Dr. Martin King Jr.’s Anti-War Legacy

[norml]

RON WALTERS: Dr. Martin King Jr.’s Anti-War Legacy
by Ron Walters
January 25, 2006

This Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, I re-read his famous speech, 'Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,' delivered on April 4, 1967, and I was reminded once again how fundamentally it speaks to us today. In doing so, it also reminded me that many have attempted to devalue the intellectual quality of Dr. King's vision by referring to him only as an 'orator.' But his message was not only eloquent, it was a thoughtfully reasoned critique of the American dilemma in Vietnam that clarifies many current questions.

While counseling Americans to move beyond 'smooth patriotism' to the 'high ground of firm dissent,' he also had to answer his critics, some of whom were his colleagues. They felt he was endangering the civil rights movement by opposing the Vietnam conflict.

He countered by suggesting that such criticism reflected their ignorance of the world we live in, implying that there was a connection between domestic and foreign politics. The example he used was that the poverty program, enacted with such hope, has been 'broken and eviscerated' by the diversion of spending for the war. Moreover, he related upon confronting Black youth who had participated in violent rebellions in American cities, telling them that Molotov cocktails and guns would not bring justice, they raised the example of Vietnam as America's violent method of resolving conflict.

King believed in the principles of the new enlightenment created by World War II, which ushered in the United Nations and other initiatives, and principles urging nations to 'study war no more' and to achieve a new standard of peaceful human relationships. He also felt that being the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace gave him a responsibility to pursue a 'vocation of ...brotherhood... beyond the calling of race or nation.'


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http://www.chicagodefender.com/page/commentary.cfm?ArticleID=3753

[Uncle Joe]

1. Yes, it is a tragic shame,

the good Doctor is not here anymore. We could certainly use his counsel. The nation and the planet have truly have been suffering from the loss of his moral fiber.

Today our society places far more emphasis over the superficial as opposed to substance. The quick and easy answers such as blow your enemy up, because diplomacy and peace truly are hard work, much harder than cutting brush. It's too bad today we seem to celebrate the large fish Dr. King caught instead of the fact he reminded us how to catch them.

Kicked and nominated.

:kick: