October 8, 2013
An Agape type of
Love: Is it Possible Between the Tea Party and President Obama?
This weekend, I was able to watch a few soccer games and I
was able to read some of the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I ended up watching a lot soccer games by
chance; I was flipping through the channels and saw a game in the English
Premier League. I then watched the game immediately following it, an MLS game
later that evening and then capped with another game on Sunday. But the reading of works by Dr. King was not
by chance. As someone who is an advocate
for an individual who remains in prison for crimes he did not commit (Rodney K.
Stanberry, www.freerodneystanberry.com), I find myself taking in Dr. King’s
words from time to time. While we are
experiencing our personal injustice, Dr. King led a movement against unjust
acts and unjust laws in the face of continued criticism and threats to his
life. I am always amazed at the level of commitment he and so many others had
to the issue of equality, economic security for all, and ending oppression
while using a non-violent method. As a person who is non-violent and who is a
prisoner of hope, Dr. King and Ghandi are two people that I truly admire. Both of these gentlemen could have had
relatively comfortable lives, even in the face of oppression. I revisited Dr. King’s speech entitled “Love,
Law and Disobedience” delivered by Dr. King in November 1961 (for those who not
realize this, Dr. King has a body of work before and after the March on
Washington and he was more than a dreamer, as my good friend Dr. Wilmer Leon
writes each year on the commemoration of Dr. King’s birthday.
Agape Love
This weekend, I was not reading Dr. King to make sense of
what is happening with my cousin or to gather some solace in his words as is
usually the case. Rather, I was reading
his work to make some sense of some of these extreme comments I hear about
President Obama. In particular, I was
listening to a talk radio show out of Mobile, AL last Thursday evening when I
heard this vile rant against President Obama regarding the government
shutdown. The talk show host was talking
about the veterans on the Honor Flight who went to Washington, DC to see the
World War II Memorial. These Honor
Flights are organized to provide WWII veterans with an opportunity to visit the
monument dedicated to them. One such
Honor Flight took place during the shutdown and the host indicated that Obama,
with a spirit of hate, had barricades put up to keep the veterans out. He called President Obama “a sorry so and so”
who hates you and who hates the American people. He used the term King Obama instead of
President, I am not sure if he has uttered the words President Obama, but on
that evening, he went on a rant about King Obama. I was taken aback by the comments, even as I
have heard the host before and know that he is active in the Tea Party in
Mobile, Alabama. He has even run for office. If I recall correctly, he said on
another talk show that he did not run for the vacant Alabama First Congressional
District seat because he wanted to help now Mayor-Elect Sandy Stimpson defeat
Mayor Sam Jones, the first African American to be elected to the position of
Mayor in Mobile (I’m not indicating that he wanted Jones defeated because of
his race; rather, I’m just pointing out a historic fact). My reaction after hearing the host is that
the First Congressional District of Alabama does not need to elect any person
who endorses those views. Yet, both
candidates who made are in a run-off campaign after being the top two vote
getters in a 9 person race on the Republican ticket (http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/DS/20130925/NEWS02/309250048/Byrne-Young-GOP-runoff-1st-Congressional-District)
will seek the endorsement of the talk show host and the popular Tea Party group
that he is affiliated with. The First
Congressional District of Alabama deserves a moderate candidate whether it is a
moderate Democrat or a moderate Republican that will not come to Congress with the
idea that the person at the top of the executive branch hates the American
people. How can we move forward as a
nation when people who detest the president will see negotiating with him as
being tantamount to treason? And I say this regardless of the President in
office at the time. Goodness knows that if I held a certain mentality, I would
have encouraged a governmental shutdown over all sorts of issues, including tax
cuts in the middle of a war and a recession, this only helped to further
inflate the debt and deficit, but I digress.
Mobile has brought in industry such as Austal Shipbuilding and Airbus, a
city in the district, Prichard, Alabama, has brought in a high profile police
chief from New Jersey/New York, and even the Mayor Elect seems to be bringing
in people who are willing to work with the community in order to improve upon
what has been done and to make the city even better. So, again, I was bothered by that rant,
perhaps of the fact that it was an anger-filled rant. And this brings me back to why I was reading
Dr. King’s work this weekend. I often
think about what Dr. King says about an agape type of love, a love that will
enable you to love your enemies even as they are oppressing you. Here is a quote from the aforementioned work:
…Then the Greek language comes out
another word which is called the agape. Agape
is more than romantic love, agape is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive, good will to all
men. It is an overflowing love which
seeks nothing in return. Theologians
would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. So that when one arises to love on this
level, he loves men not because he likes them, not because their ways appeal to
him, but because he loves every man because God loves him. And he rises to the
point of loving the person who does an evil deed while hating the deed that the
person does. I think this is what Jesus
meant when he said ‘love your enemies.’ I’m very happy he didn’t say like your
enemies, because it is pretty difficult to like some people. Like is
sentimental, and it is pretty difficult to like someone bombing your home; it
is pretty difficult of like someone who is threatening your children; it is
difficult to like congressman who spend all of their time trying to defeat
civil rights. But Jesus says love them,
and love is greater than like. Love is
understanding, redemptive, creative, good will for all men. And it is this
idea, it is this whole ethic of love which is the idea standing at the basis of
the student movement.” (“Love, Law and Civil Disobedience,” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings
and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., HarperSanfranciso:1986, P 47)
These words are powerful to the believer and non-believer as it
helps to reconcile the anger one feels towards injustice to the belief that
human beings have the capacity to do what is right and just, and, therefore, it
is important to not lash out with hate. To the talk show host that I am
referring to, you can dislike President Obama and detest his policies, but can
you find it within your heart to at least apologize for saying that he is a
“sorry so and so” and say that while you don’t like President Obama, you
respect and love him as a human being?
Dr. King faced extreme oppression, including people bombing his home
because he dared to push for equal rights and human rights for all. He died not in an armed robbery, but because
he dared to rob people advocating and sanctioning white supremacy from the idea
that people are inferior based on race.
He experienced threats not because he opposed Jim Crow by drinking at a
water fountain, but because he opposed Jim Crow by organizing a mass movement
based on non-violence, a heightened level of humanity that states that you do
not have to fight violence with violence to achieve a goal, and he became
public enemy number 1 in some circles not because he used the freedom of speech
afforded to him behind a microphone, but because he dared to break the silence
of allowing the military industrial complex steal from the idea of pursuing peace
and tackling poverty in a comprehensive fashion (http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificaviet/riversidetranscript.html).
What is Sorry
about President Obama?
If Dr. King can refrain from calling various leaders “sorry
so and so’s,” certainly we can refrain from this use of very unproductive
language. And beyond that, what has
Barack Hussein Obama done to indicate that he is a sorry so and so. Did he live a life of privilege getting ahead
on the Obama name? No, he is a product of a single mother and absentee father,
actually, absentee parents as his grandparents, one of whom served in WWII if I
recall, who took advantage of what our society offers- education and opportunity. He graduated from Ivy League universities and
could have lived a life of luxury were it not his commitment to public service.
He did serve as a community organizer, a state legislator, a husband and
father, a United States Senator when he was only a handful of African Americans
to ever serve in that capacity and
only the third to be voted by his constituents to serve to becoming the first
African American president of the United States. There is nothing sorry about what he has
achieved and there is nothing sorry about wanting to ensure that all Americans
have access to basic health care, not via universal healthcare, a single payer
system, or a public option, as many progressives wanted, but by trying to
implement a conservative idea of personal choice and responsibility. How many citizens have been denied health
care because of a preexisting condition? How many Americans took and kept a job
that may not have been the best for them because they were dependent on the healthcare
provided? This plan that is the basis of
this shutdown provides a freedom of choice and independence, that do come with
a consequence to avoid what conservatives would label as free loaders- people
who do not want to pay into the system, but receive the benefits- ie going to
an emergency room for health care without health insurance ( here is one
article making the conservative case for the Affordable Health Care Act http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/opinion/sunday/why-obamacare-is-a-conservatives-dream.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.) Certainly the affordable health care act is
far from being perfect, but for the multi millions of individuals without
insurance and who want a choice, it is a step in the right direction.
The Right of a President to Pursue an Agenda
As someone who was dually elected by the American people,
President Obama had a right to present his agenda, which included the
Affordable Health Care Act. This was not
kept secret as he discussed it on the campaign trail, both houses in Congress
debated the act and the summer after it was presented, there were lots of town
hall meetings with constituents shouting down members of Congress. The legislation passed after much compromise,
and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law. For President Obama to be on the receiving
end of a rant developed over blaming him for the National Park sites, including
the WWII Memorial, to be closed is taking opposition to this President too far.
Perhaps the talk show host in question could lead a group of people back to the
National Mall and insist on the barriers be moved from the Dr. King Memorial so
that his words of guidance and leadership could sink in. That is, of course, if they didn’t believe
King Obama would forbid them from paying reverence to the words of another
King. I jest, surely I jest.
Peace,
Artemesia Stanberry
PS Rachael Maddow Show on how Democratic
Congresswoman introduced a bill to create a World War II Memorial, with very
little support initially: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/53162118
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