Today Is the Day

The Contest for the Soul of America

Dear Underground Railroad Free Press subscriber and readers,

Today, January 20, 2025, is Martin Luther King Day, one of our annual national holidays in America. This day in particular we are reminded of the example that Dr. King set for respect for others, deliverance from the emptiness of intolerance, and an enlightened spiritual path forward as a nation. Among many other lessons, he taught that “Love thy neighbor” meant exactly that, not “Love thy neighbor except . . . ”.

The United States has survived an 80-year cycle of threats to democracy, the most successful form of human existence ever. To create democracy, the United States fought the Revolutionary War, to protect it the Civil War, then World War II, succeeding each time. Now 80 years later, we are at it again.

This day, January 20, the goodness of the nation, the essence of America, an anointed future, are not on Capitol Hill but at the opposite monumental end of the National Mall where the world honors the exemplars of Americanism and democracy—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, the World War II soldier, sailor and flyer—and Martin Luther King, Jr.

At the other end of the Mall today, words and threats will be said. It behooves us all to contrast whatever is said there with what in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1964 Dr. King had to say: "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

God bless America. Again. And God bless all of you.