 If you accept what King has to say, that means that's good. Not saying you have to accept what he has to say, but if you do, that's your choice. Now, by the way, plenty of people do, right? There are numerous roads and streets and numerous cities that are named after him. There are statues, monuments after him, and I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but what I'm saying is that lots of people do accept what King had to say, or at least on the surface, because they applaud him as a good man, a great man, for what he did. He is credited, not single-handedly, but very much credited for helping end the Jim Crow laws for the culmination of the civil rights movement. And that's great. I'm not criticizing that. And if you're one of these folks that applaud King, that's great. But I want you to be clear on what you're applauding him for. Now, his stance on direct nonviolent action, let's not kid ourselves, it's an extreme. He calls it an extreme. It's an extreme between out-and-out violent revolution and doing nothing. And it's not as if he says, well, we're not doing nothing, but we're only going to commit violence at a certain point when our lives depend upon it. He's not saying that. It's almost like a third or a third end of the spectrum, which is nonsensical. Yeah, you place yourself out there to get beaten, to be assaulted. And that's not a little thing. And by the way, King was criticized for this. He was criticized for placing people in harm's way without any sort of way for them to defend themselves. So, you know, let's not pretend King is without his critics. So if you accept what he has to say, you're accepting an extreme. You're accepting a stance of pacifism. And King would say, okay, you know, fine, you think I did a great thing. That's great, but are you prepared to follow my footsteps? I mean, if you're not, why not? Is did he make a mistake? But if you accept what he has to say, okay, but realize what this commit yourself to, right? They stood out there. They were insulted. People threw trash at them. There were a variety of things at them. They were assaulted, broken, you know, bruises, broken bones, you know, ruptured organs, dog bites, fire hoses, right? They were thrown in jail. I don't know the exact numbers off my head, but there has to have to have been people who were killed during the protests during these direct nonviolent action. And they still didn't fight back. That's an extreme. It's not as if they said, oh, we can't. They said, oh, we won't. Their goal was to change people's minds by generating sympathy and others, not anger, not thought, not reason. They suffered and the hope was that through that suffering, people would change their minds. So if you're committed, if you accept what he has to say, that's good, but now you are committed to pacifism. You might wonder how well, how could a job you would do with something like that? I mean, King and his people went through training. There's a somewhat decent chance that if you're watching this video, you lose your cool during traffic. Pacifism is something that requires discipline, something that requires a lot of practice. And yeah, it's an extreme. And keep in mind, the reason why he did this was so that people would be united in this sort of sentiment. Are you willing to do that? Somebody hates you. Instead of returning anger, you suffer at their hands in order to change their mind. That's tough. Okay, well, suppose you reject what Martin Luther King's conclusion here, that the way to restore justice is through empathy to the ethics of care. Well, you're going to reject either one of four things, right? Either investigation, negotiation, purification, or direct nonviolent action. Now, keep in mind, if you reject what King has to say, at some point, you think he did something not good. Maybe he took something too far. Maybe he should have taken action one way instead of another. I'm not saying that you think he's a bad man, but that he did something not good. And by the way, King came under criticism. You would not be alone in saying this. There were criticisms of Martin Luther King. And, you know, not from where you might think, right? The members of the KKK criticism. Well, of course they did, but it wasn't just them. There were people on King's side who seriously disagreed with King's methods. All right. Well, let's suppose you reject investigation. What would that mean? What would the consequence be? Well, the consequence would be, I mean, whether you accept nonviolent action or not, right? The consequence could be that you could go into, you know, head into a set of actions with dire consequences, right? Supposing you take violence or not, right? It's either pacifism or violence or nothing, I suppose, right? You go into a, you know, take a set, take a course of action with dire consequences without even knowing whether you're right. That would be weird. Taking a course of action with dire consequences not even justified, not even knowing whether you're right. Remember the point behind the investigation is to figure out whether there was in fact injustice. And if you say, well, we could skip that step. Let's just go forward. That's a little, that's like looking at a minefield and saying, ah, forget the, forget the map. Let's just start walking. That's probably a bad idea. Well, suppose you want to reject negotiation. You could take this approach. And it'd be weird. You probably want to reject investigation at the same time, right? Because maybe you just do investigation, but not negotiation. It seems a little strange. I mean, one of the reasons to do the investigation is so you can go to the negotiating table and say, look, we found some injustice here. You know, but I guess you can still keep investigation and say, okay, we figured out this injustice. We're going to go straight to action. We're not even going to try to get them to change their minds using reason. You know, you could take that approach, I suppose. I would say this is where King made his mistake, is he didn't even try, he shouldn't even try negotiation. I mean, that would be, I think that would be weird, right? Let's enter into a course of action with dire consequences. We know there's something going on here. Let's enter into a course of actual dire consequences without even trying to get them to the negotiating table. I mean, whether you think direct nonviolent action is the way to go or not, whether you think you should take up arms, I guess. But to not even give people a chance to, you know, change their minds through negotiation, through reason, that would be weird. I mean, I guess you could try that. Well, last two. You think King made a mistake? It's either with self purification or direct nonviolent action. Let's look at purification. So if you reject purification, the question is, are you going to accept direct nonviolent action or not? I mean, the only way it makes sense to me to reject purification is if you're going to reject direct nonviolent action. If you are going to say that you're going to have direct nonviolent action and still reject purification, you're definitely setting yourself up for failure. You're, you know, going into a situation where you're going to be abused. You're expecting yourself or want your intention is not to return abuse. I, wow, that, that, yeah, like I said, that's setting yourself up for failure. You are not equipped to handle that calmly. You have to train yourself to do that. Well, then the other way that you reject purification is if you reject direct nonviolent action. Yeah, you could take this approach. You could say, you know, the error that King made, I mean, it's admirable that he started out nonviolently, but there comes a point where you draw a line and it comes a point where you have to start defending yourself. You know, for what it's worth, King never drew that point. He never drew that line. He was adamant that nonviolence is the only way to resolve, you know, to, you know, to establish justice, peace, you know, amongst everybody. And, you know, he died. He was killed. He held that line to the end. But if you reject what he has to say, and I'm not saying you have to agree with him, if you reject what he has to say about nonviolence, I mean, what are you committing yourself to? You know, well, I mean, remember what King's trying to do. He's trying to say that he's trying to get people to become sympathetic to, you know, this injustice, right? Towards people who suffer this injustice by really demonstrating what the suffering is like. We're going to go out there and show you what this injustice is. No matter how far you have seen it, because, you know, you're hiding away in your house. You don't really, it's not on the news, whatever, everybody's just covering up, not talking about it. We're going to go out and show what this injustice is like. It's not just, it's not really separate but equal, right? It's torturous. And we'll show you the torture. And King wanted a society that cared. And again, he's not going to use the explicit phrase, but he's appealing to the ethics of care. He wanted people to care for one another. He wanted a society that was compassionate towards one another. Well, if you're going to reject non-violence, you're not going to get that compassion, right? It just does not happen where, you know, somebody yells at somebody else, right? Bob yells at Frank and Frank feels compassion towards Bob. No, no, right? Frank gets defensive. Frank gets angry. He yells back. It just doesn't happen where Bob hits Frank. And Frank says, wow, I must have been a real jerk. What's bothering you, Bob? No. Violent demonstrations, well, frankly, it's not really demonstrations anymore. It's revolution, right? It's not a demonstration. It's not, you know, peaceful resistance. That's revolution. And when you reject non-violence, you're not looking for a society that's compassionate. You're creating a society through compliance, forced compliance. And you could do that, I suppose. But now you're creating a society where its people don't care about each other. And yeah, I mean, you say, well, you can't force people to care for one another. Well, that's King's point. You can't force people to care for one another. And when you're in a society where one group of people doesn't care about the rest, it's not a great place to be. And I realize this is happening more and more and more. It's more and more the case that, you know, we have this animosity towards our fellow citizens. We have the animosity towards other people around the globe. Why would you want to be in a room full of people that hate you? I mean, that's what you create with forced compliance. So you can reject King's approach if you like, but you're not going to get compassion. You're not going to get care. You're not going to get people who genuinely want your well-being. You're going to get anger. Compliance, maybe, but anger and blood.