History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 2

History - Essay Example Niebuhr further warns that the liberal idealism’s modern culture underrates the historical existence of human self-interest. In effect, within modern liberal rhetoric of American democracy, self-interest normally disguises itself. This paper narrow down to looking into four ‘icons’ who mirrored Niebuhr’s critique that predatory self-interest deeply permeates American liberalism including Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Gunnar Myrdal and the framers of the Port Huron statement. Malcom X seems to symbolize one of supreme examples of ‘child of darkness’ that Niebuhr gives wherein self-interest and the black movement’s segregation pushes the society further into isolation, but this is not the case. In his article, Niebuhr did not describe the modern revolt against the medieval culture and the feudal order as a conflict between children of light and children of darkness. ... degree that it challenged not only the tentative and premature unity of a society but also the stabilization of a culture, over and above developing new cultural and social possibilities (Hollinger, 281). Malcom X was in the same way democratic to the extent of challenging capitalism disparities for his exploited people over and above suggesting an alternative to new cultural and social possibilities. Actually, within the white community, chances for black mobilization and power were minimal. Hollinger asserts that the white man fears separation more than he fears integration – since segregation denotes that he puts someone away from oneself, but not far enough to make them be out of one’s jurisdiction; the white man will integrate faster than he will segregate (p.443). In my view therefore, Malcom X mirrored Niebuhr’s ideas more than he challenged them. The â€Å"Letter from a Birmingham Jail† by Martin Luther King also gives support to Niebuhr’s t houghts in his struggle to delineate unjust and just laws. As earlier discussed, the all-encompassing framework upon which Niebuhr claims the â€Å"children of light† stride toward is the ‘just law’, which Martin Luther King’s defines as ‘a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God’ (Hollinger, 415). An ‘unjust law’, upon which Dr. King bases the example of segregation, is not rooted in natural law and eternal law and it degrades human personality in addition to giving the segregated a false sense of inferiority and the segregator a false sense of superiority (Hollinger p. 415). Segregation, which is an explicit example of the penetration of the ‘children of darkness’ into practiced government, obligates Dr. King and others of one mind with him to break the law. Albeit the