today.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so 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.

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.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

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.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!