THE FORK IN THE ROAD

January 20th, 2003 is a National Holiday. It is a day set aside by Congress to remember and celebrate the contributions of an American icon, Martin Luther King. By a coincidence of the calendar’s cycle, it is also the second anniversary of the inauguration of George W. Bush as the 43rd President of the United States. As a result it is a day full of irony.

The man whose life we remember today led the fight to chase Jim Crow from America’s society. The man whose Presidency we cannot forget has made up Jim Crow in whiteface and sent him off to dance for the Supreme Court. The man whose life we remember today embraced non-violence as the only moral way to effect social change. The man whose Presidency we cannot forget searches the trivia of arms inspection with a magnifying glass to find an excuse to unleash the most violent of human acts, war, with the most violent of man’s inventions.

The man whose life we remember today appealed to others to lay their lives in the balance that the burden of inequality be lifted from the weakest of us. The man whose Presidency we cannot forget appeals to Congress to lift the burden of personal taxation from the strongest of us that they may consume more and leave the weak to subsist on the crumbs that fall from the table.

The man whose life we remember today appealed to America to come together to serve its brightest Angels. The man whose Presidency we cannot forget calls upon us to unite to advance America’s darkest instincts; greed, intolerance; vengeance and destruction.

On this day, this 20th day of the year 2003 we have come to a division in the pathway. Down which will branch America’s trek continue? Which way will America choose?