Associated Press
Dr. Martin Luther King, 1965
As the news began to sink in about Osama bin Laden's death yesterday, a quote attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr. went viral:
"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy."
The facts first - this is not a quote from Dr. King.
Yesterday before I knew that fact, I tried to track down the origins of this quote and determine if, in fact, it was said/written by Dr. King. My initial Google search produced hits. Lotsa hits. But all from blogs and aggregated quote sites without any real journalistic credibility. That was a red flag... but I kept searching, and I stumbled upon a longer version of the quote:
"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
So at this point I had more of a quote... but based on the websites publishing it, I still could not verify its origin. More red flags. I widened the scope of my search looping in more Last Word staffers and the NBC News research department. What we all begin to notice was that all the online entries of this quote were very young, even for the Internets. At this point, none of us had any confidence that the quote was genuine, but I still wanted to know more.
So I began to parse the quote and search for smaller bits of it. It was then I discovered this quote from a collection of Dr. King's sermons:
"Let us move now from the practical how to the theoretical why: Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence and toughness multiples toughness in a descending spiral of destruction."
So... that takes care of everything but that first sentence: "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy." So where did that come from? The Atlantic has tracked down the answer for us. Apparently the passage was originally posted by a user on Facebook with her thoughts leading up to a King quote, like this:
I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." MLK Jr.
From there, some copies and pastes and reposts later... those quotation marks somehow disappeared and the entire passage was attributed to Dr. King. The errant first sentence was then used in 140-character tweets, and the rest is viral Internets history.
You may still be saying to yourself, "It does sound like something Martin Luther King, Jr. would have said." Indeed, I agree. It does. But there's a reason for that. The sentiment in this remark also appears in a certain text that Dr. King knew rather well.
Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’
- Ezekiel 33:11
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So the Martin Luther King quote was a fake. The REAL message, nothing fake about it, was that people were forwarding it, posting it, and responding to it. What that shows us is that instead of dancing up and down and shouting "USA USA" like a bunch of amped up frat boys, and acting like we'd won a football game, people were instead feeling introspective and thoughtful -- not jingoistic -- about Bin Laden's death...
Maybe the person who started the quote did it to show that America was made up of fools who would believe it was written by MLK. But the quote wasn't ludicrous or unbelievable (like "Obama was born in Kenya" for example). In fact, it was quite in the spirit of something MLK might have actually written.
The fact that the quote went viral, and was clearly something that spoke to how Americans felt yesterday, says more about the American people's quality, goodness, and heart, than it does about our ability to be duped. It says that the people who responded to that quote, who forwarded it, and who read it and felt that it spoke some truth yesterday did not celebrate the death of Bin Laden with a vengeful spirit.
So thank you, whoever wrote it/edited it/forwarded it -- because you proved that Americans can't be duped by fake patriotism, cheerleading chants of USA USA, bravado, hubris and boastful pride!
I totally agree! Those who relish the blood of their enemies have become an enemy unto themselves. Death is tragic, murder even more so, and the events that led up to this moment in history are tragic.
"If we believe that murder is wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just individuals but governments as well." -Helen Prejean
(Davenport. Basic Criminal Law: The Constitution, Procedure, and Crimes, 2nd Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions p. 106).
I, too, was introspective and given to meditation on the subject of Bin Laden's death, but I've had enough education--and counseling--that I didn't engage in black-and-white thinking on the subject; I sought some nuance and a bit of adult reasoning...
Several months ago, my home state, Planet Utah, executed a man via firing squad (there are still a few here on Death Row who've "chosen" that method of execution; see Gilmore, Gary).
I know one of that man's brothers fairly well... The now dead man's crime involved a shootout in our old Hall of Justice using a smuggled firearm...
He was a career criminal with a history of substance abuse, and I mourn for my friend's loss, but not his brother whose only "right" to continued oxygen on this planet was dependent on the mercy of its others who've behaved more lawfully... I'm generally opposed to capital punishment as a rule, particularly because it is applied so inequitably...
In the case of Bin Laden, however, his crime was so heinous, so much the product of a pathological grandiosity, and so immune to ordinary legal recourse (we're still being victimized by his acts every time we board an airplane) that his killing was not only justified but mandated.
What you say makes so much sense. I just posted a similar thought on a friend's fb page as she posted the MLK quote. While this quote -most of which was accurate - is very moving it does not and cannot apply to all; there are those with whom you cannot reason and who will continue to harm. It is a greater misdeed to allow them to do so. I do not rejoice at the death of bin Laden but neither do I mourn his passing.
The quote still applies. Neither the FB posters intro, nor the MLK quote preclude the necessity of certain persons death. They only point out that it is to be undertaken with sadness - it is the least bad outcome in a situation with no good outcomes possible.
The mistake warned against is taking this least bad for good. The depravity spawned by such an error is hard to over estimate.
Who was the OP? They are disgusting!
Thank you for the fact check. I tried the same (remembering the erroneously attributed "Dalai Lama letter" that circulated after 9/11), but I abandoned the effort after four pages of same-day postings. I didn't think to search on sections of the quote, but I wondered how/when King would have had occasion to express the first sentence.
Larry, is "lotsa" a word? Just curious.
I'm gonna say it's not!
lotsa BS flowing from the right wing hit machine
Thank you for digging into this. It is food for thought for all of us. Thanks also for the quote from Ezekiel.
It is difficult to imagine any situation where capturing bin Laden alive would be moral or useful. Nothing, short of a drug-induced collapse of his mind, would alter him in his position. Its crux is a mixture of religion and social hubris and genuine discontent. This mixture is exceptional in its ability to influence certain types of minds. There is a societal immorality in allowing the fostering of notions of such malignancy, when the rendering of death as a punishment for the crimes begotten by these notions, has judicial legitimacy. The killing of bin Laden was a moral act. It was also a killing; this should give us pause. All such acts agreed to and performed by us, as a society, mark us. To have to wash away an evil by blood dips our hand in it; this should never be a trivial matter.
Thanks for the fact-check.
@kurt - "lotsa" may not be an actual real honest to goodess word... but in the world of blogging it can be fun to deviate from the queen's english now & again. =)
Silly, nick, but you just sounded like sarah palin, i am sure many will refudiate that
According to this writeup: bigfatfurrytexan.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/fake-mlk-quote/ , the original posting was a FB users personal comments: "I will mourn.. ", prefixed to a properly quoted MLK quotation: "Returning hate..".
Somewhere in the process of re-quoting, the original quote marks were removed and replaced, and commentary and the original quote were merged. The hybrid quotation then went viral.
In case the above link gets stripped, the keywords: bigfatfurrytexan, wordpress, and fake-mlk-quote, should provide sufficient google fodder to find the writeup.
Thank you all for bringing some sanity to this out of control event. In sprit of the unlawful intervening into a sovereign countries and applaud the outcome regardless of the circumstances. We as a moral nation, in which we preach that we are, should set better examples. Thanks again to the individual who brought this discussion to light. Regardless of who made the quote, I get it; it was still in the spirit of what MLK would have said or reacted to. There are so many reasons America should not be applauding, making jokes of the Osama bin Laden death. It really tells us where this country mind set is. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Thank goodness most of the post I have read veers away from that concept. Another part of the scripture states that’s prevalent in shaping our moral aptitude, in which we need plenty of work on, is the passage when the lord asks anyone of you who have not sinned… toss the first stone. This is however paraphrased; however, the intent was to ask if anyone of us who have not committed a sin against mankind let him, or her toss the first stone. The event was citizens self persecution of a woman who had presumably committed adultery. We will never know who the making of Osama bin Laden. America should look at what is the reason why a person like Osama bin Laden would surface, commit such atrocities against mankind; causes the lives of American. Is it a respond to our westernizing concept, our greed, our actions, and our pretentious attitude that we have god given authority to make up moral laws on the go? Do you think it was a moral act to go in and kill him and bury him at sea simply because we felt that it was prudent to do so? There are many questions still need to be answered. My final statement is, I was amazed on the manner in which Osama bin Laden was captured, and wondered why the same method was not use in capturing Saddam Hussein. Instead we boomed the whole country in the so call pursuit of our fight against terrorism, not taken into consideration of innocence the value of woman men and children lives, hundreds of billions of dollars loss, the lives loss of our young men….. When will it end?
Jim Haugabook
"wondered why the same method was not use in capturing Saddam Hussein" ------------ Plain & simply , a different Commander-in-Chief.
Who in hell do we think we are. Why don't we allow other countries to come to America and hunt down and kill americans who they feel have committed atrocities in their countries? Answer please? Did Osama have a twin? He could have. Oh,fair trials are only for humans in the United States? Please. Your children are watching you! And imulating you.
I can't help but feel that the killing/murder/execution of someone, no matter what they've done in the past, is too final an act. No one can predict the future or what it holds. Perhaps this is an idealistic perspective.
A further points to consider, since we're discussing the atrocity Osama commited. Another perspective:
Though there is no official figure, there is an estimate that many tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in the cross-fire in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden was not even Afghani, and in the end was not even living there. I do not see much justice in the 'war on terror', I see something else... something that smacks of revenge. Or certainly the lines between the two have become blurry.