Over at LRC, Paul Gottfried argues that “There is now a state-sponsored cult of Martin Luther King, which has taken over certain aspects of Christian redemptive history and adapted them to its needs.”

He concludes:

The once raging conflict between the neoconservative and establishment Lefts …

[Note: whereas I consider neoconservatives to be right-wing social democrats (i.e., socially conservative socialists), Gottfried, who associates everything virtuous with the Right, considers fascism and neoconservatism to be left-wing ideologies!]

… also indicated the deepening of the theological tradition centered on the new multicultural savior. The appeals made to King’s plagiarized texts on whether reverse discrimination might be allowed or not suggest how important his words had become for our public life. The dispute called to mind the councils of the early Church and the attempts therein made to distinguish between orthodoxy and heresy. The theological dispute between the two Lefts was speedily resolved as soon as King’s repeated endorsement of white reparations in a wide area of educational and commercial activities was cited. But the dispute itself was by far more interesting than its resolution. It suggested the churchlike character of our post-Christian religion invoking a leftist savior within the context of a public cult. How this imposed religion will continue to spread remains for me a matter of keen interest. It is obviously eating away at the residual influence of Christian belief and will likely come to overshadow the old faith even more. For those who harbor any lingering hopes that the new cult will turn into anything as benign as Washington’s Birthday, I would urge them to stop kidding themselves.