261 CHRONICLESnof Dr. King is becoming a national tradition. Last year thenvictim was another sports figure, Los Angeles Dodgersnofficial Al Campanis, who was asked on ABC-TV’s Nightlinenabout black athletic performance and wound upndiscoursing on the comparative buoyancy of the races whennimmersed in water. He too got his clock cleaned by hisnemployers, and though the incident did not occur innconnection with Dr. King’s birthday, it did happen to fallnduring the week of the 19th anniversary of the civil rightsnleader’s assassination in April 1968.nIn 1986, when King Day was first celebrated after itsnenactment by Congress in 1983, the victim got off easy. InnMontgomery County, Maryland, Mrs. Karen Collins, anpart-time music teacher in a Silver Spring elementarynschool, made the mistake of giving her private opinion to ancolleague that the country was making too much of Dr.nKing and that she had heard that he had been a Communistnsupporter and had Communist friends. Her remark wasnoverheard by some students, who ran home to tell theirnparents, who alerted the local NAACP to the presence ofnun-American activities. Even before the NAACP invitednitself to settle the matter, however, Mrs. Collins hadnreceived a reprimand from her principal, had been placednon administrative leave, transferred to another school, andnrequired to enroll in a “human relations” course where shencould learn something about the American Way.nThe NAACP was not at all satisfied and demanded herndismissal. “Any person who says Dr. King was a Communistnis either maliciously racist or uninformed,” said RoscoenNix, president of the local chapter. Actually, it was neverncertain exactly what Mrs. Collins had said. She deniednsaying that King was a Communist, and after her disciplining,nschool superintendent Wilmer S. Cody acknowledgednthat “Although her exact words are still in dispute, she didnexpress some dissatisfaction about the school system’s specialnprogram concerning Martin Luther King’s birthday.”nMrs. Collins appears to have kept her job, but the godnwhom she blasphemed had tasted blood.nIf the reader thinks I exaggerate the metaphor of King asngod, consider the demand in 1979 (and since) to add Dr.nKing’s “Letter From the Birmingham Jail” to the Bible. Atnthe third annual conference of the Black Theology Projectnin 1979, a proposal to add the letter as another epistle in thenNew Testament was approved by the convention of aboutn40 black ministers, theologians, and lay people, and the Rev.nMuhammed Kenyatta, instructor in sociology at HaverfordnCollege, held that “We believe God worked through Dr.nMartin Luther King in that jail in Birmingham in 1963 tonreveal His holy word.” The pious sociologist also noted thatn”people generally do not realize that the process of decidingnwhat is or is not Holy Scripture has been an ongoing one.”nIf the thirst of the new god were slaked only by the ritualnslaughter of schoolteachers and sports commentators. Dr.nKing’s apotheosis might actually represent a step forward fornthe country, but evidence mounts that more is beingndemanded. King Day in fact represents a revolution in ournnational mythology, a transformation that seeks to delegitimizenthe symbols of American history and national identitynand to redefine the meaning of the American Republic —nperhaps even the meaning of the Christian faith. This atnleast is the explicit understanding of the holiday that thennndominant molders of public opinion articulate every year inntheir ceremonial ruminations. Writing in the New YorknTimes on January 18 of this year, Vincent Harding,nprofessor of Religion and Social Transformation at the IliffnSchool of Theology in Denver, rejected the notion that thenKing holiday commemorates merely “a kind, gentle andneasily managed religious leader of a friendly crusade fornracial integration.” Such an understanding, he writes, wouldn”demean and trivialize Dr. King’s meaning,” and thenhigher truth of King Day is made of sterner stuff. “ThenMartin Luther King of 1968,” writes Mr. Harding,nwas calling for and leading civil disobediencencampaigns against the unjust war in Vietnam.nCourageously describing our nation as “the greaternpurveyor of violence in the world today,” he wasnurging us away from a dependence on militarynsolutions. He was encouraging young men to refusento serve in the military, challenging them not tonsupport America’s anti-Communist crusades, whichnwere really destroying the hopes of poor nonwhitenpeoples everywhere.nThis Martin Luther King was calling for a radicalnredistribution of wealth and political power innAmerican society as a way to provide food, clothing,nshelter, medical care, jobs, education and hope fornall of our country’s people.nRoger Wilkins, civil rights activist and now a Senior Fellownat the far-left Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, hadnsome similar thoughts about the meaning of Dr. King’snlegacy in the Washington Post, and similar interpretations ofnthe man and the holiday could be reproduced from thenmajor media of public opinion for every year since thenholiday was created.nTo be sure, the use of the King holiday to legitimize thenleft’s long march through American institutions is not thenonly meaning attributed to it. At the time of its enactmentnby Congress, various rationales were offered by liberals andnconservatives alike: that the holiday was merely a celebrationnof the personal virtues of a man of courage and vision, that itnhonored the national rejection of racial bigotry, or that it wasna holiday for American blacks, who, it was patronizinglynsaid, “needed their own hero,” much as children in anrestaurant need their own menu. Yet these are not thenpresiding apologiae for the holiday, nor were they at thentime it was adopted; and the radical interpretation of Dr.nKing and his legacy is both the dominant as well as the morenaccurate version.nThe objective meaning of the King holiday — the actualnmeaning independent of what its sponsors thought theynmeant or what some of its celebrants think they meannnow—has little to do with the renunciation of Crossburningsnand lynch parties or even of less malevolentnincarnations of Jim Crow. To be sure, a nation that honorsnDr. King and his legacy renounces such manifestations ofnracial inequality, but it also must renounce all forms ofninequality, racial or other, because if all men are indeednequal, then it is absurd to say that only some forms ofninequality are evil. If, as Dr. King understood it, thenDeclaration of Independence is a “promissory note” — notnmerely declarative of national independence but also imper-n