Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Malcolm X, Bayard Rustin and MLK Jr. Hailed in the ‘Marine Corps Gazette’

Civil rights, and some news about Best Defense

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin. (Wikimedia Commons)
Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin. (Wikimedia Commons)
Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin. (Wikimedia Commons)

“As time passes, we come to recognize the true heroes of the recent past. We know now that the true leaders of the 1960s in the United States were Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X, and others who declined to be patient. Overseas, we can recognize that among the people who helped lift the dead hand of communism from eastern Europe and Russia were Vaclav Havel, Czeslaw Milosz, Lech Walensa, Pope John Paul II, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, and other dissidents.”

“As time passes, we come to recognize the true heroes of the recent past. We know now that the true leaders of the 1960s in the United States were Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X, and others who declined to be patient. Overseas, we can recognize that among the people who helped lift the dead hand of communism from eastern Europe and Russia were Vaclav Havel, Czeslaw Milosz, Lech Walensa, Pope John Paul II, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, and other dissidents.”

— P. 9, Marine Corps Gazette, December 2017.

In other news, “Best Defense” will be leaving FP at the end of December. Where should it go next? Your thoughts welcome. Also, while we’re at it, anything you’d like to see changed in the column?

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

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