A Just America For All Americans – Or Take Me To A Leader

“The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself.” – Andre Malraux (1901 - 1976)

On this the occasion of the celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I cannot think of a more germane and relevant topic to write about than leadership.  And, I cannot think of a hero, living or dead, who has personified more, those words of Andre Malraux than did Doctor King.  Today, these many years later, our nation still feels the hole in our moral fiber that was left with his passing.

I think that speaking or writing about leadership comes naturally to me because I lived and breathed it for so many years.  I had the good fortune to witness real leadership and all of the peace and glory it brings and to experience the lack of it and so much more to appreciate such a gift when our Lord bestows it upon some deserving person.  Today I lament for this glorious trait and associated feelings simply because there is such a public void of it.  Our nation’s history is riddled with heroic leaders that held the capacity to call the nation to arms on foreign and domestic fronts.  (A favorite example of mine is Theodore Roosevelt who charged San Juan Hill and then charged robber baron hill at home.)  Today our nation is being threatened on both of those fronts once again and, to our bad fortune we are adrift in a leadership desert.

The persons who haunt our nation’s capitol today do not possess a flickering of honest leadership nor do they possess a flickering of honest statesmanship and even more disturbing they do not possess a flickering of honor.  In fact the current administration in Washington continues to line the pockets of the modern day robber barons, while denying American citizens of their constitutional rights and simultaneously creating a military fiasco on the international front.

Before his death Dr. King had continued his struggle but it had a slightly different direction because this time he was including the struggle of trying to end and unjust war that was decimating predominately poor and minority youth of America and bombs were falling on innocent men, women, and children.  I believe that if today Dr. King were standing on the steps of the Lincoln memorial in Washington D.C. and looking out across Washington he would say, ‘and what has changed Mr. President?’  I believe he would say, ‘bring our soldiers home Mr. President’ and I believe he would say, ‘where is the justice and honor in your presidency Mr. President’?

I believe that those would be the words of Dr. King because I believe those would be the words of a truly competent leader.  Today a mere flicker of hope crossed the horizon.  Today the man who should be president, Vice President Al Gore delivered a speech worthy of Teddy Roosevelt and challenging a president gone amok and a nation gone asleep.  But we sorely need more.  We need to wake America up with the voices of a thousand, no ten thousand leaders pointing out the injustice and the corruption and the immorality.

I would call on the Democratic Party to call a conference of the Democratic Leadership and to create a “Pledge to America” and to lay out in that pledge a vision and a path to a “Just America for All Americans”.  We need leadership, and the opportunity for America and the Democratic Party is now!

I do not like to close any post on a negative note but this just seems too appropriate and villain that he was he was a leader.

“What luck for rulers that men do not think.” – Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

Those Are The Sergeant Majors Thoughts On That.