This is the John Fugel-Sang Podcast.

Jesus warned us about the Christian Right 2,000 years ago when he said,

these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

And over the years, the same has sadly become true of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Conservatives opposed him and called him a communist during his lifetime.

He was murdered by a conservative white man.

Ronald Reagan did make his birthday a federal holiday but did it

very reluctantly. At the time Jesse Helms was objecting saying that the king was a

communist and Reagan wouldn't deny that.

In fact, Sam Donaldson was asking him during the signing ceremony of the holiday

and he said, well, Reagan said, they seem bent on making it a national holiday.

That was his reason.

He didn't say who they were, but the fact is that

Dr King's birthday as a holiday had passed both houses of Congress with ironclad

veto-proof majorities. That's the only reason it became a holiday because Reagan couldn't veto it and then Reagan flew off to spend a weekend in Augusta at a golf club that took no black members. At the time former Governor Meldrum Thompson Jr. of New Hampshire sent Reagan a letter begging

him to veto the King Holiday because he was a man of immoral character and repeating the charge

of communism.

Ronald Reagan wrote back saying,

on the national holiday you mentioned,

I have the reservations, you have, but here the perception of too many people

is based on an image, not the reality. Today conservative America celebrates Dr. King but only

in the form of knowing one line from one speech you know it and it's a beautiful

...