As an unexpected Christmas gift, Aaron Worthing got me The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. on CD. I took a drive up to Big Bear with my son this weekend (a father-son “Indian Guides” trip), and on the way up and back we played the CDs. I was already well into the CDs from previous drives to work, so we heard the “I Have a Dream” speech on CD 4 near the end of our drive on Saturday. On the way back we started with King’s eulogy for 4 martyred children in Birmingham.

It was just a coincidence that we were listening to the speeches of King on this day, but it was a fitting one.

King was an expert at rhetoric, and his speeches were powerful and compelling as delivered in his voice. Nobody is without fault, but he was a tremendous force for good in this country. He stood at all times for nonviolence and noncooperation with evil. His story is a stirring one and it is good to have a day to remember him.

There is still evil in the world, and we still must fight to eradicate it. MLK reminds us to do so with dignity and peacefulness — but never to give in; always to resist evil with courage and steadfastness. Let us all follow King’s example and fight evil where we find it.

UPDATE: From the eulogy:

These children—unoffending, innocent, and beautiful—were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.

And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.

It’s a case study in effective rhetoric, and it’s impossible to come away unmoved.

[Posted by Karl]

Jon Huntsman, who claimed third place in New Hampshire was a “ticket to ride” to South Carolina, has figured out we don’t care.  The former Utah governor will drop out of the GOP nomination campaign and plans to endorse frontrunner Mitt Romney later this morning.  His campaign YouTube page has been purged of anti-Romney videos.  His anti-Romney websites now redirect to Yahoo.

You know who this benefits, but the benefit has to be marginal.  Team Obama used Huntsman’s withdrawal to take a shot at Romney, which is even more marginal.

The establishment line developing on Twitter is that conservatives never forgave Huntsman for being Obama’s ambassador to China.  I’ll stick with what I wrote in December — Huntsman blew it by running as the Maverick Who Insults Conservatives when his record was arguably more conservative than Romney and Newt Gingrich.  Indeed, he was the anti-Gingrich: his substance was more conservative than his image and he insulted all the wrong targets.  And unlike Rick Perry, he insulted the wrong people intentionally.  That approach has John Weaver written all over it, but Huntsman was dumb enough to think it was smart.

Thus, Huntsman exits the stage, perhaps hoping for a cabinet post in a Romney administration, probably having to explain to the press why a “perfectly lubricated weather vane” is exactly what America needs in 2012.

–Karl