MLK
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- whatever
April 4, 1967 "Beyond Vietnam"
"It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us.
Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." [Sustained applause]
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken: the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.
I am 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 [applause], 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, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.
On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [Applause]
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."
It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hands 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. [Sustained applause]
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."
Thank you Dr. King.
- JazX0
quoting jevad:
"F*CK OFF"...
hahah
- JazX0
btw, I was just kidding there... ;)
- todelete__20
this couldn't have gone in the MLK day thread why?!?
- whatever0
Thanks for your feedback, kOna.
This is a thread to the man and his prescient words. The other thread seemed to be a discussion of whether you have the day off or not.
- CyBrainX0
More relevant today than then. And we still have a moron from Texax in the White House predicated on killing and "overseas investments" than people.
- TNDAP0
Thank you, don't mind the ignorance.
- soda0
Great words there, almost chilling really.
There is a similar speech from JFK that sounds like he was looking into the future and didn't like what he saw.
- harlequino0
Speaking of having chilling foresight, read this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product…Written in 1935, it chronicles pretty much everything happening in the U.S. now.