Christmas Spirit Quote by David Horowitz

The line is less a history lesson than a piece of political jujitsu: it uses Martin Luther King Jr. as moral capital to underwrite a partisan reallocation of credit. Horowitz isn’t just noting that Reagan signed the King holiday into law; he’s staging a reversal meant to sting. The implied audience is the reflexive liberal who “knows” Republicans opposed civil rights and Democrats delivered them. By isolating Carter-era congressional resistance and elevating Reagan as the decisive actor, Horowitz aims to scramble that moral map.

The phrasing does quiet work. “This is thanks to” turns a complicated legislative fight into a single benefactor story, as if the holiday were an act of presidential generosity rather than a long, contested campaign driven by Black activists, organized labor, and broad public pressure. “And not to the Democratic Congress” isn’t just a correction; it’s a rebuke, designed to make Democrats look petty, regressive, or hypocritical on terrain they claim to own.

Context matters: the MLK holiday became law in 1983 after years of obstruction, including Republican opposition and conservative anxieties about King’s politics. Reagan’s signature is real; so is the messy coalition-building that made the bill politically unavoidable. Horowitz’s intent is to telescope that mess into a clean moral scoreboard where Reagan becomes the unexpected hero and Democrats the surprising villains. The subtext is clear: if you want to speak King’s name as a badge of virtue, first concede who, in Horowitz’s telling, handed you the badge.