By The Editors

This Saturday Glenn Beck, the conservative talk show personality, is leading a rally of conservatives at the Lincoln Memorial. He has declared it “divine providence” that it will occur on the forty-seventh anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and the famous “I Have A Dream” speech of Martin Luther King’s Jr.

His plans have incensed many civil rights groups and progressive activists, and some are planning counter-rallies in Washington and other cities. Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network will hold its annual celebration of King’s speech with a march and rally at the Lincoln Memorial. But a National Action Network spokesperson stressed that the organization had made its plans for a Washington celebration, long before Beck announced his plans.

Wednesday Martin Luther King III, president and chief executive of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, wrote a column in the Washington Post explaining what his father stood for.

Among other things, he said:

Vast numbers of Americans know of my father’s leadership in opposing segregation. Yet too many believe that his dream was limited to achieving racial equality. Certainly he sought that objective, but his vision was about more than expanding rights for a single race. He hoped that even in the direst circumstances, we could overcome our differences and replace bitter conflicts with greater understanding, reconciliation and cooperation.

My father championed free speech. He would be the first to say that those participating in Beck’s rally have the right to express their views. But his dream rejected hateful rhetoric and all forms of bigotry or discrimination, whether directed at race, faith, nationality, sexual orientation or political beliefs. He envisioned a world where all people would recognize one another as sisters and brothers in the human family. Throughout his life he advocated compassion for the poor, nonviolence, respect for the dignity of all people and peace for humanity.

Although he was a profoundly religious man, my father did not claim to have an exclusionary “plan” that laid out God’s word for only one group or ideology. He marched side by side with members of every religious faith. Like Abraham Lincoln, my father did not claim that God was on his side; he prayed humbly that he was on God’s side