Last Thursday, Paul Robeson, Jr., son and biographer of the legendary entertainer and far-left activist, spoke at Dartmouth as part of the school's week-long recognition of Martin Luther King, Jr. His speech, a passionate, hour-long condemnation of America in general, and the Bush administration in particular, featured the following claims:

--that America is splitting into two countries, one dominated by African-Americans and one dominated by the ideals of white Southern Protestants such as Trent Lott, Bill Frist, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Vice President Dick Cheney.

--that such men are all "made of the same stuff."

--that America needs a "second period of Reconstruction" to finish the work of the Civil Rights movement, to install universal human rights, and to redistribute economic resources

--that Bush "is part of a neo-Confederate government geared at destroying the Union."

--that some of Joseph Stalin's documents provided the template for the Homeland Security Act

--that the support Bush receives from the South is analogous to the support Hitler received from southern Germany

--that it would be better to spend "hundreds of billions of dollars" assisting all Americans who make less than the median income than it would be to pay slave reparations

--that while "A civil war at a time like this would be unimaginable," a "revolution" must still be staged "by any means but that."

So much for the content of our characters. Maybe Dartmouth should hold a forum to debate whether intellectually dishonest historical revisionism celebrates or denigrates King's memory. At such a forum, it would also be intriguing to consider how Robeson, Jr. is using a distinctly American vocabulary of segregation and secession to promote the eventual dissolution of the U.S. as we know it--if institutionalized racism in the U.S. is his most visible target, the revolutionary triumph of a new transnational socialist order is his ultimate goal.

Thanks to reader Fred R. for the link.