Today, the third Monday of January, is the day we recall some of the lessons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who was assassinated in 1968. King lived a brief but amazingly concentrated life that corresponded to an equally brief, unfinished, phase in America's racial awakening. King's teachings had a profound effect on everyone — those who loved and respected him, and even those who loathed him and everything he stood for. Had Reverend King lived, many Republicans claim, he would have been a Republican himself, a social conservative, an ardent defender of Israel and the unborn, and would have...