It is one of the enduring mysteries of American history -- so
near-providential as to give the most hardened atheist pause --
that it should have produced, at every hinge point, great men
who matched the moment. A roiling, revolutionary 18th-century
British colony gives birth to the greatest cohort of political
thinkers ever: Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, Washington,
Franklin, Jay. The crisis of the 19th century brings forth
Lincoln; the 20th, FDR. Equally miraculous is Martin Luther King
Jr. Black America's righteous revolt against post-emancipation
oppression could have gone in many bitter and destructive
directions. It did not. This was largely the work of one man's
leadership, moral imagination and strategic genius. He turned
his own deeply Christian belief that "unearned suffering is
redemptive" into a creed of nonviolence carved into America's
political consciousness. The result was not just racial
liberation but national redemption. Such an achievement, such a
life, deserves a monument alongside