In remembrance of Martin Luther King, I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on something he said in his sermon at the Riverside Church in New York. The speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence” is always worth reading, but is of particular relevance today as our elected officials plan to take us down the path to war. You can read the whole speech here: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html Here’s the part I wanted to call to your attention, if you don’t have time to read the whole thing: “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.” Dr. King's "revolution of values" is happening now, in a growing movement that the media have chosen to call "anti-globalization," but which is more appropriately called, in my opinion, "pro-democracy." Many of its most eloquent proponents will gather in Porto Alegre, Brazil, this week, for the third annual World Social Forum. Check it out: |
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