Glenn Beck should not be permitted to think he owns Dr Martin Luther King Jr

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are planning an event at the Lincoln Monument in Washington DC on the anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's I Have a Dream speech.

In just a few clicks on this page, or this link right here, you can listen to twenty two of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's recorded speeches. Last year on MLK day, I decided to go and listen to King's speech I Have Been to the Mountain Top. It was easy to find, as was the I Have a Dream speech. But it seemed inexplicably difficult to find other speeches in audio. I would have always thought there would be some sort of official MLK monument, maybe even governmental, with loads of MLK resources.

This turned out not to be the case. The first result in a simple google search for "martin luther king" is his Wikipedia article. The second is a biography from the Nobel Peace Prize people. The third is a website dedicated to slandering Dr Martin Luther King Jr as a wealthy promiscuous communist. This page is hosted by stormfront.org, a white supremacist forum. There are a lot more websites on MLK, but no true official or authoritative site about him, and certainly no clearly formatted collection of his speeches. So I went ahead and added another voice to the cyber fugue, what I consider to be the most complete collection of the audio of MLK speeches on the internet.

My point in saying all this, is a byproduct of putting together such a resource is having listened to all of these speeches more than once. They are hard not to listen to. King has a beautiful eloquence and truth to all of his words, and he delivers his speeches with a humbling passion.

"We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

-Dr Martin Luther King Jr
 I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial, 1963

Alright, the original point. Glenn Beck is having a rally called Restoring Honor, in the exact same spot as MLK, on the anniversary of this ridiculously important speech. I can't exactly claim to be an expert on Glenn Beck, but a few youtube searches with Beck's name and King's acronym, there's plenty to learn.

This is probably my favorite, where Glenn Beck describes that race relations only went sour in the lead up to the Civil War:

And here he is, justifying his Restoring Honor rally by saying African Americans don't own Martin Luther King:

Well, Mr Beck, I can tell you who Dr Martin Luther King Jr, at the very least, does not belong to. IT'S YOU AND SARAH PALIN.