Martin Luther King, Jr., advocated civil disobedience as means to achieve equality.  Not moral wrongs, but refusal to adhere to the rules that prescribed the orderly society that kept blacks subservient to whites.  If one accepts that notion that there are three competing political interests, order, equality and freedom, then Martin was prepared to sacrifice order for equality.

Order is the interest that most people are concerned with, as it protects the normality of life for the majority. And, after all, people are always guided by their self-interest, whether they want to admit it or not. 

Today, the battle still rages, but it’s between equality and freedom, with order long since acknowledged as nothing more than the convenient means of keeping the troublemakers in their place.  Advocates for equality today argue that freedoms must be curtailed in order to achieve equality.  The question remains, however, whether Martin would have taken that stance, or saw freedom as the roadblock to equality that needed to be overcome.

In his most famous speech, I have a dream, two themes emerged.  The first is summed up in this sentence:

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.

The second theme is seen in his repetition of the phrase, let freedom ring, culminating in his closing:

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Rather than view equality and freedom as competing values, this suggests that they were both necessary aspects of each other, that one without the other necessarily failed to be realized.

I suspect that Martin saw equality as an artificial roadblock on the path to freedom, constructed by some foolish and troubled people who needed to come to grips with their own limitations and challenges before they could recognize the impropriety of accepting others as human beings and fully equal in all respects.  I suspect he believe that equality, though not easily achieved, would eventually be realized.  And then, I suspect, he believe that equality would put those who suffered discrimination on the road to achieving freedom. 

Equality, therefore, was not part of the three conflicting interests, but a subset of freedom that had to be achieved in order to ultimately attain freedom itself.  If that’s so, then Martin would never have traded off the long term goal, freedom, for the interim goal of equality.  To do so would have rendered equality less meaningful, less worthwhile, if it only led to order, to being equally subject to control and limitations.  It’s like saying everyone, regardless of race, is free to eat at the same table, but the cost of this equality is that the food will taste awful.

Martin would never bargain away freedom to achieve equality.  He knew that the latter without the former was a hollow victory, and that the true purpose of equality is to attain freedom.  Yet those who follow in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s intellectual footsteps today are fully prepared, if not chomping at the bit, to give up freedom for equality.  It’s become a flagrant battleground with freedom of speech, a great right provided no one’s feelings get hurt in the process, in which case it gets tossed out the window in a flash.

It’s much easier to argue for equality at the expense of freedom.  It’s a big, shiny bargaining chip, making every potential trade very attractive.  It may well offer the clearest, fastest path to equality.  But it’s a deal with the devil.  Give away freedom and your equality has lost some meaning.  Give away more freedom and equality is rendered worthless.  So what if we’re all equal, and all miserable, and all equally subservient to ordered?

Martin wouldn’t have bargained away freedom.  Who are you to advocate doing so?  Equality must be achieved, but never at the expense of freedom, as it’s freedom that makes equality so worthwhile a goal. 

Happy Martin Luther King Day, and honor his memory.  And see Gideon’s MLK Blawg Review #294.