Words mean things. BUT, you complete me.

"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…" - Martin Luther King Jr. August 28, 1963

I have heard MLK’s quote many times and each time have been inspired by the ideal of humans not being judged by the color of their skin. However, as I sat in the coffee shop with friends this morning talking politics and looking at our favorite blogs, I read The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell which included portions of Dr. King’s famous “I have a dream” speech. As I reread the familiar lines, I noticed something. We’ve been led to believe the thesis of King’s statement is that judgment should cease. But that’s because we’ve been fed an incomplete sentence. Dr. King, as a Christian, as a human, as a thinking man, knew that judgement between right and wrong is a necessity of life. If we can’t judge something, what are we dreaming about? That is to say, how would it be possible to judge and condemn those who refused the full rights of United States citizenship to some Americans if judgment itself were in error?

It seems the dreams of some include a total elimination of judgment. That’s in sync with the idea of tolerance I suppose. But, if you think about it, tolerance is a decision to “put up with” any idea or action of another that you judge to be incorrect or in conflict with your own. Tolerance itself requires being judgmental. A beef I’ve had with tolerance ever since it came into vogue during the Clinton-era’s age of political correctness was that it, usually awkwardly, forces a focus on what makes us different as opposed to what makes us the most remarkable “e pluribus unum” history has ever known.

BUT, I digress. My main thought today is emphasizing King’s completion of his. That day in August, 1963 Dr. King's full statement was, “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." (all caps, mine.) King knew his children would be judged—and I suspect he taught them to make wise judgements as well. He would not, otherwise, so willingly put the “content of their character” on the table.
This is the soaring ideal that King dreamed of realizing for the generations to come. As the writer of this morning’s Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell put it,

“Dr. King did not think that the principle of equality meant that everyone should be treated the same. He sought equality of rights and equality before the law, not equality of outcomes or equality as a result. For Dr. King, justice was when a person is judged ‘by the content of their character’ rather than by arbitrary considerations such as skin color.  Dr. King did not mean that we should treat people of good character and bad character the same. Actual equality is achieved when arbitrary standards are replaced by meaningful criteria such as talent and virtue. A just country, in Dr. King’s vision, is one in which people are rewarded for acting well.”

We celebrate today a man who was brave enough to stand against those who wanted to alter the vision of our Founding Fathers and the First Principles they established. How fitting, then, in today’s climate of bailouts, handouts, and our massive lurch to the left that Dr. King again reminds us, “the content of [a person’s] character” is the thing to rightly judge.

BUT, all I can hope is that these the words of Dr. King will, once again, ring loud and clear today.