Martin Luther King Jr. loved the principles on which his country was founded. In his legendary “I Have a Dream” speech, King lauded “the architects of our republic” for a Constitution and Declaration of Independence that promised “all men, yes black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

It was 1963, 187 years past the ratification of the Declaration. It was 100 years since President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all from the bondage of slavery.

Yet, King lamented, society had a long battle ahead before blacks would realize the full American dream. Though free of slavery, they remained “sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”

King and other civil rights leaders, before and after him, gave Americans a vision to fight for. Merely writing “inalienable rights” on paper would not create a multi-racial utopia of freedom and justice for all. Freedom is not free. It is fought for and maintained by people who “march ahead” in pursuit of a vision.

“…many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny, and they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone,” King said.

The multi-racial civil rights movement, he implored, should never wallow in misdeeds of the past.

“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred,” King said.

When King delivered “I Have a Dream,” roughly 45% of blacks lived below the federal poverty line. That was down from 87% in 1940. Today, the poverty rate among blacks has reached a record low of 21% — still too high, but on the way down.

The country has made extraordinary progress toward liberating blacks from the “lonely island of poverty.” Working together — blacks, whites and people of all backgrounds — have a long way to go in our march to achieve freedom and justice for all.

The cup of bitterness and hatred poses the biggest contemporary threat to King’s dream. Though King celebrated the founding of our melting pot, the vast American left increasingly denounces it as evil.

Today marks the first King celebration since the New York Times published its America-hating series the “1619 Project.” The stated goal of the Times “is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year.”

By “reframe” they mean “revise.” The Times ignorantly claims 1619 as the year European settlers “inaugurated” slavery, which will forever run in our country’s DNA.

“It is the country’s very origin,” the Times claims.

It was neither the country’s origin nor the continent’s inaugural moment of slavery. As well documented by multiple historians, Native American tribes practiced slavery long before a slave ship arrived in 1619. Slavery was rampant around the globe before European migration to North American and remains so today. Americans ended slavery in less than 87 years by fighting and dying for the vision stated by those who established nationhood — the vision that motivated King.

This bitter, hate-filled drivel is on tap at America’s colleges and universities, where professors constantly characterize the United States as a nation stolen from peace-loving natives and helplessly mired in racism. Research by Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, finds “Between the World and Me” as the second-most assigned book in summer college reading programs and required reading in nearly 800 courses.

The book, writes Wood, “treats slavery as an institution that was never truly abolished” in the United States.

“Today the progressive left wants to ignore the achievements and pretend that blacks are perpetual victims of white racism,” writes community development leader Robert L. Woodson in The Wall Street Journal.

Woodson believes King would have rejected today’s “identity politics gamesmanship.”

“It frames its grievances in opposition to the American principles of freedom and equality that he sought to redeem,” Woodson explains. “…Martin Luther King Jr. believed in the promise of America. In fact, he helped to fulfill it.”

To celebrate the life of Dr. King is to celebrate the founding of the United States. It is to celebrate 244 years fighting for the founders’ goal of freedom among humans equal in the eyes of a creator. It is to celebrate and constantly pursue the dream expressed in what King called an old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”