Happy MLK Day

There are no programs listed on the tv schedule tonight about Martin Luther King Jr. Not even PBS! So I'm listening to I Have a Dream, which you can download here. Maybe it's because I'm an economist, but this passage has always had particular poignancy for me:

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 which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

So the Federal government is the lender of last resort for our system of justice as well as banking.

I think I said this last year on MLK day, but this speech I think makes King not just a great moral leader or a great civil rights leader, but a great American with a capital A. I mean, you start from the Declaration of Independence, then the Gettysburg Address, and then I Have a Dream, and there you've got the full (thus far) flowering of what this country is all about. Apologies to Gabor Boritt, but I Have a Dream is at least the equal of the Gettysburg Address in terms of redefining the relationship between our government and the governed. So sez I.