A Radical Revolution of Values…
April 6, 2008 | 11:45 AM
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action; for they ask and write me, “So what about Vietnam?” They ask if our nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence I cannot be silent. …
We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the United Buddhist Church. This is a role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible but refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments. I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. …
I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, “You’re too arrogant! And if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I’ll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name. Be still and know that I’m God.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Why I Am Opposed to the Vietnam War”
Posted in Christianity, Ethics, Human Dignity Series, Life, Politics, Social Justice
joe kennedy, 2008
Thanks for posting this, Joe. King’s words are always in need of a good hearing, as much now, 40 years after his death, as they were in 1967. The teaching of noviolence as a way of life is never popular, but it’s never unneeded. What if the way of nonviolence took root in the lives of the young men in New Orleans? What if every church in the city required candidates for membership to got through a church-based course in noviolence? Today, I saw a woman with a T-shirt that read, “Love your enemies.” It’s a prayer I pray, “Lord, help me love my enemies.” There’s no question that MLK sought to love James Earl Ray, and I am amazed by such love and seeking after nonviolence.
Dayne
April 7th, 2008 at 7:53 PM
I know it’s late but I had to comment. I had not heard this quote by King before- small wonder. It is excellent and just as applicable today as it was forty years ago.
April 8th, 2008 at 2:29 PM
Dayne, I think you’re absolutely right. What if we taught non-violence today? Good question, since it’s not being done.
Strider, if you took King’s speech and then replaced “Vietnam” and its subsequent references with “Iraq,” it wouldn’t be a stretch at all. That says something.
April 8th, 2008 at 2:34 PM