Today we celebrate the life of the greatest prophet and revolutionary in American history. Of course, he will not be presented in that light by the official statements of the powerful. Instead, he will be portrayed as a secular saint, a convenient reminder that children should play nicely with one another and everyone should volunteer at soup kitchens more often. "I Have a Dream" will be quoted repeatedly with little context, but the following will definitely not be:
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor in 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 smashes 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. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
...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. 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 between poverty and wealth. ... 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." ... A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
(Emphases added. From "The Trumpet of Conscience", a collection of sermons broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in the Fall of 1967.)
Posted by Michael at January 17, 2005 12:09 AM | TrackBack