** Must-Read: Prophetic words by MLK, Jr. on War and TRUE values**

[checks-n-balances]

From a "Greatest" Thread today from mloutre. My gratitude to that DUer for posting the thread below for everyone to read about John Lewis and listen to his stunning speech...

Cry, The Beloved Community -- John Lewis is still carrying the flame:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/
discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x553427

While addressing Congress, Rep. Lewis referenced a lesser-known speech by King. I am convinced that the theme at the end of King's speech still hold much of the key to our preserving what's left of our democracy and preventing global destruction. These particular words of King are so hauntingly prescient and powerful that I try to post this anytime, anywhere I get the chance!

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967

Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

(Please put links to this speech on your respective web sites and if possible, place the text itself there. This is the least well known of Dr. King's speeches among the masses, and it needs to be read by all)
http://www.ssc.msu.edu/~sw/mlk/brkslnc.htm

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression...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 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, 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...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 Latin 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 veins of people 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.

(snip)

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality...

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

More at:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

A great related article:

A 'True Revolution of Values'
Martin Luther King, Jr., warned America about the danger of unquestioning national pride. How far have we come?
By Michael Eric Dyson
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/182/story_18298.html

[The Count]

1. For all the fuss about MLK's Day, his writings are never brought forth

They are too timely and ...subversive.

[loyalsister]

2. One of my favorites

I found in a list without proper citation was:
"When you are right you can never be too radical, when you are wrong you can never be too conservative."

It fits this context, so it must fall within the spectrum of these writings somewhere.