Martin Luther King, Jr talks about Muhammad Ali

It's sad to watch this video and think of how far backwards we have regressed.

Dynamic leaders like Dr. King were silenced long ago and society has overall failed to pick up the baton and continue in the race. Politics and religion have hopped in bed together and become one in preaching a message of hatred, intolerance, racism, nationalism, exceptionalism, nativism, hegemony, hawkishness, violence...

Entertainment, technology and societal fragmentation have, I feel, become our masters, leaving too many of us in a state of somnombulance and self-destructive apathy. There are beautiful people all over the world standing for principles bigger than themselves, the Occupy Wall Street individuals, for example. Still, I don't feel the social cohesiveness or collective will exists to enable a strong, shepherding voice like that of a King or Cesar Chavez.

Where is the moral courage, today? Where have all the leaders gone?

It's significant that in words delivered from a pulpit, Martin Luther King, Jr. was championing the principles of Muhammad Ali (formerly known as Cassius Clay) in refusing to pick up arms in a war he morally could not support. While King was a preacher of the Christian gospel, he did not use his position to cast aspersions at Ali's Islamic faith. He acknowledged that, whatever people in the congregation might personally think of his religion, they would be wrong impugn his character. (Actually, King was perusaisively critical of Christian ministers who advocated complacency and accomodation, rather than direct action to effect progress.)

How many leaders -- religious, political and otherwise -- do we see today, saying, "I may not agree with your politics or beliefs or what you do in your sex life, but I respect your right to be who you are?"

It's interesting how in his final years, King's Civil Rights message of racial equality had broadened toward speaking out against imperialism and the rights of people worldwide. But what many people don't realize today -- when even pharisaical politicans quote King at prayer spectacles and perfunctory anniversary celebrations --- is that from the beginning of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and even before, labor unions worked hand in hand with black churches and progressive organizations.

The rights of the working man and woman were co-mingled with the cause of racial equality as if they were one, and in a way they were -- and are. Once freedom is allowed expanded breathing space, it can more easily take root and bloom in other corners.

It is quite troubling today when demagogues find power in the politics of polarization. But haven't they been around forever? They were there cheering on Bull Conner as he unleashed attack dogs on peaceful dissenters in Birmingham, Ala. They were along the sidewalks of Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22, 1963, passing out leaflets calling Pres. John F. Kennedy a "marxist" and "socialist dictator." And they live today, disseminating crude racial caricatures in their Tea Party banners and facebook posts.

But the message of social justice, of the true value God has placed in every human life, has also been alive throughout history. Ministering to the poor and least among us, of championing those who have trampled upon and oppressed -- that is in line with an ancient tradition recorded in the Gospels of Jesus Christ, stretching backward to Old Testament prophets further back to Moses leading a people out of bondage.

I'm realistic. I know Jan. 1 is really just another day and calendars are created with a certain amount of arbitrariness. As of this writing, my wife and daughter are feeling weak, possibly feverish and probably will tomorrow as well -- New Year or not. We're competing with a lot of ignorant people, the tide of history and all that. Still, let's do all we can to make 2012 excellent.

Some of my favorite people in this world are the World War II veterans I interact with at the local senior center. For those who endured the Depression and Second World War so their offspring could have a better life, let's do something great.