I Have A Dream

Today, 21 January 2008, we celebrate what would have been Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 79th birthday. Let's focus a little on his most famous speech, delivered on 28 August 1963. Dr. King argued that it was time for the United States to live up to its best nature, its founding ideals.

He called on our better natures, and indeed on the very foundations of legitimacy for the American Experiment. "[U]naliable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Twice he used the phrase "all of God's children," a gender-neutral paraphrase of the Declaration's statement that "all men are created equal" and that their rights are "endowed by their Creator."

He said:

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."

This was not a man who believed in the innate superiority of any race or color. Instead, he understood that it's the content of someone's character and heart--their beliefs, creeds, and ways of acting. He asked not to be judged on the basis of birth, but on his and his family's behavior:

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.

Character. That's another way of describing the base operating system that each person runs. Their ideas of truth, fairness, right and wrong.

It's the software, not the hardware.