Lisa Fritsch writes at American Thinker:

"Whites don't own Abraham Lincoln and blacks don't own Martin Luther King," says Glenn Beck as he defends his right to rally and restore honor at the same place and on the same date as Martin Luther King's historic "I Have a Dream" speech. That Beck has to say this seems ridiculous in itself, for most of us know that Martin Luther King is an American legend, with cherished monuments and a nationally celebrated holiday honoring his birthday each year. But Beck has to say this because he is white. And sadly, he is addressing the same critics: certain black reverends who never miss an opportunity to exploit race and black history.

True enough. Community organizers such as Al Sharpton do not own Martin Luther King, Jr. And neither does Glenn Beck, nor you or me.

Martin Luther King, Jr., is not the slave of the Rev. Al Sharpton. Mr. King does not jump when the reverend snaps his fingers. The legacy of King is not race-based private property under the whip of new masters lording it over new slaves in new cotton fields.

Our nation was founded not just upon "values" we happen to like, but upon objective truths about God, man, and the cosmos that we neglect to our peril.

These truths are facts of life which, if we affirm, set us free to see each other, to respect each other, and to treat each other, as human beings created in the image of God and endowed by our Creator with "certain unalienable rights," among them "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

To stake their claim over Martin Luther King, over August 28, over "I Have a Dream," certain race activists seem fond of saying, "We were there."

But clearly they are no longer there. They have left the building, they have left the monument, they have left the dream.

They have joined up with Jim Crow. They've joined up with skin color, collectivism, group hatreds, and the content of our pigmentation instead of the content of our character.

No human being owns Martin Luther King, Jr. No human being owns his legacy. He is forever an individual created in the image of God, not an empty value symbol to be manipulated according to the desires of marketers, hustlers, masters, and tyrants.

This is an unalienable fact of life. It sets us free. But to others it is holy terror. 

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