I did read the last two sentences. The only founders who anticipated King’s words were called Anti-federalists (statesmen who had various reservations about ratifying the Constitution). Neither they or the Federalists would have liked King?s words.
Brookhiser is indeed a wordsmith, but maybe he overlooked what King wrote in Why We Can’t Wait (Signet Books, 1964). From King’s book, I offer a few quotes from a chapter titled “The Days to Come.”
“I am proposing, therefore, that just as we granted a GI Bill of Rights to war veterans, America launch a broad-based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege of denial” (137).
“The nation will also have to find the answer to full employment. . . . (139).
“In addition to such an economic program, a social-work apparatus on a large scale is required” (139).
Regarding the 1930s: “Powerful and antagonistic elements all over the land were strongly resisting the efforts of workers to organize to secure a living wage and decent conditions of work. . . . The national government found a method of solving this problem. The Wagner Act was written, establishing the rights of labor to organize” (140).
“In the case of organized labor, an alliance with the . . .civil rights movement is not a matter of choice but a necessity. . . . ” (142).
“Another necessary alliance is with the federal government. It is the obligation of government to move resolutely to the side of the freedom movement” (142).
