At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.
[...]
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Forty years later, and the man still has our number. Damn.
Apparently Edwards spoke to oppose the escalation plan at the same church where King made that speech in 3.
I'll bet Joe D is totally creaming his pants over 5.
no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers
Wow.
The Riverside Church is great. A fantastic organ, and the ministers pray for things like same-sex marriage and a living wage, in addition to all the usual abstractions.
A fantastic organ
Jackmormon has some expertise in this area.
That's a wonderful speech and I'm glad I read it.
Speaking truth to power -- the U.S. could use someone like him now.
Yeah, that speech is great, and I wish it would get wider play, especially in our current situation. The "I Have a Dream" speech is beautiful and important, but it's the #1 Dance Single, and more people should get to hear all the great B Sides in King's catalogue.
The real King, the B-Side King, is dissonant with the Sunday-School King that's been created in the last thirty years.
Yes, the real King remains more radical than much of America is comfortable with, which is one reason why the Dream speechgets such wide play.
15: Definitely still worth it, and still unfulfilled.
re: 3
That is some great powerful stuff, right there.
I'd been thinking about 3 over the weekend. I'm glad you remembered it, apo. I watched a documentary about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his efforts to figure out what the appropriate role was for the church in dealing with fascism and totalitarianism. Bonhoeffer believed that teh church's duty was to stand with the victims, and in his time that meant the Jews. It seems to me that Kinf believed the same thing. We are *not* facing Hitler, but the current regime is protofascist. There's a lot of natinalism we have to deal with, and it seems to me that we could do a lot worse than to think about those two when figuring out how to do it.
(Bonhoeffer, BTW, was very influenced by the Black church in Harlem while he was at Union Theological Seminary--Abyssinian something--and learning about the struggle of African-Americans as a people motivated his concern for the Jews.
18:The Abyssinian Baptist Church would seem to fit.