Prophetic words for Inauguration Day
What do we need to hear as the 47th presidency begins?
Martin Luther King Jr is memorialized in stone in Washington, D.C., but his words remain unheeded. (Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash)
Hostility often greets those who challenge the status quo, and honor is frequently belated for people who depart from orthodoxy. Vincent Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime; just seven of Emily Dickinson’s 1,800 or so poems were published before her death, and Galileo died 150 years before his controversial principles were widely embraced. A better world would more quickly recognize artistic, literary and scientific genius. We humans aren’t as swift as we might wish.
We are especially inhospitable to moral pioneers. Consider Martin Luther King Jr., whose 96th birthday we honor Monday as a national holiday, but who during his lifetime was mostly belittled and scorned. True, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for being “the first person in the Western world… to make the message of brotherly love a reality” in the struggle for civil rights. Yet he still had plenty of critics at home in those days. When the segregationist Sheriff Eugene “Bull” Connor was asked his view of King as Nobel laureate, he said, “That’s scraping the bottom of the barrel.”1
One of my pals in those days had been born in Alabama, and while his family was active in our progressive church, they weren’t immune to old prejudices. I recall precisely what my 12-year-old friend said to me in our church basement on the Sunday after King was honored. Clearly mimicking what he had heard at home, my friend said, “He causes a race riot here, and over in Europe they give him the Nobel Peace Prize.”
That was a few months after Lyndon Johnson had pushed through the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which by outlawing habitual discrimination helped shift Americans’ views on race. Yet even as more Americans began to embrace King’s message of racial equality, his increasingly vocal opposition to the Vietnam war drew him new critics. When he declared that the “deadly Western arrogance” of the war violated the 1954 Geneva accords that promised self-determination for all, he was denounced by the same editorial boards that had lauded his stands on civil rights. The Washington Post said in 1967 that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country and to his people.” Life magazine likened one of his antiwar speeches to “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.”2
Public opinion was shifting dramatically toward King’s views when he was assassinated in 1968. A few days later, our church hosted an interdenominational memorial service. I recall proudly walking alongside my dad at the head of a few hundred people as we marched through our small city’s downtown and up the wide steps outside the church. After his death, King’s stature grew further and his views were more widely embraced. President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1977, and his birthday became a federal holiday in 1986. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was established on the National Mall in 2011; it is visited by about 3 million people a year.
It is ironic, then, that on the day set aside to remember and honor King, we will inaugurate for a second presidential term a person who so blatantly disrespects the moral and humanitarian stances that belatedly won King his deserved esteem. It’s not hard to imagine how horrified King would be if he were alive on his 96th birthday and thus able to witness what Donald Trump promises to do next. Maybe we’re in league with the students of Galileo at the dawn of the 18th century, wondering if his far-sighted teachings would ever take hold.
Racism is not the only element of Trump’s apparent platform that conflicts with the message of King, but it is where understanding of the contrast begins. The author and historian Ibram X. Kendi defines a racist simply: someone who holds that “certain racial groups are better or worse than others.”3
In that, Trump has been clear. During the 2024 campaign, for example, he claimed that migrants crossing the southern border have “bad genes,” contrary to the “good genes” that he assured his mostly-white rally crowds that they surely had. The new immigrants, including those he falsely claimed were eating family pets in Ohio, are part of “an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world… from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions,” he said, who have “resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens.” That is, they’re certainly worse than the rest of us.4
Among the 77.2 million Americans who voted for Trump, few wouldn’t be deeply offended by the suggestion that they are racist. But Kendi, a Boston University professor of humanities, has argued persuasively in both scholarly and popular works that a person is either an anti-racist or a racist — and that anti-racism requires an aggressive agenda for key elements of social change, all opposed by Trump.
That agenda would include the right to health care for all, in contrast to Trump’s reiteration of the unpopular notion of killing the Affordable Care Act, which provides insurance for 45 million Americans. The anti-racism project also would create enhanced educational and housing opportunities for all and reduce the wealth gap that is more profound along racial lines than by any other demarcation.
You could certainly argue that the 49.8 percent of voters who cast their ballots for Trump knew exactly what they would be getting, and judged it better than the prospects of a Kamala Harris presidency. But in one Trump priority that has emerged since the election, most of his backers surely would be surprised: Trump’s recent pugnacious approach toward our allies, revealed in his insistence that Greenland must become part of the United States, that the U.S. Senate renounce its 1978 ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty so the canal will revert to American ownership and that Canada ought to eagerly give up its national sovereignty and become a part of the U.S.
If the notion of Canadian statehood is the most far-fetched of Trump’s recent ramblings, the takeover of Greenland seems to be the one that he’s really serious about. A poll of American voters found that only 11 percent think we ought to do whatever we can to take over Greenland, and a majority oppose the idea outright. That opposition surely would grow if Trump decides to use U.S. military force to seize the island — which is part of Denmark, a NATO ally that has indicated it would be happy to accept more U.S. strategic investment in Greenland. Even so, Trump’s designee for Secretary of Defense, the former Fox News talk show host Pete Hegseth, refused to rule out sending in the troops if Denmark and Greenland decline Trump’s offer.5
Never mind that the United Nations Charter requires nations to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other nations, and forbids the threat or use of force against nations’ political independence. After all, the charter has often been breached by others — for example, in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump, an unabashed admirer of Vladimir Putin, practically invites the conclusion that his designs on Greenland may be less about strategy than about demonstrating that he is just as tough as Putin.
Maybe Don and Vlad should just get to a playground and wage a vigorous round of “King of the Mountain” rather than putting independent nations in their crosshairs. That’s only vaguely more weird than the anachronism of an American president threatening military force to take new territory, which smacks of 19th century imperialism. And as many commentators have observed, Trump’s designs on Greenland obviously legitimize Putin’s assault on Ukraine.
Martin Luther King Jr. had a view of such behavior. He saw the Vietnam war as a mark of American colonialism worldwide. In a speech at New York City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, labeled by historians his “Beyond Vietnam” sermon, King urged that the U.S. step away from economic nationalism and focus instead on “a radical revolution of values” that emphasized love and justice. That hope was unrealized when, exactly 365 days later, he was struck down. It remains so today.
Groundbreaking works of art and discoveries in science are soon enough supplanted by what comes next, but that doesn’t render the earlier work worthless. Van Gogh’s art was considered part of the post-impressionist era, which was followed by expressionism, cubism and abstract art. Yet we still admire the paintings of Van Gogh. Likewise, the scientific understandings advanced by Galileo — including his bold insistence that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe — set the stage for further observation and advancement by generations of scientists who followed him.
And so, too, do the moral teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. speak to our situation today and call upon us to listen. Near the end of his remarks at Riverside, King declared, “We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” 6
For those tempted to despair by the return of Trump to the presidency, comfort might be taken from the now-familiar words King offered at Washington’s National Cathedral just five days before his death: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
On Inauguration Day, 2025, then, Americans would do well to turn their attention less to a speech being delivered by a contemporary leader whose power will be temporary and more to the lasting and inspiring teachings of a 20th century prophet. It is a day when he truly deserves the honor.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/nobel-peace-prize
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/beyond-vietnam
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/14/ibram-x-kendi-on-why-not-being-racist-is-not-enough
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/12/trump-racist-rhetoric-immigrants-00183537
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2025/01/15/trump-greenland-poll/77668938007/
https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil100/17.%20MLK%20Beyond%20Vietnam.pdf
NEWSCLIPS FROM THE UPSTATES
Dispatches from our common ground *
Wherein each week we look around what we call the nation’s Upstates — those places just a bit removed from the center of things — to find illuminating news and intriguing viewpoints, which you might not otherwise see.
This week, we share reporting we found here:
St. Cloud, Minn. (St. Cloud Times, sctimes.com)
Indianapolis, Ind. (Indianapolis Star, indystar.com)
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NEWSCLIP:
TERRITORIAL DESIGNS TAKE HOLD IN THE MIDWEST
Today, Greenland and Canada, so can Illinois and Minnesota be far behind?
Are Republican legislators in two Midwestern states taking a page from Donald Trump’s playbook? It’s a fair question, since there are moves afoot in Iowa and Indiana to try to seize some land from neighboring states.
Stephen Gruber-Miller reports from the Iowa state legislature that State Sen. Mike Bousselot has introduced legislation that would allow Iowa to buy nine southern Minnesota counties. About 180,000 Minnesotans would thus become Iowans. Bousselot says he had the idea before he heard that Trump wanted the United States to annex Greenland.
Meanwhile, reporters covering the Indiana state legislature note that House Speaker Todd Huston has filed a bill to set up a commission to “embrace” seven Illinois counties that voted in November to explore seceding from Illinois to form a 51st state. “To all of our neighbors in the West, we hear your frustrations and invite you to join us in low-cost, low-tax Indiana,” Huston said.
The Indiana proposal has the hallmarks of a serious one, given Huston’s power in the state capitol. But it would require the acquiescence of Illinois, where the state attorney general says the counties don’t have the authority to join another state.
Don’t expect me to take a side. I was born in Illinois and lived there the first nine years of my life, and I was an Indiana voter for five years. And I’ve spent many happy times in both Iowa and Minnesota. But this all begins to sound to me a bit too much like America in the 1850s. We ought to ask the legislators to cool it.
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MORE FROM THE UPSTATE AMERICAN
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THANK YOU for reading The Upstate American, and for joining us in the conversation about our common ground, this great country. I hope you’ll join us again next week — or send a message with ideas you’d like to see us address.
-REX SMITH
Well-said and timely!