Martin Luther King, the Constitution, and Justice

By: Tony Williams

Most everyone knows Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which I wrote about here on its fiftieth anniversary last August.  The March on Washington and King’s famous speech had a singular impact upon the Civil Rights Movement and passage of the Civil Rights Act.  The “I Have a Dream” speech was profoundly shaped by American founding constitutional principles.

(See: http://wjmi.blogspot.com/2013/08/martin-luther-king-jr-i-have-dream-and.html).

As important and brilliant as the “I Have a Dream” speech was, the lesser-known “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was perhaps an even more profound examination of the principles of constitutionalism and justice. 

In early 1963, King and the movement were faltering after a failed campaign in Albany, GA, to raise awareness of the injustice of segregation.  The leaders of the movement decided strategically to make Birmingham, AL, a showcase of injustice with the reaction of a virulently racist police chief. 

Mass demonstrations and arrests soon followed.  Pretty soon, the infamous police dogs and fire hoses were loosed upon the demonstrators.  King, himself, marched in defiance of the local authorities and shared a prison cell with his fellow marchers.  King proceeded to pen a letter explaining his breaking of the law banning the demonstrators from marching as well as explain to the white ministers who opposed his direct action campaign why he could not follow their counsel to “wait” for justice. 

“Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a logical and philosophical masterpiece of persuasive writing and is profoundly rooted in the traditions and thinkers of Western civilization.  King writes that blacks “have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights.”  He starts by appealing to the pathos of the readers recounting many terrible injustices suffered by southern blacks from the “stinging darts of segregation.” 

King addressed the fact that people were legitimately concerned that King and other leaders were breaking the law “since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools [Brown v. Board of Education].  How can King advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?  His answer is that “there fire two types of laws: just and unjust.”  King is a firm advocate of the moral responsibility of obeying just laws for order in civil society.  However, he argues that, “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”   He then quotes the great Christian authority, St. Augustine, that “an unjust law is no law at all.” 

Like a good philosopher King sets about defining his terms “just” and “unjust” to prove his case about following them.  A just law, King writes, is a “man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.”  The unjust is “out of harmony with the moral law.”  King assumes, like the Founding Fathers, that there was a natural law of right and wrong given to humans by the Creator.  For support for this natural law philosophy, King refers to the great Christian philosopher of the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas, who held that an unjust law is “’a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.’” 

King provides further elaboration by positing that just laws uplift the human person while unjust laws “distort the soul.”  Just laws are rooted in human equality as in the words of the Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”), while unjust laws give a false sense of superiority and inferiority.  King uses the terminology of the Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, arguing that unjust laws are based upon an “I-It” relationship rather than an “I-Thou,” treating people as things rather than persons with dignity.  In language that might seem out of place in today’s politics, King went so far as to say that segregation was not only “politically, economically, and sociologically unsound; it is morally wrong and awful.”  Indeed, he writes that segregation is an example of man’s “terrible sinfulness.”  Finally, the unjust segregation laws were inflicted upon a minority with no vote in creating the laws and thereby passed without consent, violating American principles of republican self-government.  He quotes from St. Paul, Martin Luther, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln to support the ideal of justice. 

King rejects the argument that his belief in breaking unjust laws would lead to anarchy.  “One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty,” he writes.  “I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”  He refers to other examples of those who were persecuted for disobeying the laws of the state including Socrates, Jesus, the Christian martyrs, and the members of the Boston Tea Party. 

Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was a document that argued for justice deeply rooted in the Western and American traditions.  King agrees with James Madison, who wrote in Federalist #51 that, “Justice is the end of government.  It is the end of civil society.  It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained.”  In a state where the strong majority oppressed the weak minority, “anarchy may as truly be said to reign.”   

King anchored the Civil Rights movement in American principles of liberty and self-government.  “One day,” King wrote, the world will note that the Civil Rights demonstrators were “standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”

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Tony Williams is the Program Director of the WJMI and the author of four books including America’s Beginnings: The Dramatic Events that Shaped a Nation’s Character. 

Favorite Benjamin Franklin Quotes

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706.  Franklin was a leading American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, statesman, and diplomat. He was the only Founding Father to sign the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris with Great Britain, and the Constitution. Here are a few quotes from this wise and great man (many of which were published under a pseudonym in his popular Poor Richard's Almanack), and which after more than two centuries still ring true.

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.”

“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.”

“Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.”

“Beware of little expenses. A small leak can sink a great ship.”

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

“Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

“Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.”

“Creditors have better memories than debtors.”

“Diligence is the mother of good luck.”

“Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.”

“Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure.”

“Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.”

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”

“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”

“Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.”

“Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”

“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

“He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.”

“Hide not your talents. They for use were made.”

“If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.”

“It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.”

“It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow.”

“It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.”

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”

“Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.”

“Marriage is the most natural state of man, and... the state in which you will find solid happiness.”

“Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late.”

“Lost time is never found again.”

“Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.”

“Observe all men, thyself most.”

“One today is worth two tomorrows.”

“Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody.”

“Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.”

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

“The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.”

“Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.”

“Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.”

“There was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.”

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

“Where liberty is, there is my country.”

The Best Books of 2013

Happy New Year to all our readers, teachers, and fellow citizens who are helping to make the Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute a voice in the national civic discussion and continuing education of American founding principles.  2013 has seen the publication of many important books related to history and politics related to the Founding.  We at the WJMI have invited a few scholars to reflect on some of the best books they read that were published this year (or very recently).  That is of course a different list that they might have drawn up of the best books they read this year whatever the publication date, some may quibble with some of the choices.  But, we hope that you will read over lists, enter into the conversation, and maybe even pick up one of the following books! 

Tony Williams, Program Director of the Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute, and author of four books, including America’s Beginnings: The Dramatic Events that Shaped a Nation’s Character. 

         One of my favorite books of the year was published by a frequent lecturer at the WJMI, David Bobb, who wrote Humility: An Unlikely Biography of America’s Greatest Virtue (Thomas Nelson).  Trying to restore some sanity to our national civic conversation, Bobb spends the beginning of the book with a brilliant, readable examination of humility in classical and Christian philosophy.  He then examines the virtue of humility in the character and statesmanship of George Washington, James Madison, Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass.  Coming in under 200 pp., it is a wonderful brief masterpiece on this highly original topic. 

         In The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization (Random House), Arthur Herman compares and contrasts the ideas of the great ancient Greek philosophers and their relative influence on Western philosophers in the medieval and modern world.  The book is broad in scope, written with magnificent prose, has sound judgments, and demonstrates a remarkable erudition.  It is a grand achievement. 

         Although many books on the American Founding did not always live up to my expectations, two solid books on the subject were Stephen Brumwell, George Washington: Gentleman Warrior (Quercus), and John Ferling, Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry that Forged a Nation (Bloomsbury).  Brumwell’s Washington is an aggressive risk-taker in war and an eighteenth-century virtuous gentleman.  Ferling’s book narrates the events, ideas, and characters of the well-known rivalry in the 1790s that shaped the America of today. 

         Daniel Hannan, an English writer and former member of the European Parliament, has written a book – Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World (Harper Collins) – on the “Anglosphere” based upon extensive research and experience in politics.  In the book, he examines what Winston Churchill called the “English-Speaking Peoples” and notes that their great political success, economic growth and world leadership has resulted from the exceptional principles of individual liberty, the common law, a rule of law, property rights, and representative government as seen in its great charters of liberty: Magna Carta, English Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and the American Constitution. 

         In The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right (Basic Books), Yuval Levin writes an intelligent comparison of great British conservative, Edmund Burke, and radical pamphleteer, Thomas Paine.  Levin attempts to prove that Burke represents the right and Paine the left in politics.   Although he underestimates the significant political changes engendered in the Progressive Era and rise of the welfare state in creating the current political categories that he is analyzing, this important discussion of these lesser-known figures in the popular imagination is an important, thought-provoking one.   

         Coming off Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin has written another magisterial tome of history and American politics, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (Simon & Schuster).  The book compares and contrasts the progressive policies and expansion of federal and presidential power under Roosevelt and the conservative temperament and use of power by Taft.  Goodwin also shows the very close ties Roosevelt had to progressive journalists who eschewed journalistic objectivity for social activism.  Although Goodwin is a firm advocate for Roosevelt’s view and a masterful writer of narrative history, she perhaps inadvertently exposes how much of a progressive Teddy Roosevelt was in expanding federal power and creating the twentieth-century state. 

David Frisk, a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute, is author of If Not Us, Who? William Rusher, National Review, and the Conservative Movement (ISI Books, 2012).

         A notable disjunction exists between intellectuals and average citizens on the Right. Ordinary people tend to assume that freedom and a governmental recognition of traditional values fit together. The intellectuals are prone to suspect that when the question is considered rigorously, they don’t. One intellectual who thinks they do is Donald Devine, a vice chairman of the American Conservative Union, formerly a political scientist at the University of Maryland and a high official in the Reagan administration. His book, America’s Way Back: Reclaiming Freedom, Tradition, and Constitution (ISI Books), introduces believers in limited government and traditional values to the relationship between these ideals—both of which conservatives identify with, but whose linkages aren’t often clearly expressed.

Devine does this with a combination of persuasive policy analysis and well-integrated insights from various thinkers which help to argue for the Right’s stances on current issues. His title reflects a general view among conservatives that the country has indeed lost its way, along with the author’s opinion that too many people they have accepted as their political representatives are lost as well. After watching the Reagan-era spirit of limited government recede in the George W. Bush years, Devine was among those disgruntled leaders who thought the conservative movement had been badly wounded by Republican officeholders who wouldn’t uphold its principles and probably didn’t get them. Now, with a passionate statist in the White House, he is hoping for a new Reaganism. America’s Way Back—inspired partly by the role Frank Meyer, the in-house philosopher at the early National Review, played among conservatives—offers current activists the deeper understanding of their less-government, more-responsibility platform without which they may win elections but cannot govern.

Stephen F. Knott is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval War College and author of several books including Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth (University of Kansas Press) 

The year 2012 marked the bicentennial of the War of 1812, but this “commemoration” generated little interest from the American public and the media. Donald R. Hickey’s book, The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence (The Library of America), however, brings this distant war to life in a gripping manner that gives this forgotten conflict the attention it deserves.

Hickey has assembled a fascinating collection of writings that do justice to both the “great man” approach to history as well as to those interested in the experiences of “ordinary” people engaged in the conflict. All are given their due, including Native-Americans, prisoners of war, disgruntled and disloyal Federalists, newspaper editors, and key decision makers in Washington and London. While most of the causes of the conflict remained unresolved at war’s end, “Mr. Madison’s War” restored a sense of American honor and respectability. For many Americans, the War of 1812 was America’s “Second War of Independence,” a conflict that concluded the unfinished business of the American Revolution. One important outcome of the war was that it convinced James Madison that Alexander Hamilton’s proposals for a national bank, a professional military, and a vibrant manufacturing base were all in the national interest. As Hickey notes, after the war Republicans who “had been hostile to peacetime defense spending . . . embraced a sizable army and an ambitious program of naval expansion and coastal defense.” Unable to make reality bend to his Republican ideology, President Madison was forced to concede on many of the contentious points that had divided the young nation since the early 1790s.

J. David Gowdy, is the founder and President of WJMI, and the author of "Jefferson & Madison’s Guide to the Constitution" and "Seven Principles of Liberty."

         In Long Journey with Mr. Jefferson: The Life of Dumas Malone (Potomac Books), author William G. Hyland, Jr. reviews the life of the noted author Dumas Malone as a man, teacher, and historian. The ultimate focus of the biography, and of Malone’s life, was the research and writing of his six-volume biography Thomas Jefferson and His Time, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History, and is considered the definitive work on Jefferson’s life. This 38-year labor of devotion occupied much of Malone’s professional life, and constituted his crowning achievement (particularly considering that Malone struggled with pain and blindness the last 15 years of his 83-year life).  Malone’s unequaled experience in seeking to uncover and comprehend Jefferson’s character led him to confess that, “I considered him my friend.”

Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1757 - July 12, 1804)

By: Stephen F. Knott

Since the day Aaron Burr fired his fatal shot in the notorious duel at Weehawken, New Jersey, in July, 1804, Americans have tried to come to grips with Alexander Hamilton’s legacy. A controversial figure in his time and ours, Hamilton is often portrayed as the most reactionary member of the founding generation — the man who hoped to foist a crown upon America and called the people a “great beast.” Although Hamilton did not advocate the former and probably never said the latter, he remains for many Americans the founding’s villain.

It is unfortunate that many Americans have this distorted image of Hamilton, for no man worked more assiduously for the ratification of the American Constitution than Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton had many doubts about the efficacy of the Constitution, yet as the guiding force behind The Federalist Papers and for the remainder of his life, he arrayed all of his formidable intellectual talents in defense of our nation’s charter.  Hamilton was well aware that he was part of a unique generation (Tom Brokaw to the contrary, this was America’s greatest generation) whose decisions would prove to cynics around the globe that men were capable “of establishing good government from reflection and choice” rather than on “accident and force.”

On Alexander Hamilton’s birthday, perhaps George Washington’s perspective on his closest advisor is worth pondering. As the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Washington observed that Hamilton filled “one of the most important departments of government with acknowledged abilities and integrity.” Washington went on to note that Hamilton was “enterprising, quick in his perceptions” and that his judgment was “intuitively great.” Responding to Hamilton’s critics, Washington noted that some considered Hamilton to be an “ambitious man, and therefore a dangerous one. That he is ambitious I shall readily grant, but it is of that laudable kind which prompts a man to excel in whatever he takes in hand.” 

As Americans living under the Constitution, we are the modern beneficiaries of Alexander Hamilton’s great abilities, intuitive judgment, and laudable excellence.

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Stephen F. Knott is a member of the Board of Visitors of WJMI, a Professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval War College and the author of Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth (2002). 

The WJMI Year in Review

Happy New Year from the Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute!  We at WJMI are grateful for your support this past year.  A few statistics from 2013:

During 2013 over 9,171 people have downloaded WJMI’s free manual “Jefferson & Madison’s Guide to the Constitution” at the Federalist Papers Project: 

http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/ebooks/jefferson-and-madisons-guide-to-the-constitution 

The Guide is also available on Amazon’s Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Madisons-Guide-Constitution

Our Blog averages over 2,000 page views per month.  Our top blog posts are:           

Entry	Pageviews
The Declaration of Independence	9535
The Basic Principles of the Declaration of Independence	8317
Favorite Quotes from President Calvin Coolidge	4838
James Madison's "Advice to My Country"	2205
Quotes Concerning the Declaration of Independence	2044

WJMI sponsored three seminars for secondary school teachers during 2013:

     The Bill of Rights: Charter of Freedom            February 15, 2013

     Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution       September 13, 2013

     Thomas Jefferson Roundtable                            November 15, 2013

WJMI also sponsored several seminars on the Constitution for Citizens in Utah and Virginia.

Tony Williams joined WJMI as full-time Program Director in 2013. He is the author of four books on the Founding, including “America's Beginnings: The Dramatic Events that Shaped a Nation's Character” (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010), all available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Tony-Williams

WJMI began to collaborate in 2013 with the Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport University (http://cnu.edu/cas/) and they will co-sponsor our first teacher seminar of 2014 in February on the topic of “The Life & Character of George Washington.”

We hope that you have a Happy & Prosperous New Year and commend to all this wise advice:

"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors,

and let each New Year find you a better man."

— Benjamin Franklin

The Boston Tea Party

By: Tony Williams

On December 16, Americans recognize and celebrate the 240th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.  We honor what patriot John Adams called an act “so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid, and inflexible.”  Adams rightly predicted that the Boston Tea Party would be remembered as a significant event in the resistance against British tyranny. “It must have so important consequences, and so lasting, that I can’t but consider it an epocha in history.” 

The events of the Boston Tea Party are familiar to most schoolchildren. The colonists were angered by the Tea Act which gave a monopoly to the East India Company and the tax that was retained from the Townshend Acts.  The Bostonians refused to allow the tea to be landed in Boston and threatened the tea agents.  After a democratic mass meeting of thousands in which Sam Adams warned that they would make “Boston harbor a tea-pot tonight!” the assembled crowd make their way to Griffin’s Wharf to destroy the tea.  Patriots dressed up like Mohawk Indians and methodically dumped an incredible 90,000 pounds of tea worth £10,000 into the water. 

For the colonists, it was not a matter of paying a few extra pence for their tea, but rather the constitutional principle of Englishmen not wanting to be taxed without their consent.  George Washington asked from Virginia: “What is it we are contending against?  Is it against paying the duty of 3d. per pound on tea because burdensome?  No, it is the right only . . . as Englishmen, we could not be deprived of this essential and valuable part of our Constitution.” 

In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British passed several acts collectively known as the “Coercive Acts,” which systematically violated the rights of the colonists in Massachusetts.  Their right to trade was violated, their right to their property and not to have troops in their home without their consent was violated, their right to self-government was violated, their right to justice and local trial by jury for accused royal murderers, and their right to settle out West was violated.    

The colonists believed that these acts constituted a systematic British plan of despotism to enslave the colonists.  They argued for their rights as Englishmen, but they also argued that their natural rights from nature and nature’s God were being violated as well.  Washington wrote, “An innate spirit  of freedom first told me, that the measures, which administration hath for some time been, and now are most violently pursuing, are repugnant to every principle of natural justice; whilst much abler heads than my own hath fully convinced me, that it is not only repugnant to natural right, but subversive of the laws and constitution of Great Britain itself.”

It is no surprise then that Washington averred, “The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition.”  Although history is filled contingency and reconciliation was certainly possible to avert war and revolution at this point, it is also true that the Boston Tea Party triggered a series of events that would ultimately lead to independence and self-government for Americans. 

It is for that reason that Americans rightly commemorate the event. 

Tony Williams is the WJMI Program Director and has written about the Boston Tea Party and related events in his book America’s Beginnings: The Dramatic Events that Shaped a Nation’s Character. 

The First Whitehouse Christmas with John & Abigail Adams

“When the second President of the United States, John Adams, and his wife Abigail, moved into what would come to be known as the White House [in November 1800], the residence was cold, damp, and drafty. Sitting at the edge of a dreary swamp, the First Family had to keep 13 fireplaces lit in an effort to stay comfortable. It is in this setting that the cantankerous president held the first ever White House Christmas party in honor of his granddaughter, Susanna. It could be said that the invitations sent for this party were the very first White House Christmas cards, though in those early days, the building was referred to as the President’s Palace, Presidential Mansion, or President’s House.

The affair was planned in large part by the vivacious First Lady, Abigail Adams, and was considered a great success. A small orchestra played festive music in a grand ballroom adorned with seasonal flora. After dinner, cakes and punch were served while the staff and guests caroled and played games. The most amusing incident of the evening occurred when one of the young guests accidentally broke one of the First Granddaughter’s new doll dishes. Enraged, the young guest of honor promptly bit the nose off of one of the offending friend’s dolls. The amused president had to intervene to make sure the incident didn’t take an uglier turn.”

Following the Adams’ first Christmas in the White House, they held the first presidential levee on New Year’s Day.

“As you can imagine, the celebration was grand! Cookies, custards, and cakes, all baked in the new hearths on either side of the enormous kitchen fireplace, were served, along with all kinds of puddings, pastries, trifles, and tarts. Borrowing court etiquette from European kings and queens she had seen while John was U. S. Ambassador to Britain, Abigail regally greeted guests from a throne-like chair. Standing proudly beside her was her husband, wearing velvet breeches and lace with fashionably powdered hair.

Although that reception was a lavish affair, John and Abigail preferred more basic fare, and a few of their favorite foods, which can be traced to their New England roots, included Green Turtle Soup, Indian Pudding, and Gooseberry Fool.”

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Sources:

http://www.whitehousechristmascards.com/john-adams-1797-1801/john-adams/

http://lincolnslunch.blogspot.com/2010/07/john-and-abigail-adams-indian-pudding.html